Combining Work and Family Life: Removing the Barriers to Women’s Progression

1. Combining Work and Family Life: Removing the Barriers to Women’s Progression Experiences from the UK and the Netherlands: Implications for BME women Dr Kay Standing School of Social Science Liverpool John Moores University

2. Aims • To assess the impact of UK ‘family-friendly’ policy/workplace flexibility. • Awareness; availability; take-up; attitudes. • Potential to alleviate the ‘work-care’ conflict for women; alleviate the ‘childcare barrier’. • To investigate the ‘lived experience’ of work-life balance for women. • Explore the ways in which childcare persists as a barrier to employment progression. • To explore examples of good practice from the Netherlands

3. UK Policy and Legislation post-1997 • National Childcare Strategy • Parental Leave • Time-off for Dependants • Work-life Balance Campaign – Changing Patterns in a Changing World (DfEE, 2000) • Employment Act (2001) Implemented 2003 • Flexible Working Request • Improved Maternity Rights • Paid Paternity Leave • Tax Credits

4. Women, care and paid employment • The gendered nature of care • 55% mothers of under 5s work, Two thirds all mother • White, Indian & Black Caribbean mothers highest employment rates (65-70%) Pakistani and Bangladeshi mothers lowest (15%) • Age at which start family issues – higher for white women

5. Part-Time Work • Part-time working commonest form of ‘flexibility’ 42% women, 9% men work part-time, but 67% of women with children under 4 & 63% youngest child 5-10 work part-time (EOC 2004) • Women’s labour market inequality • Pay gap – 19 per cent (EOC, 2003) Pakistani and Bangladeshi women face a 10 –15% higher pay gap than white women ( p-t 40% less per hour than men) Occupational segregation Implications for Progression

6. Part-Time work & BME Women • Biggest gap in part-time work white women 41% cf 7% white men • Part-time employment less common for BME women, but more BME men work part-time, especially Bangladeshi men (38%) (EOC 2006)

7. Muslim women least likely to be in paid employment (24%) • Bangladeshi (40%) and Pakistani women (36%) most likely to be outside the labour market due to childcare • Black Caribbean women (8%) least likely, but also horizontal and vertical segregation (EOC 2006) 39% work in Education, Health and Social Work

8. Working Black Caribbean women are 8% more likely to have a degree than white women, yet only 9% are managers/senior manager cf 11% white women

9. Methods • 67 in–depth interviews and 3 focus groups with working mothers across a range of sectors and occupations in the UK. 15% from BME groups • 16 in-depth interviews with policy makers, academics and trade unionists and 4 focus groups with working womenin the Netherlands, (including 1 focus group with Dutch minority ethnic women)

10. UK Policy • Women’s lack of awareness of entitlement and low level of take up of both parental leave and flexible working request • Employer led not policy led • Policy lacks any real power I suppose I don’t feel it having an impact around me. So I suppose I can’t say that at a policy level they are not trying to do enough, I think in practice I don’t notice any big changes as a working parent. (Social Worker) I would think I can go and access the policies when in practice I might not be able to - you know, for hours or patterns of work. The policy doesn’t do enough to encourage, should the policy be backed up with the help of employers to make it work and other resources? (Outreach Worker)

11. Impact of Policy • Role of informal workplace cultures, peers and managers in negotiating flexibility • Long hours culture • Lack of availability of reduced hours working at higher levels • Lack of affordable and flexible childcare • Differing and changing experiences of working parents

12. Workplace Culture Informal negotiation between colleagues and managers more significant than policy   Role of manager and peer group I think if you were routinely seen as putting in requests for unpaid leave to cope with children you’d be seen as not being able to cope correctly with putting in place like arrangements to care for your children. (Lawyer)

13. Workplace Culture I think they do have family-friendly policies but I also think that they’d rather … if I was late I’d probably say it was because my washing machine had broken down for example, rather than my daughter wouldn’t put her tights on. You know that sort of thing, because I personally feel sometimes, and you know my boss is lovely, but it’s just that sort of personal detail that intrudes into the work environment that they are not too interested in really. Speaking quite frankly, it’s probably not that interesting or understandable unless you’re a parent.( Credit Administrator)

14. Flexible Working Practices • There was a large degree of flexibility in working practices and some positive examples. • Varied by occupation, occupational level, sector and the nature of job roles. • Positive benefits for work-life balance but not if combined with long hours culture. • Often employers’ formal family-friendly policies cosmetic and offer no real help with dual roles.

15. Flexible Working Practices On average I work 45, 50 hours. Sometimes more depending on a deadline and usually over the whole month you try and pan it out so you don’t do more than 50 hours in a week. [It’s]completely [flexible] I work from home. Today I’ve come in simply to meet with with some person and you. I didn’t have to be here today. Tomorrow I do, I’ve got meetings scheduled, but if I couldn’t make the meetings I can dial in on teleconference. I plan my own week. When I didn’t work on a Friday they’d still ring me up and ask questions that I think could have waited and I think they make you have a certain amount of guilt because you are not there. (Management Consultant)

16. Flexible Working Practices Flexibility not available at certain sectors and levels and if women want to progress in careers. Fixed Part-time or flexible longer hours. I want to become a manager but I can only do part-time because I’m trapped at the moment. I can’t work outside the, you know I’ve got to think of the children. But I also want to have a career myself because when they grow up. (Supermarket Warehouse Worker)

17. Flexible Working Practices Also not available at higher levels: There isn’t, I don’t think, an acceptance of part-time working being as credible in a professional setting..It is a male environment (Solicitor)

18. Work and Care I think you need a huge amount of strength to carve out the boundaries between work and home and to get both things working quite well. I feel guilty about the kids when I am at work and I feel guilty about my work when I am at home. (Editor/Producer) Changing circumstances over the life course Formal and informal support – paid childcare, role of partners, family, support networks We do always feel we are sort of juggling the next six months. You know sort of constantly the arrangements just to sort of cope… But there are times you know when it falls apart. It’s hard. So it’s constant juggling.(Business Analyst)

19. Emotional Work • Care overlooked in policy discourse – citizenship through employment, gendered discourse •  Emotional reconciliation – context of ‘choice’

20. ‘Choices’ I have had to compromise in the last 14 years. Since I had kids I haven’t progressed at all in my career. And I take whatever cruddy jobs are going because you know I have to grateful that I have part-time work. It’s drives me crazy but that is the compromise I’ve made, and the value I have got is that I have two lovely kids. So you can’t have everything, whoever told you you could? (Business Analyst) I am not going anywhere. Because I have been discussing with my career manager today and they said ‘what are your aspirations?’ And I said ‘I haven’t got any’. It suits me quite happily to do my part-time hours. I like the job I am doing, it fits in well with my home life, and I think that I have a good work-life balance to be honest. (Computer Programmer.)

21. Progression • Barriers complex & interrelated • ‘Choices’ women make complex • Problematise progression

22. Progression When I came back from maternity leave, I actually said to them ‘look for the first few months just keep my workload reasonable’… But then they never really got back into giving me any more responsibility. I had to go back to them and say ‘do you know, you’re kind of passing me over for jobs here that I’m well capable of doing? (Electrical Engineer)

23. Progression Thinking about it in terms of the flexibility that I’ve got with work – just the fact that I can do the things that I want to do. I feel I’ve got the best of both worlds. If I didn’t have that flexibility, then I would think about going part-time… What I would really like to do is to actually be heading up policy across the whole of the UK consumer finance within the next 18 months…. That’s what I wanted and that’s what looks like is going to happen (Credit Policy Manager)

24. Implications for BME Women • Workplace experiences are both gendered and ‘raced’ • Some positive examples of BME women in management positions, however they were concentrated in caring and service sectors. 20 women in the sample were at management/senior management level, but only 2 BME women • Government emphasis on citizenship through paid employment problematic for mothers

25. Conclusions Need for a ‘joined-up’ policy Reconciling paid work and family life means more than the increasing opportunities at work agenda, it instead implies a redistribution of work and status between women and men, that is changing the gender contract. (Duncan, 2002: 307)