IJPSM

3,1
Balancing Work and Family
Responsibilities:
36
Gender-Equity and
Organisational Change
Rhona Rapoport and Robert N. Rapoport
Institute of Family & Environmental Research, London

It is perhaps astonishing that concern for helping workers to achieve a more

satisfactory balance between work and family responsibilities is a very recent
and novel organisational policy issue. While changes underway are not primarily
driven by a concern for gender equity, the social, economic and demographic
forces fuelling new efforts to recruit, retain and develop women in the workforce
may result in increasing gender equity.

Background
Prior to the Industrial Revolution it was normal for both men and women to
work at various tasks associated with the home-based agrarian economy. Though
there were gender-based elements in the division of labour and a patriarchal
mould for the whole enterprise, the sharp separation between work and family
that has characterised modern life was lacking. Max Weber[l] considered that
the strict segregation between work and family life was part of the dynamic
mechanism which gave rise to modern capitalism: allowing the employment
of human resources to be impersonally based on merit rather than on nepotistic
obligations.
Women and children were often used as cheap labour in the sweatshops of
early industrialisation, but the humane factory law reforms worked towards their
removal. For families able to survive on the earnings of a male provider alone,
separation of work and family, including the physical distancing of home and
family life from the precincts of work, was sought as a self-evident benefit.
Both employers and employees, albeit for different reasons, preferred private
life should be none of the business of the organisation.
This separation of work and family life was underpinned ideologically by cultural
concepts of gender. It was considered that the biologically determined condition
of men made it natural for them to conduct the activities required in the
workplace; men were considered better not only at the "large muscle jobs"
such as the operation of heavy machinery, but at the tasks of management such
as leadership, rational planning, and fiscal responsibility. Women, on the other
hand, were considered "naturally" better at sensate activities cooking and
home-making, childrearing and an intuitive understanding of human feelings.
These cultural conceptions legitimated the continuity of conventional gender
role-segregation males dominating the workplace (and correlatively exempted
from domestic duties such as cooking, cleaning and childcare), and females Balancing Work
as help meets attending to hearth and home, kitchen and childcare (and and Family
correlatively granted only limited access to the world of work).
Responsibilities
Recent Changes
There have recently been a number of interrelated changes in work, family
life, cultural conceptions of gender, and in the larger society. These have 37
unsettled the conventional patterns without yet establishing viable new norms.
We are in a period of transition during which ideas and policies are being tried
out and evaluated, de facto social "experiments". What are the changes and
what is their relevance for gender equity?

Workplace Changes
These changes include more technological support and a diminished role for
heavy-muscle activity with a greater emphasis on mind-work, i.e. management
and problem solving and the provision of services. The combination of increased
education and of increased motivation to work (economic and non-economic)
has brought a great influx of women into employment, and in a wider range
of occupations than previously. Initially women worked until they married, then
until their first baby was bom. Recently married women with young children
have shown a steep rise in entry rates so that the assumptions about women's
confinement to the home are increasingly erroneous, both statistically and in
terms of cultural norms.

Family Changes
These have also been marked, with greater recognition of diverse family/
household types. This has been due in part to the greatly increased and
variegated patterning of wives' work. As more married women work for more
of the family life-course, new family structural types are spawned, e.g. the dual-
worker family (where husband and wife both work continuously), the lone-
parenting household, the co-habiting-couple household, the intermittent or
occasional working-couple household, as well as the conventional family (where
the wife is a permanent full-time homemaker). Apart from new work patterns,
variant household types have increased because of the high divorce rate, the
high remarriage rate with attendant reconstitution of combined families, and
a wider range of tolerated cohabitation arrangements.

Gender Conceptions
Some evidence suggest that the change in gender conceptions is a case where
behavioural changes have in many instances preceded changes in values and
concepts rather than the reverse. Many wives with children have "voted with
their feet" to normalise women's employment by taking jobs, even though they
may reject new conceptions of gender equality. While few would now seriously
argue, as many did a few decades ago, that women are less intelligent, less
competent, or less reliable as workers than men, many consider it best that
women do not exercise their talents in the workplace. It is still held by a majority
IJPSM of British people, both male and female, that it is best for both babies and
3,1 mothers, that women leave the workplace for an extended period of time, when
they have children[2]. Furthermore, if a working parent in a dual-worker family
has to leave to care for a young child, it is considered rational for the wife rather
than the husband to drop work at this point, because she is usually the lower
earner. This reinforces a self-perpetuating pattern of gender inequality in the
38 workplace. Some data suggest that even when a working wife/mother is the
higher earner, she is often expected to leave when an infant needs care, the
gender stereotype overriding economic rationality.
It is also widely believed that it would be too costly for organisations to increase
their support for workers with young children because it would erode the
organisation's competitive position. Even one leading advocate of gender-role
change has suggested that this should be faced as a fact of life, and that women
should choose between emphasising parenthood or emphasising career; if it
is the former they should accept that they would inevitably follow a "mommy
track" at a lower level than comparably skilled males[3]. This has created a
storm of controversy, with supporters both pro and con. Critiques of the
"mommy track" idea have included the view that organisations could change
their culture and structure in such a way as to ease the dilemmas and make
it more possible for men and women to have a more equal opportunity to exercise
their talents in the workplace.

Demographic Changes
An additional recent force, the impact of which is still being assessed, is the
changes in demography. The "baby boom" following the Second World War
has run its course. It was followed by a "baby bust" phase, the effects of which
have begun to have an impact on the labourforce. This is occurring in the context
of expanding economies and an increased demand for skilled labour. As fewer
school-leavers emerge to present themselves for job openings, employers
become activated to woo the potential labour pool not previously courted. This
means women, to a large extent, and in some contexts ethnic minorities.
Luring, Retaining and Developing Womanpower
Since the Second World War, we have become increasingly aware of the fact
that womanpower has been an underutilised human resource. Research
conducted in the 1960s was concerned with how to avoid the waste in use of
these human resources, and revealed the basic issues[4]. These issues are
still operative today. The essential finding of the 1960s research was that personal
and social buck-passing was fruitless, and that a multidimensional approach was
required. Blaming women, the family, the schools, employers and the
governments (or "the capitalist system") was a way of avoiding the issue.
Decisive action towards greater equality of opportunity was somewhat dampened
in the past two decades partly because there was a surplus of labour supply.
As indicated above, there is now a changed situation not only an increased
demand for skilled labour, but also improvement in the conditions of work,
changes in family structure and in gender conceptions. All of these factors point
to the possibility of a resumption of efforts to make better and more equitable Balancing Work
use of women in the labourforce. and Family
New policies to encourage women to participate more equally in the Responsibilities
labourforce need to create favourable conditions for men and women to:
take leave from work for family reasons;
attend to childcare requirements; 39
re-enter work following family-leave; and
pursue long-term career development via various patterns.
These measures have been ideals and are still not widely available. At present,
they are appearing piecemeal as they are experimented with in different settings.
Two questions are emerging as crucial in such early experiments:
(1) What is considered "favourable" to the various parties concerned?, and
(2) What is the role of government, industry and the family in creating
favourable conditions?
We shall look at two approaches to dealing with these issues: the Swedish policy
of Parental Leave, and the British policy of Career Break[5].
Parental Leave
The Swedish case is part of an integrated attempt to achieve gender equity.
Though a small country, Sweden is competitive in international trade and has
a substantial number of world-class companies. Sweden has had low
unemployment, and a high rate of participation of women in the labourforce
(in 1987,92 per cent of women aged 25-54 were in the labourforce, as compared
with 74 per cent in the United States). Because of the small population size,
and the high rate of emigration earlier in the century, labourforce shortages
have provided long-standing challenges stimulating the development of innovative
human resources policies. But so has been the ideal of equality, Sweden being
a country without a heavy heritage of class stratification[6].
In addition, Swedish policies directed towards developing a better balance
between work and family responsibilities are impelled by two other values: the
quality of family life, and children's welfare. Swedish equal opportunity policies
are distinctive in the degree to which they emphasise men's participation in
domestic responsibilities. This gives their equal opportunity laws and polices
a different "flavour". Rather than emphasising the rights of women in isolation
they emphasise the aim of people, men and women having equal opportunities
in bringing up children as well as in achieving career success. This approach
is reflected in the Act of Equality (1970, amended 1985). While this law is intended
to promote equal rights between men and women at work, its preamble says
that equality would mean men taking responsibility for children under the same
conditions as women, having the same responsibility for the home and equal
rights to children and emotional life. In the 1988 Bill, the Swedish Parliament
defined four objectives for their equality policy:
IJPSM (1) women and men are to have the samerights,obligations and opportunities
3,1 in all the main fields of life;
(2) every individual should have a job paid sufficiently to enable her or him
to earn a living;
(3) both sexes should to the same extent devote themselves to political,
40 trade union and other matters of common interest both at work and in
the community;
(4) men and women should share responsibility for their children and the
work at home.
In Sweden, these objectives explicitly express long-term values, and not just
immediate crisis expedients. Furthermore, there is agreement on both sides
of management, that trade unionists and managers work together on standing
committees to tackle issues associated with making the policies work. Similarly,
there is agreement in both public and private sectors that the necessary steps
to realise the values of gender equality will be taken on by all concerned without
the implication that the sacrifices required are more than can reasonably be
borne in a competitive world. Where there are differences, they are about such
issues as how much of the financial support package should be borne by public
money, how much by private insurance, how much by the employing organisation,
and how much by the individual family; not whether the measures are desirable
or should be taken on.
These factors have combined to promote an orientation to policy-development
which nurtures human resources on a gender-equal basis and seeks to develop
their potential to the full. Sweden has led other European countries in developing
family-responsive policies including parental leave, part-time and flexible work
arrangements, and the universal provision of childcare services on the
assumption that such policies favour productivity rather than the reverse.
Parental leave in Sweden takes the form of a universal 12-month period of
post-natal leave, with compensation from a social insurance fund at 90 per cent
of gross earnings. This has been increasing, and it is planned to increase it
still further to 18 months in 1991. The way the leave entitlement may be
used is very flexible: shared between parents as they choose, taken as part-
time leave, deferred until any point up until the child is four and ready to enter
school (this will be deferred to age eight in 1991), and there is an explicit emphasis
on encouraging fathers to take the leave as well as mothers. There is also a
government commitment to provide childcare services for all children over the
age of 18 months which will cover the care of the child until normal school-
entry age. The pay during leave is covered by a childcare levy of 3 per cent,
earmarked within the 46 per cent employer contributions to national insurance.
The actual functioning of the provisions is imperfect. However, the Swedish
situation is interesting in that the society as a whole, and major employing
organisations within it consider that the goals are essentially valid, and that
the challenge of realising them is everyone's business a matter for widespread
experimentation, evaluation and revision. The distinctive hallmarks of the
Swedish scheme are:
 the affirmation of gender-equality values at a national governmental level; Balancing Work
the integrated operation of employer, government and local community and Family
efforts; Responsibilities
the flexible options for male or female use of the leave entitlements as
suited to the particular family; and
the high level of compensation (making it economically feasible for either 41
mother or father to take leave).
Difficulties experienced in the operation of the scheme include:
the greater tendency for women to use it than men, particularly in
management (thus risking the perpetuation of the gender-segregated
status quo);
the tendency at higher levels of management for neither men nor women
to take much parental leave;
the difficulties in recruiting and maintaining the services of adequate child-
care personnel for the period following parental leave; and
informal problems of reabsorption of people into the organisation following
parental leave.
Consensus about the desirability of such a scheme has been reaffirmed in
experience, and the tendency is to seek solutions to continuing problems by
extending the leave, increasing the pay allowances, improving the childcare
facilities rather than regarding the whole thing as unviable or undesirable. Since
1974 when parental leave was initiated, only 2 per cent of men took a significant
amount. Now the figure is nearly 30 per cent (higher in some groups). In the
public dialogue which is ongoing about such issues as how to get more men
to take their parental leave, ideas are mooted such as imposing a quota system.
The consensus seems to be, however, on improving efforts to communicate
the rationale for the scheme and persuade men of its importance for all
concerned at various levels. In other words to step up educational efforts. There
are changes going on, whether due to these deliberate educational efforts or
larger forces of cultural change, in which younger generations coming up into
more senior levels of jobs are now more oriented in the desired direction than
were their predecessors. (This seems to be an international phenomena,
supporting the idea of larger cultural change forces at work. In one case known
to us in Switzerland, a managing director who inherited the business from his
father, having identified this tendency for males to forego parental leave because
of the fear of losing out in the promotion race, introduced a promotion incentive
for men who take advantage of parental leave.)

Career Break
"Career break" is a British concept. The policy originally aimed to cover
extended interuptions of the regular work pattern for various reasons, not only
leave to care for children. As career breaks such as sabbaticals were already
recognised phenomena the idea of a career break for other reasons was easier
IJPSM to rationalise. The term also indicates that it is not a "leave , because there
3,1 is neither remuneration nor absolute guarantee of reabsorption into the firm
following the break.
There are striking cultural contrasts between Britain and Sweden in relation
to gender-equity and family-support orientations. The career-break policy as
applied to women in Britain began with only one firm, a bank, initiating it in
42 1981, and slowly others are taking it up. It is non-statutory, and still only practised
by a relatively small number of companies. It was initially used for high-flyers,
and is only slowly being seen as something more broadly applicable, with a
lead being taken by the Equal Opportunities Commission in helping to
disseminate ideas on how it works. It still tends to be elitist in character, as
its application is restricted to people with a fairly long (normally two years)
record of continuous service to the company, and to people with promise of
future development.
Career break is seen as an extension of maternity leave, which is the only
statutory measure available for protecting women employees at risk of losing
career ground because of family responsibilities. Introduced in 1975 as part of
a comprehensive Employment Protection Act, even the maternity leave was
opposed by the (then) Conservative opposition in Parliament, and by employers.
The latter objected to what they considered State intrusion into traditionally
private and local matters, and to the fear that it would place an extra burden
on business, especially small businesses, and act as a disincentive to the
employment of women.
What eventually emerged gave women 40 weeks leave (really a right to
reinstatement rather than leave in the technical sense of a statutorily supported
and paid time off). Eighteen weeks of the 40 are paid six weeks at 90 per
cent of normal earnings, the rest at a relatively low flat rate. Furthermore, there
are length of service qualifications (at least two years) and the present
government has sought to exempt firms employing less than five people. In
practice, because of the stringent conditions, only about half of employed
pregnant women qualify, with women in the lower, less skilled jobs being least
likely to be able to use the provision.
The explicit position of the Government is that caring for young children is
a private matter and that public opinion (if not public behaviour) still favours
the conventional pattern of women focusing on the home while children are
young. The effort to reduce public expenditure for social services reinforces
this stance, and the result is a relatively uneven pattern with some employers
espousing the career break benefit enthusiastically and with gender equity in
mind; others avoiding it, or adopting it with the attitude that, like the wartime
emergency, it is a necessary expedient while there are labour-market shortages.
It is not seen by many as a regular or permanent innovation.
In general, the macro-environmental conditions which set the context for
the operation of the career break are only minimally supportive of the idea of
gender-equity, as compared with other European countries.
Ironically, the wide prevalance of part-time working if not abused could be
an important element in balancing work and family responsibilities. The British
have a wider acceptance of part-time work than other countries, and what may Balancing Work
have originated as a compromise, may eventually lead the way to a more widely and Family
applicable pattern. Part-time will be associated not only with women but with Responsibilities
men as well, and not only with low-paid jobs, but with jobs up and down the scale.

Some Transnational Perspectives 43

The demographic crisis is shared by Britain and Sweden, as well as the United
States and other advanced industrial countries. The culture as well as the political
situation in the various countries affects the orientation of employers and
employees to family-responsive policies. Viewing the US, Britain and Sweden
on a continuum, we see at one extreme (the USA) the emphasis on de-
regulation, reduction of government services, and the emphasis on market factors
in determining individual career and family destinies. In this context, companies
with a large female labourforce and/or precarious image problems for recruiting
new workers are more likely to be innovative. High-tech information companies
like AT&T and IBM have been very active in developing new family support
schemes, as have pharmaceutical companies like Johnson and Johnson and
Merck. Other companies may be very backward in this regard with:
rigid adherence to a 40-hour work week, a concept of career path inconsistent with the life
cycle of a person with family responsibilities, notions of equity formed in a different era, and
performance-evaluation systems that confuse effort with results by equating hours of work
with productivity[7, p. 438].

At the other extreme we see a strong sense of government leadership in affirming

social values, and an active partnership between government, industry and the
local community in financial and other supports for the realisation of cultural
ideals. In the middle, the UK has a current political stance close to that of the
USA, but a culture which is still traditional and patriarchal, though emphasising
the social responsibility of the firm.
All three of the countries have gender-egalitarians and gender-traditionalists,
but there are perhaps more Britons than Swedes who would subscribe to the
view of one writer to The Sunday Times who wrote as follows in response to
a "Profile" published the previous week of a familistic task-sharing modern
British man:
Never has so much damage been wreaked on so many marriages as by Roy Strong's
contribution to the series Life in the Day (Magazine, 13 August). Together with countless
thousands of peace-loving husbands, I have had this wretched article thrust in front of me,
and my nose rubbed in it with the injunction "Read that!" With such a blissful marriage,
why does he have to upset so many others with his treacherous and malignant chatter about
his dusting, vacuuming and cooking?[8].

In Sweden, the writer would probably have been regarded as in need of

education; in Britain, possibly as an endangered species in need of protection.
In the USA a substantial number of people may resonate to the view but few
would publish it in a "quality" newspaper.
IJPSM Equality and Equity
3,1 The changes in work and family patterns have been accompanied by, and
sometimes assisted by the idea of gender equality. This norm, championed by
various advocacy groups and supported in civil rights legislation, is based on
the ideal of equal rights of all human beings regardless of ethnicity or gender.
Organisations like the Equal Opportunities Commission, as well as women's
44 organisations, have this cause as their primary mission.
The ideal of equality, however, has been considered somewhat problematic
not only by its opponents, but also by those who subscribe to it. Firstly,
it is a quasi-mathematical concept which implies an identity on two sides of
an equation. Even given the notion of equality of opportunity the idea of gender
identity of outcome is less axiomatic. Consideration of the human complexities
leads to the conclusion that people cannot be equal in all respects. Freeing
men and women from traditionally polarised role stereotypes does not
necessarily imply that all men and all women should fit a single new mould.
We consider, therefore, that the concept of equity is a useful complement to
that of equality. Gender equity requires equality of opportunity as well as a fair
allocation of constraints[9]. The first stipulation allows for the possibility of
individual freedom of choice; the second recognises that the exercise of this
freedom is contingent on constraints, requiring negotiation towards fair solutions.
If a man, for example, says that his wife should have as much freedom of choice
as possible so long as she continues to carry the domestic responsibilities
(including servicing him), he is paying lip service to the ideal of equality, while
generating a sense of unfairness. A fairer position would be that a wife should
have as much freedom of choice as a husband, and that they should work out
the best way for them to share the constraints. This will affect how much freedom
each can in fact accept, and the consensus about how to share the constraints
would be intrinsic to the agreement. A sense of fairness might prevail even
though the duties of each member might not emerge as the same in all respects.
Gender equality is a powerful ideal, but there are problems about how best
to realise it. We suggest that while the ideal provides a vital goal, its operation
in any current situation should be complemented by the concept of equity, of
which it is an integral part.

Implications for Employing Organisations

The increase in numbers of women in the workforce has not been paralleled
by an equivalent redistribution of domestic work between the spouses. Working
wives have had to do a "second shift" [10] of domestic work and this has been
both stressful and fraught with a sense of inequity. Where working wives seek
to engage unwilling husbands in sharing the constraints, they face the risk of
marital discord and perhaps dissolution the aftermath of which tends to
leave them at a greater disadvantage than their spouses. A genuine egalitarian
form of sharing one that is acceptable as fair to both members of the couple
is experienced by only about 20 per cent of working couples according to
recent research estimates. The possibility of achieving this varies, of course,
by social and occupational context, as well as by personal predilections. The
task of developing support structures to help balance work and family Balancing Work
responsibilities is a priority. and Family
In different cultural settings the task is made easier or more difficult. In Responsibilities
Sweden, as discussed above, the improvement of family support structures for
working men and women goes "with the grain" of national culture, is supported
by government policy, organisational practice and by the fabric of local social
and educational services. In Britain, by contrast, it goes against the cultural 45
grain to a large extent and enjoys less support at various levels of organisational
and social structure. Informally, though, there may be considerable support.
In the United States there is a very diverse situation, a heterogeneous workforce
and an individualistic ethos. At the same time there is a greater flexibility, a
more developed technology and in particular organisations a more imaginative
approach to problem solving than in many European settings.
Throughout the developed world determined efforts are being made to improve
the utilisation of women, both for reasons of gender equality and because of
the current labour shortage. Many elements of the repertoire for creating family
support structures are similar in different countries flexible working time,
job sharing, part-time work, parental leave, childcare benefits and career break.
Organisations taking the lead tend to be those with the kinds of jobs which
easily allow for flexibility and a female-intensive labourforce. Banks, public sector
organisations and high-tech organisations are prominent innovators.
An important issue in the current innovations is how much the introduction
of measures to balance work and family responsibilities is seen as a temporary
expedient designed to keep women working only while there is an emergency,
and how much it is seen as the leverage-point for a more enduring form of
socio-cultural change in which both men and women will be helped to restructure
their work/family involvements. Where the first orientation prevails, there is
a reluctance to institutionalise programmes and facilities, and a tendency to
grant only minimal concessions. They may be perceived as expensive, risky
and subject to abuse. Where the second is present, there is a longer-term view
and the new policies are related to the long-term needs of men and women.
The orientation is adopted that the productivity of workers is enhanced by their
having a balanced and satisfying personal life. The organisation's social
responsibilities towards children and families is seen as playing a crucial role.
Organisations which previously perceived gender and family issues as outside
their area of concern or too expensive are now seeing the need to take an interest
if they are to remain competitive for available human resources. Organisations
are increasingly accepting a responsibility for contributing to the formation of
families and children for the future. They can exert an influence, both directly
and indirectly, on political and legal reforms, and many organisations perceived
the long-term interest they have in exerting this influence as it affects the future
human resources pool. Lobbying for tax reforms should help families with
childcare expenses as well as the traditional commercial agenda.
Gender equity is a goal which is being pursued both in countries like Sweden
where it is being sought at all levels, and in countries like Britain and the United
States where it is only patchily sought by specific groups without support at
IJPSM the macroscopic political level. Where gender equity is being sought at all levels,
3,1 it may occur with less wastage of human talent and less damaging conflict
(between husbands and wives, families and organisations, parents and children).
Most advanced industrial countries pay lip service to gender equality as ideals;
but the introduction of new family-friendly and gender-equitable policies which
will realise the ideals is a difficult and complex task, which will have to be worked
46 out differently in different settings, and followed up by monitoring and evaluation
so that initial improvements can be sustained and a genuine restructuring can
be achieved.

References
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Henderson and T. Parsons, Free Press, Chicago, 1957.
2. Jowell, R. et al., British Social Attitudes, Social and Community Planning Research, London,
1988.
3. Swartz, R., Harvard Business Review, 1989.
4. Fogarty, M.P., Rapoport, R. and Rapoport, R.N., Sex, Career and Family, Sage, Beverly
Hills, London, 1971.
5. Rapoport, R. and Moss, P., "Men and Women as Equals at Work", Occasional paper
No. 11, Thomas Coram Research Unit, 1990.
6. Stoiber, S.A., Parental Leave and 'Woman's Place': The Implications and Impact on Three
European Approaches to Family Leave, Women's Research and Education Institute,
Washington, 1989.
7. Rogers, F.S. and Rogers, C., "Business and the Facts of Family Life'', Harvard Business
Review, Nov/Dec 1989, pp. 437-45.
8. The Sunday Times, 21 August 1989, p. B7.
9. Rapoport, R. and Rapoport, R.N., "Men, Women and Equity", Family Coordinator, Vol.
24 No. 4, 1975, pp. 421-32.
10. Hochschild, A., The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home, Viking,
New York, 1989.