Saturday, September 05, 2009
Work Family Balance
I have been impressed by the work and research of Dr. Anna Fels since reading her book, Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives, which I reviewed in my blog, back in March 2005: See my review.
My own book, Outstanding in their Field: How Women Corporate Directors Succeed (Praeger: June 2009) is an attempt to do exactly what she suggested in your book: give women the recognition and credit that they so rightly have earned.
Many women ask questions about "work family balance" in my speaking events, even though my focus is on governance and leadership. Therefore, I’ve had to deal with the same issues that Dr. Fels addressed. The following are some preliminary thoughts.
Recently, Dr. Fels appeared in a video presentation on Gender Parity at the World Bank. Gender Parity.
She noted that, "At the World Bank, many programs have been established in an effort to accommodate families: leave with pay, 'flex' time, and a flexible policy toward paternity leave." Yet despite these programs, only 2% of women avail themselves to these options. "This is particularly striking given that 50% of new hires range from age 35 and below, prime childbearing years," Dr. Fels said. She also noted that "the average age of a female staff member at the birth of her first child is 37."
One questioner in her audience recognized that there is a divergence between the wishful thinking that women, human resources professionals, and gender studies researchers have about work-family balance programs in the workplace vs. the reality of what actually is working there, which is essentially nothing.
We keep pointing to "enlightened real leaders" among a few rich companies capable of offering "company store" solutions such as on-site day care, paternity leave, flexible time, etc. Some companies that implement such programs, like Lehman Brothers, also have a tendency to fail and/or eliminate them during times of financial or economic distress. These realities suggest that we have not yet created solutions with a sufficiently well-founded economic foundation that they can endure over the long term or win market share.
One explanation for the discouraging results is a persistence of barriers and prejudices. "If only women were treated equally." For example, some behaviors are considered ok for men, but women are treated differently. Ironically, such prejudices about women are sustained BY women as much as men. We saw an extensive dialog and debate about Harvard Professor Gates v. Officer Crowley on the subject of race relations, but there seldom is any meaningful dialog confronting prejudices about women. We permit a massive amount of female socialization and conditioning to persist appears in magazines, television and radio. Women often do not challenge their own negative self-portrayal as supportive little woman or other prejudicial images.
If family-friendly programs, like those at the World Bank, are so highly valued by women, then why do only 2% of eligible women participate? Women would appear to be valuing the alternatives more, whether they want to admit it or not. It’s equally possible that women do not understand how they are evaluating or valuing the options.
Women like what they see in male career trajectories and want those benefits. AND they also want the ability to participate in family-friendly programs. But these are two mutually exclusive choices. This is the divergence of wishful thinking vs. reality.
What are some indicators of the "wishful thinking" nature of family-friendly programs?
The argument that "it's everybody's issue" suggests that if “everyone played nice,” then somehow competition would go away. Yet, we know that when one company or one woman chooses the family friendly option, there is a price or competitive edge to pay.
The argument that "the workplace" or "society" is the only way to provide viable solutions for individual families creates expectations that are unrealistic in today’s highly disaggregated society. These are huge programmatic expectations that "someone else will take care of" the consequences of individual personal choices and decisions.
The argument that the nuclear family is the core of society, today, statistically is an anomaly and essentially an urban myth in a contemporary economy where only 3-7% of the US population represents the "traditional nuclear family." That mythical portrayal of "the nuclear family" abounds, however, throughout 150% of the media’s representation of the US population. Women want to believe that it exists in spite of evidence to the contrary.
The argument that "gender parity" will not exist until children and men change, first, passes the responsibilities on to others. When women have two jobs (work and family) while men have only one, the result is that children thrive, husbands thrive, but the women are miserable. Why would women persist in behavior that is NOT in their own self-interest? The imbalance in the supply-demand relationship of dependent care is sustained by miserable women: why do women accept this situation? It would appear that women gain some substantial psychic benefit from the imbalanced situation. Alternatively, women are not yet feeling enough of the negative disincentives that would induce them to push for change.
Women are setting up impossible goals for the workplace, for men, and for "society and culture."
Women are expecting "others" to do all the changing:
Create a culture that proves it believes in integrating work-life policies.
Make the men participate in paternal leave.
Create a culture that values family.
Men in high visibility positions should also participate.
Organizations must....
Why do women buy into the argument that they alone are supposed to do the balancing act? The change in their work-family experience, which brought them to this point, has been very slow and imperceptible. We have experienced a slow, steady disappearance of community support infrastructure that used to help with child-care. Why would women be the "only ones who care?"
Women are looking to the richest, closest source of solutions: the corporate workplace community is the most robust one that can possibly replace the traditional community support systems. Women argue that the workplace is the one most able to deliver possible solutions. Women do not have a long track-record of constructing viable alternative "business-based" solutions to family-oriented problems, on their own, in the entrepreneurial marketplace.
Women tend to lump all care-giver problems together, overwhelming business resources: child-care, health-care, and elder-care. Add to this, the other workforce issues, such as relational aggression of women-to-women, salary differentials, male prejudice, male bonding, differentials of communications, etc. Sometimes, the bills of particulars appear to be never ending. Should business resolve all of the problems women say they face?
Anna Fels suggests a menu of options to better integrate family and work activities. She presumes that companies would be willing to pay for these programs, and that men and women would be willing to pay (in the form of adjustments to compensation) to have them available.
A Menu of Options (and some unaddressed consequences).
1. Available housing near place of work; reduce commuting. Work and family separation in space and geography doesn't fit with two working member family. (Puts companies in the business of providing housing proximate to work.)
2. Day care for employees. (Puts companies in the business of providing child care.)
3. Rooms on-site for sick kids; near parents’ worksite. (Puts companies in the business of providing on-site health care.)
4. Having pediatricians/doctors nearby or on site. (Puts companies at liability for medical support.)
5. Creation of schools on-site; public schools near work places. (Puts companies and school traffic in close proximity.)
6. Oxygen (Women's Network) allows workers to bring in babies, children, dogs into the workplace. (Puts other employees in a position of not having in-work benefits; differential employment treatment.)
7. Expanding men's role in childcare. Women presume that "men will never agree to do more for childcare." Yet, women persist in the argument that "men must change first."
Perhaps if women would cease holding stereotypical gender preconceptions about men, first, then men might respond differently -– which is actually suggested by the research. For example, in the absence of a mothers’ female kin, men respond to familial needs and fathers compensate by doing 20 times more caretaking. Reluctant fathers who have no choice but to raise children are serious homemakers and very good nurturers. Care is a fungible commodity. Men and women are flexibly opportunistic.
The failure of family-friendly programs often is attributed to an inability of businesses and business people to be able to "manage" the disparate demands that result from bringing family into the workplace. Why don’t we focus on improving the management side of the workplace issues? And why don’t we also focus on improving the management side of the family entity as a basic business unit?
Do women fully understand the impact of their proposals on the companies and other workers?
How do workers manage remote or flexible work schedules?
How do workers divide their attentions between personal concerns (children) and professional concerns (the job).
How do workers gain the experience of travel and exposure to other distant cultures while staying at home?
Does teleconferencing provide the same quality of experience handling remote work challenges?
How well do we train workers to manage remote work?
How effectively do we manage the quantity and quality of work content?
Why are workers investing in 60-80 hour weeks/12 hour days? Does management know the content of their workers days today?
Does business know the value of output from meeting time? Is it worth the investment?
How effectively does management handle conflict: women to women, men to women, manager to subordinate?
How effectively does management coordinate people from different backgrounds, motivations, generations and experiences in the workplace?
Do companies and employees suffer competitively by instituting family-friendly programs?
What is also interesting is that the "pent up demand" that supposedly exists (wait lists of 400 families, 3 years or more for on-site corporate day care facilities) has not been addressed by any entrepreneurial business solution or consortia of small businesses providing such services as collectives of entrepreneurs. Perhaps because we only focus on the wishful thinking that "if only everyone would work together" to solve the problems that women perceive to be important, we might be missing out on many other viable business options. To the hammer, every problem appears to be a nail.
We appear unable to conceptualize solutions that are market-based: naively hoping for solutions that are fully subsidized by government or rich corporations. If women had a better appreciation of the economics, costs, benefits and tradeoffs of the solutions they propose, perhaps they might consider creating alternative small businesses that could thrive and endure more successfully than token and temporal public policy programs or expensive company-store solutions that simply pass the costs incurred onto unsuspecting consumers.
The issues certainly are not simple. My goal is to simply begin to address them from some new perspectives.
My own book, Outstanding in their Field: How Women Corporate Directors Succeed (Praeger: June 2009) is an attempt to do exactly what she suggested in your book: give women the recognition and credit that they so rightly have earned.
Many women ask questions about "work family balance" in my speaking events, even though my focus is on governance and leadership. Therefore, I’ve had to deal with the same issues that Dr. Fels addressed. The following are some preliminary thoughts.
Recently, Dr. Fels appeared in a video presentation on Gender Parity at the World Bank. Gender Parity.
She noted that, "At the World Bank, many programs have been established in an effort to accommodate families: leave with pay, 'flex' time, and a flexible policy toward paternity leave." Yet despite these programs, only 2% of women avail themselves to these options. "This is particularly striking given that 50% of new hires range from age 35 and below, prime childbearing years," Dr. Fels said. She also noted that "the average age of a female staff member at the birth of her first child is 37."
One questioner in her audience recognized that there is a divergence between the wishful thinking that women, human resources professionals, and gender studies researchers have about work-family balance programs in the workplace vs. the reality of what actually is working there, which is essentially nothing.
We keep pointing to "enlightened real leaders" among a few rich companies capable of offering "company store" solutions such as on-site day care, paternity leave, flexible time, etc. Some companies that implement such programs, like Lehman Brothers, also have a tendency to fail and/or eliminate them during times of financial or economic distress. These realities suggest that we have not yet created solutions with a sufficiently well-founded economic foundation that they can endure over the long term or win market share.
One explanation for the discouraging results is a persistence of barriers and prejudices. "If only women were treated equally." For example, some behaviors are considered ok for men, but women are treated differently. Ironically, such prejudices about women are sustained BY women as much as men. We saw an extensive dialog and debate about Harvard Professor Gates v. Officer Crowley on the subject of race relations, but there seldom is any meaningful dialog confronting prejudices about women. We permit a massive amount of female socialization and conditioning to persist appears in magazines, television and radio. Women often do not challenge their own negative self-portrayal as supportive little woman or other prejudicial images.
If family-friendly programs, like those at the World Bank, are so highly valued by women, then why do only 2% of eligible women participate? Women would appear to be valuing the alternatives more, whether they want to admit it or not. It’s equally possible that women do not understand how they are evaluating or valuing the options.
Women like what they see in male career trajectories and want those benefits. AND they also want the ability to participate in family-friendly programs. But these are two mutually exclusive choices. This is the divergence of wishful thinking vs. reality.
What are some indicators of the "wishful thinking" nature of family-friendly programs?
The argument that "it's everybody's issue" suggests that if “everyone played nice,” then somehow competition would go away. Yet, we know that when one company or one woman chooses the family friendly option, there is a price or competitive edge to pay.
The argument that "the workplace" or "society" is the only way to provide viable solutions for individual families creates expectations that are unrealistic in today’s highly disaggregated society. These are huge programmatic expectations that "someone else will take care of" the consequences of individual personal choices and decisions.
The argument that the nuclear family is the core of society, today, statistically is an anomaly and essentially an urban myth in a contemporary economy where only 3-7% of the US population represents the "traditional nuclear family." That mythical portrayal of "the nuclear family" abounds, however, throughout 150% of the media’s representation of the US population. Women want to believe that it exists in spite of evidence to the contrary.
The argument that "gender parity" will not exist until children and men change, first, passes the responsibilities on to others. When women have two jobs (work and family) while men have only one, the result is that children thrive, husbands thrive, but the women are miserable. Why would women persist in behavior that is NOT in their own self-interest? The imbalance in the supply-demand relationship of dependent care is sustained by miserable women: why do women accept this situation? It would appear that women gain some substantial psychic benefit from the imbalanced situation. Alternatively, women are not yet feeling enough of the negative disincentives that would induce them to push for change.
Women are setting up impossible goals for the workplace, for men, and for "society and culture."
Women are expecting "others" to do all the changing:
Why do women buy into the argument that they alone are supposed to do the balancing act? The change in their work-family experience, which brought them to this point, has been very slow and imperceptible. We have experienced a slow, steady disappearance of community support infrastructure that used to help with child-care. Why would women be the "only ones who care?"
Women are looking to the richest, closest source of solutions: the corporate workplace community is the most robust one that can possibly replace the traditional community support systems. Women argue that the workplace is the one most able to deliver possible solutions. Women do not have a long track-record of constructing viable alternative "business-based" solutions to family-oriented problems, on their own, in the entrepreneurial marketplace.
Women tend to lump all care-giver problems together, overwhelming business resources: child-care, health-care, and elder-care. Add to this, the other workforce issues, such as relational aggression of women-to-women, salary differentials, male prejudice, male bonding, differentials of communications, etc. Sometimes, the bills of particulars appear to be never ending. Should business resolve all of the problems women say they face?
Anna Fels suggests a menu of options to better integrate family and work activities. She presumes that companies would be willing to pay for these programs, and that men and women would be willing to pay (in the form of adjustments to compensation) to have them available.
A Menu of Options (and some unaddressed consequences).
1. Available housing near place of work; reduce commuting. Work and family separation in space and geography doesn't fit with two working member family. (Puts companies in the business of providing housing proximate to work.)
2. Day care for employees. (Puts companies in the business of providing child care.)
3. Rooms on-site for sick kids; near parents’ worksite. (Puts companies in the business of providing on-site health care.)
4. Having pediatricians/doctors nearby or on site. (Puts companies at liability for medical support.)
5. Creation of schools on-site; public schools near work places. (Puts companies and school traffic in close proximity.)
6. Oxygen (Women's Network) allows workers to bring in babies, children, dogs into the workplace. (Puts other employees in a position of not having in-work benefits; differential employment treatment.)
7. Expanding men's role in childcare. Women presume that "men will never agree to do more for childcare." Yet, women persist in the argument that "men must change first."
Perhaps if women would cease holding stereotypical gender preconceptions about men, first, then men might respond differently -– which is actually suggested by the research. For example, in the absence of a mothers’ female kin, men respond to familial needs and fathers compensate by doing 20 times more caretaking. Reluctant fathers who have no choice but to raise children are serious homemakers and very good nurturers. Care is a fungible commodity. Men and women are flexibly opportunistic.
The failure of family-friendly programs often is attributed to an inability of businesses and business people to be able to "manage" the disparate demands that result from bringing family into the workplace. Why don’t we focus on improving the management side of the workplace issues? And why don’t we also focus on improving the management side of the family entity as a basic business unit?
Do women fully understand the impact of their proposals on the companies and other workers?
What is also interesting is that the "pent up demand" that supposedly exists (wait lists of 400 families, 3 years or more for on-site corporate day care facilities) has not been addressed by any entrepreneurial business solution or consortia of small businesses providing such services as collectives of entrepreneurs. Perhaps because we only focus on the wishful thinking that "if only everyone would work together" to solve the problems that women perceive to be important, we might be missing out on many other viable business options. To the hammer, every problem appears to be a nail.
We appear unable to conceptualize solutions that are market-based: naively hoping for solutions that are fully subsidized by government or rich corporations. If women had a better appreciation of the economics, costs, benefits and tradeoffs of the solutions they propose, perhaps they might consider creating alternative small businesses that could thrive and endure more successfully than token and temporal public policy programs or expensive company-store solutions that simply pass the costs incurred onto unsuspecting consumers.
The issues certainly are not simple. My goal is to simply begin to address them from some new perspectives.
# posted by ChampionBoards.com @ 10:57 AM 
