Options and opportunities for women’s workplace engagement

Introduction

Throughout history, women have sought to balance their role in the labour market while managing their household responsibilities. According to Thévenon (2013), the female labour force participation rate (aged 25–54) in all OECD countries has increased in the last few decades from 54 per cent in 1980 to 71 per cent in 2010. As women are now a significant percentage of labour force participants, a further examination of how they manage these multiple roles, especially in relation to the childbirth and household responsibilities they traditionally hold, should be conducted. Individual women have preferences about their labour force participation and are seeking the right options for themselves and their families. For example, women may choose to participate throughout their life course, temporarily remove themselves from the labour market (e.g. to care for family dependents) or never participate. In many instances, these choices accompany personal struggles about managing work and family responsibilities. Together the three books included in this review essay discuss this struggle in relation to the lack of ‘fit’ between these roles and responsibilities, the organization of work and social structures (such as the family and other institutions). These books will appeal to academics, practitioners and even policy makers concerned with understanding how women choose to participate in the labour force along with how work organizations and public policy can better support those choices.

Jocelyn Crowley’s (2013) book, Mothers Unite!, is a mixed method study of mothers who are members of five diverse national mothers’ organizations in the USA. Crowley examines why women join these organizations and questions these mothers about how these organizations may play a role in a social movement for workplace flexibility. Crowley views a lack of workplace hours flexibility (and accompanying government legislation to support that flexibility) as the central challenge impacting on women’s labour force participation. Crowley focuses her research on mothers who participate in five different support groups: Mother of Pre-schoolers, Mocha Moms, Mothers & More, the National Association of Mothers’ Centers and MomsRising. These groups are defined by individual commonalities including: religion, race, working outside the home and those trying to combine work and motherhood. Together, the women in Crowley’s book provide insight into how mothers manage their multiple roles, but also how achieving a workplace with more flexibility will have an impact on labour force participation (i.e. provide more support for a wider range of labour force participation options to combine paid employment and motherhood).

Crowley’s agenda is clear throughout her book; she wants support for her thesis that women are only going to make advances in garnering support for their labour force participation decisions if there are better policy supports for workplace flexibility in the USA. However, her findings are mixed on the lessons for a future social movement surrounding workplace flexibility. The women who have higher levels of labour force participation report a greater connection to a social movement for increased workplace flexibility. Other women report that they feel content with their workplace engagement (or decision to opt out) and seek membership in mother’s groups for social support around family care responsibilities, rather than support for juggling work and family or organizing a larger social movement.

Elisabeth Kelan’s (2012) book, Rising Stars, examines the development of millennial women as leaders and frames her discussion on a heuristic of six elements: role models, authenticity, experiential learning, formal education, visibility and organization culture. Using data gathered from years of qualitative research with young MBA students from around the globe, Kelan develops this heuristic to ‘explore gender, then generation and finally the intersection between gender and generations’ (p. 9). She conducts an analysis of the degree to which millennial women (defined as those born between 1977 and 1987) have three major categories of abilities: self-knowledge, social knowledge and acquiring knowledge. Kelan also studies their organization’s role in their current leadership development. She argues that in order to leverage millennial women’s capabilities, organizations need to make conscious changes to support women’s career progress and also that these women need to better articulate their own talent within the workplace. Through a careful study of millennials, their unique traits and gender differences within this generation, Kelan outlines the social and organizational conditions where these women will thrive. It is critical to Kelan that current organizational practices (especially leadership development programmes) are reconsidered in light of the distinct abilities these women bring to their employers. What is unique in her discussion is the role that leisure (not necessarily motherhood) may play as an issue of fit. For these millennial women ‘having a life outside of work is important […] work-life integration is no longer an issue for working mothers only’ (p. 156). Kelan includes the role that millennial men play as organizational co-workers and life partners; they are not necessarily comfortable in moving beyond the traditional breadwinner family model. Kelan does a good job of using her own research to provide a well-framed discussion of how these women’s leadership development and organizations can be shaped for millennial women’s executive leadership success.

Bernie Jones’s edited collection of essays, Women Who Opt Out (2012), is devoted to women opting out from paid employment and includes research from a variety of disciplines (i.e. social work, law, sociology, psychology and public policy). The essays included examine the issue from primarily a US vantage point; however, Misra’s (2012) essay examines ‘the similarities among industrialized nations in the demand for care work (child care, elder care, care for the disabled, etc.) as the result of women’s rising employment rates’ (p. 137) with accompanying policy comparisons. Belkin (2003) first described the decision to opt out with a sample of women who were highly educated and economically privileged, and who left the workforce (often in promising careers) entirely to manage caring responsibilities. The essays included in Jones’s collection serve three purposes (represented by the three sections in her book): to assess the concept and current notion of ‘opting out’ as described by Belkin (2003); to ask if this assessment is accurate for women’s decisions to leave the labour force; and to assess the race/class/gender axes in determining women’s workplace participation (p. 19). Employing a variety of methods and data sources, these issues are examined using feminist theory and legal scholarship in the debate (Jones is a legal scholar). Jones makes sure to include several essays (e.g. Misra, 2012; Smith, 2012) that discuss the relevance and importance of access to adequate childcare and carer pay to the discussion of women’s labour force participation. For example, Misra (2012) describes the plight of care workers across many developed countries. The results reveal that care work itself is undervalued and this has negative implications for other women’s labour force participation. Typically, care workers are also women and the social and economic value of the work they provide to families is important to our understanding of any woman’s decision to opt out. This inclusion of care workers in the discussion of women’s labour force participation is a unique contribution by Jones.

All of the books included in this review relate to the current debates about the lack of fit between the work and non-work roles that women, often simultaneously, adopt. These books all make an empirical contribution to our understanding of how women are experiencing employment in light of their preferences and non-work roles. Additionally, each book makes suggestions for how organizations and society need to adapt to support women’s choices, skills and abilities.

Lack of fit

The research from these books suggests that organizations not only overlook the traditionally defined feminine skills that can be leveraged in today’s knowledge economy, but also have structures and policies that are misaligned with women’s multiple roles and preferences. For example, all of the communities described in Crowley’s (2013) book developed from a few women beginning a conversation about ‘how they wanted their lives to be transformed through a new organizational community’ (p. 21). Facing feelings of dissatisfaction, stress and disenchantment with their lives as mothers they wanted to build a community of support. In all cases, these women did not feel that they had a network of women facing similar challenges. These women also reported that there is not one ideal arrangement for balancing work and motherhood and therefore more flexibility in managing multiple roles is crucial.

The action to leave the workforce altogether, or opt out, as discussed by Jones (2012), is clearly a choice that most women do not or cannot make. For example, Susan Lambert’s (2012) essay illustrates how many women want to opt in to paid work arrangements that support their choices and preferences. However, the organizational limitations of traditional work hours and irregular schedules are often contrary to those preferences. They are typically employed in positions with minimal job security and control of working hours and as a result have little ability to manage their financial and household responsibilities. For example, it is very difficult to manage childcare when work schedules vary from week to week. The research in Jones (2012) and Crowley (2013) illustrates that the examination of women’s preferences for work are traditionally framed through the lens of the educated, heterosexual women who have more opportunities and financial resources than those outside that group.

Kelan (2013) details the different preferences, skills and abilities that millennial women bring to the workforce as a rationale necessitating the advancement of a new approach to leadership development. She argues that the essential skills in today’s knowledge economy, for example: social skills, teamwork and customer service, are feminine and these women arrive in the workforce better equipped. In the interviews Kelan conducted, these women spoke about the organizational advantages of being a woman; a new perspective with this generation. For example, because there are relatively few women at the top, being a woman can be used to leverage an organization’s interest in developing women to hold those positions. However, organizations and their leadership development programmes are still designed around men. One method through which women can be more successful at work is through creating better means to navigate existing systems, ways that embrace their feminine characteristics. Kelan’s (2012) book makes recommendations about how millennial women need new role models and performance feedback systems that are sensitive to how these women are motivated.

Many of the communities discussed in Crowley (2013) report that with workplace flexibility more women could have the choices they desire in relation to paid employment, as ‘workplace flexibility has the potential of uniting the majority of mothers (those in and out of the labour market)’ (p. 106). Women currently in the labour market and those anticipating their return argue that they could maximize the time they spend on childcare while making the most of their time at work; making them better parents as well as workers.

All the reviewed authors argue that current workplace inflexibility, especially surrounding caring responsibilities, can limit a woman’s career trajectory. As women progress upwards in an organization, they often have unrealistic expectations placed on them in terms of travel, hours and reachability (being available 24/7). This pressure pushes women to either self-limit their career progress or eventually remove themselves altogether from paid employment. Either of these actions can have a negative impact on the overall career success for women at work. Aumann and Galinsky (2012) describe how both men and women are opting out to avoid positions of increased responsibility. The authors argue that more flexible career paths are needed to accommodate the shifting interest in career progress over an individual’s life course; the desire for increased job responsibility changes over time, often with competing demands for household responsibilities.

Family structure

Important to all of these books is the impact of holding a family role (i.e. spouse and/or mother) on labour force participation. For example, Kelan (2012) argues that millennial women want to be in a couple with ‘shared breadwinner/carer status; however, millennial men were more likely to favour re-traditionalized gender arrangements which meant being a breadwinner while being active fathers’ (p. 55). With these preferences in opposition, this can lead to the phenomena of ‘opting out’ first described by Belkin (2003) among these often highly educated, professional, career-oriented women at the centre of Kelan’s research. According to Kelan, these millennial women grew up in non-traditional households (i.e. households with divorced, single and/or full-time working parents) and as a result are aware that egalitarian gender relationships are difficult to achieve. They view their own salaries as ‘mainly important only in maintaining their independence while bringing up children’ (p. 55). Crowley (2013) surmises that many women who are currently out of the workforce to devote their time to childcare responsibilities are eventually planning to return to paid employment. Regardless of their current attachment to the workforce, flexible work arrangements can support a modern workplace that encourages hands-on parenting and more satisfying preferences for work. Many women reported wanting new public policy directed at promoting workplace flexibility that would mandate organizations providing scheduling options based on employee preferences. According to Crowley, ‘Government has a special place in American [US] life as a mobilizer of societal innovation, and therefore it should do whatever is necessary to advance workplace flexibility options as part of its leadership role’ (p. 132). The mothers included in Crowley’s research suggested that without government intervention employers would not make this organizational transformation voluntarily. On the contrary, other mothers argued that it is not the government’s role to make this transformation, but rather for individual women to find organizations that suit their preferences on a case-by-case basis; government should provide education surrounding flexibility, but mandating might not always make business sense.

Conclusion

Collectively these authors make a new contribution to existing knowledge about the challenges women face in combining their roles as family members, labour force participants and members of society. Crowley’s examination of mothers’ participation in community organizations reveals how women view their own choices in relation to the need for a social movement; a movement for workplace flexibility that many of the women included in her research do not see as relevant to their own group’s engagement. According to Crowley, government intervention should be the impetus behind this change through:

If a social movement around workplace flexibility is going to arise, then movement leadership needs to persuade those not participating in the workforce to engage in this effort for change. An examination of the relationship between mothers’ participation in these community organizations and the social movement for change in workplace flexibility had not previously been conducted.

Kelan’s discussion of the skills and abilities that millennial women bring to the workplace and the new support structures (e.g. models of mentoring and performance management) they require for leadership development is also novel. For example, Kelan recommends rethinking the traditional methods of mentoring by one individual and argues that millennial women need composite role models where they can learn from multiple women and men for that growth. Rather than performance feedback on an annual basis she found that ‘Millennials appreciated constant, immediate and constructive feedback’ (p. 113). These are just two examples of how millennial women need innovation in leadership development.

The essays included in Jones’s edited collection move the discussion of opting out beyond the elite, highly educated white heterosexual female. By including those typically not a part of this research, new insight is gained into how women across demographic and ethnic groups have different decisions to make beyond the luxury of opting out altogether. What is clear from Jones’s collection is that opting out should not be considered a solution to the work-family balance problem; the essays illustrate the complexity involved in creating workplaces that support women’s choices across demographic categories, personal values and relative caring responsibilities.