Family friendly employment reinforcing gender inequality?
Shorter working hours, time off during school holidays and opportunities to work from home are all family friendly employment policies welcomed by many campaigning for equality in the work place.
But some academics believe that these practices may actually be reinforcing sexual inequality by giving working mothers more time to carry out traditional household chores.
Determined to resolve the true effects of family friendly policies, Sarah Beth Estes, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati, surveyed 865 parents aged between 18 and 65 who used a variety of arrangements including parental leave, sick leave, working at home, flexible scheduling and on-site childcare.
Prof Estes found that women’s use of work place flexibility is unrelated to their share of the housework and does not contribute to or detract from gender division of household chores.
Although men’s use of family friendly arrangements correlated with their doing less of some types of housework, it was not their wives who took up their slack, as in these instances there tended to be a higher share of household labour performed by “others” whether they be hired help, children or parents.
In another study Prof Estes based her investigation on interviews with employed, married women, but this approach yielded a very different story.
She found some women used family friendly policies to resolve the pressures of dual earning families along traditional gender lines. Mothers commented that added flexibility allowed them to take on more responsibility for housework and childcare, allowing their partners to maintain the role of breadwinner.
Others used the flexibility provided at work because their partners would have to take unpaid time off to carry out the same chores.
Some mothers observed that because they already experienced inequity in the division of labour at home, the family friendly policies tended to alleviate their resentment and stress.
While these interviews tended to reveal trends which contradicted the previous study’s conclusions that family friendly policies did not reinforce traditional gender roles, one group emerged from the interviews claiming flexibility at work has a liberating effect, encouraging partners to become more involved in household tasks.
Prof Estes explains the apparently conflicting findings by pointing out that there is much complexity and variation in the way families use the policies available to them.
“We might not see what is actually going on when we examine quantitative data – the hard data. When you look at qualitative data – the personal statements women make – another picture emerges”.
The research was presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting in Atlanta.
