Joan Williams' Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict And What To Do About It (Oxford, 1999) is a "theoretically sophisticated and thoroughly accessible treatise" that offers a new vision of work, family, and gender. (Publisher's Weekly, Nov. 1, 1999) It examines our system of providing for children's care by placing their caregivers at the margins of economic life. This system that stems from the way we define our work ideals, notably from our definition of the ideal worker as one who takes no time off for childbearing or childrearing and who works full-time and is available for overtime. The ideal-worker norm clashes with our sense that children should be cared for by parents. The result is a system that is bad for men, worse for women, and disastrous for children. Williams documents that mothers remain economically marginalized, and points out that when mothers first marginalize and then divorce, their children often accompany them into poverty. Williams argues that designing workplaces around the bodies of men (who need no time off for childbearing) and men's life patterns (for women still do 80% of the child care) often constitutes discrimination against women. She also engages the work/family literature to show that "flexible" workplaces are often better than existing practices for employers' bottom line. On the family side, she argues that the ideal worker's wage -- after as well as before divorce -- reflects the joint work of the ideal worker and the primary caregiver of his children, and should be jointly owned. In a comprehensive examination of the theoretical issues surrounding work/family issues, she uses the work of Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu to explain why gender has proved so unchanging and unbending, reframing the special treatment/equal treatment debate, the debate over "women's voice," and offering new perspective on how to avoid the persistent race and class conflicts that emerge in debates over work and family issues.

/pdf/unbending-gender-why-family-and-work-conflict-and-what-to-do-2503cvi4wr.pdf

Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It (Panel Two: Who's Minding the Baby?)

COVID-19 and the associated lockdowns meant many working parents were faced with doing paid work and family care at home simultaneously To investigate how they managed, this paper draws a subsample of parents in dual earner couples (n=1,536) from a national survey of 2,722 Australian men and women conducted during lockdown in May 2020 It asked how much time respondents spent in paid and unpaid labour, including both active and supervisory care, and about their satisfaction with work-family balance and how their partner shared the load Overall, paid work time was slightly lower, and unpaid work time was very much higher, during lockdown than before it These time changes were most for mothers, but gender gaps somewhat narrowed because the relative increase in childcare was higher for fathers More mothers than fathers were dissatisfied with their work-family balance and partner's share before COVID-19 For some the pandemic improved satisfaction levels, but for most they became worse Again, some gender differences narrowed, mainly because more fathers also felt negatively during lockdown than they had before

Dual-earner Parent Couples' Work and Care during COVID-19.

This paper describes the results of an empirical study of the gender subtext in organizations. We examine the divergence of practice and impression of gender distinctions: gender inequality is still persistent in organizational practices while a dominant perception of equality occurs at the same time. Our analysis focuses on the processes (re)producing this divergence. We argue that both the persistency of gender inequality and the perception of equality emerge from a so-called gender subtext: the set of often concealed, power-based gendering processes, i.e. organizational and individual arrangements (objectives, measures, habits), systematically (re)producing gender distinctions. These gendering processes are examined in five departments in the Dutch banking sector. We explore the gender subtext in three organizational settings: show pieces (the token position of the few women in top functions), the mommy track (the side track many women with young children are shunted to) and the importance of being ask...

Covered by equality: The gender subtext of organizations

This discussion paper by a group of scholars across the fields of health, economics and labour relations argues that COVID-19 is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis from which there can be no retu...

/pdf/the-covid-19-pandemic-lessons-on-building-more-equal-and-4aa88ikvjm.pdf

The COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons on building more equal and sustainable societies

Earlier this year, the Australian Government finally released the findings of the tax review panel looking at “Australia’s Future Tax System”, known colloquially (and referred to in this note) as the “Henry Report” after the chair of the review panel, Ken Henry. The report, commissioned in 2008 as a “root and branch” investigation of all aspects of the tax and transfer system, was conducted largely by the Australian Treasury, with four external panel members supervising. Ken Henry is Secretary of the Treasury, the most senior civil servant in the Ministry.

Australia's future tax system

The interplay between women’s work and family lives and public and business policies attracted considerable attention during 2009. In this review we focus on Australia’s new paid parental leave scheme, pay equity, award modernization and the lack of women in senior management and on boards. We conclude that ‘economic efficiency’ arguments to promote gender equality in the workplace became stronger during the year, sometimes displacing gender justice arguments. We also suggest that 2009 was a year of policy wins and losses for women at work and that 2010 will see more attention to gender equitable policies as political parties seek to win the ‘women’s vote’.

Women, Work and Industrial Relations in 2009

It has long been recognised that collective bargaining is at the heart of industrial relations. Research on collective bargaining was largely gender blind; however, since the late 1980s, researcher...

Gender equality bargaining: Developing theory and practice

Western Governments concerned about the lack of gender equity in their workforces are increasingly seeking to address the negative effects of unconscious biases on employment decisions to counter the effects of hidden prejudices. Although unconscious bias has received limited attention in the human resource literature, social psychology literature has identified inadequacies with this practice, including that such training may entrench and normalise unconscious biases. We argue that the popularity of unconscious bias training invites agencies to view this practice as a ‘silver bullet’ to achieve gender equity, but that its effectiveness is likely to be limited unless accompanied by sustained interventions to address discrimination. Further, the impacts of unconscious bias training need to be rigorously evaluated to assess whether government resources are being effectively utilised. Consistent with international research, such an evaluation may reveal that unconscious bias training has unintended negative consequences, but that the training can be improved to reduce these consequences.

Unconscious Bias Training: The ‘Silver Bullet’ for Gender Equity?

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled large sections of the workforce out of their workplaces and into their homes to work. Many commentators suggest this has forever changed how and where we work. This article analyses how Australia's biggest employers – state and federal governments – approached the transitions to working from home, and back into regular workplaces. It considers the timing of policy responses to the pandemic as one indicator of resistance to, or acceptance of, widespread working from home. The article also demonstrates previous resistance to working from home for public servants, and questions widespread conjecture that it will become the ‘new normal’.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-8500.12444

Will working from home become the ‘new normal’ in the public sector?

Purpose




The purpose of this paper is to explore how entrepreneur-mothers experience independence in the transition to entrepreneurship, and whether they perceive independence as an agentic, opportunity-maximisation motive or a constrained, necessity-driven response.




Design/methodology/approach




Adopting a qualitative and interpretive approach, the authors analysed interviews with 60 entrepreneur-mothers to refine conceptual understanding of independence.




Findings




The authors find that entrepreneur-mothers experience independence not as an opportunity, but as a functional necessity in managing the temporal and perceived moral demands of motherhood. The authors assert that there is a fundamental difference between wanting independence to pursue a more autonomous lifestyle, and needing independence to attend to family obligations, a difference that is not adequately captured in the existing conceptualisation of independence. Consequently, the authors propose the classification of “family-driven entrepreneurship” to capture the social and institutional factors that may disproportionately push women with caregiving responsibilities towards self-employment.




Practical implications




This paper proposes that a new category of entrepreneurial motivation be recognised to better account for the social and institutional factors affecting women’s entrepreneurship, enabling policymakers to more accurately position and support entrepreneur-mothers.




Social implications




The authors challenge the existing framing of independence as an agentic opportunity-seeking motive, and seek to incorporate family dynamics into existing entrepreneurial models.




Originality/value




This paper delivers much-needed conceptual refinement of independence as a motivator to entrepreneurship by examining the experiences of entrepreneur-mothers, and proposes a new motivational classification, that of family-driven entrepreneurship to capture the elements of agency and constraint embedded in this transition.

Sue Williamson

Papers

Women, Work and Industrial Relations in 2009

Gender equality bargaining: Developing theory and practice

Unconscious Bias Training: The ‘Silver Bullet’ for Gender Equity?

Will working from home become the ‘new normal’ in the public sector?

Is independence really an opportunity? The experience of entrepreneur-mothers