Exploring order and disorder: Women’s experiences balancing work and care

Introduction

Work–life balance has recently emerged as a concern for policy-makers, businesses, academics and individuals (Chartered Institute of Personal Development, 2003; Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), 2000a; Dex, 2003). Economic transformations and technological advancements have radically altered the nature of working experiences, rendering paid employment increasingly unstable and insecure (Burchell et al., 2002; Eurostat, 2002; Hyman et al., 2005). Furthermore, mothers’ labour market participation has shifted the dynamics of the work–care nexus. One result is that ‘work-life balance’ is framed by government and employers as management of these two spheres (Crompton, 2002; McKie et al., 2001), with the expectation that domestic responsibilities will not impinge upon work commitments. Gendered assumptions relating to care continue to define women as primary carers irrespective of their labour market participation (Crompton et al., 2007; Duncan, 2002; McKie et al., 2002). This often shapes care and work preferences, and can also lead to emotional as well as practical conflicts (Duncan et al., 2003). Furthermore, neoliberal imperatives, which emphasize the individualized ‘adult-worker’ (Lewis et al., 2008b), mean that women with children or other caring responsibilities are drawn into a deregulated labour market where the model of ‘the worker’ in many sectors remains masculine, in the sense of being ‘unencumbered’ (Crompton et al., 2003).

This article is underpinned by a recognition of the salience of gender in shaping the management of paid work and care/domestic work or ‘work–life balance’. It explores working mothers’ management of the dual roles of paid and domestic work, highlighting the conflicts and problems which women encounter in attempts to reconcile dual roles especially given the dominance of market priorities at the expense of family life (Crompton, 2001). The article is based on qualitative interview data from a European Social Fund project (ESF) ¹ research project which explored working mothers’ experiences of work–life balance and employment progression, and their engagement with government and workplace family friendly policies in the UK and the Netherlands. ² This article is based on data from the UK interviews.

The findings discussed here are consistent with related research which highlights the practical and emotional difficulties involved in negotiating the gendered nature of the work–care nexus. In particular, they reveal gendered inequalities in the allocation of domestic tasks, the psychological consequences borne by women as a result of combining dual roles, and the ‘invisible’ responsibilities of organization and planning which mostly fall to women (Duncan et al., 2003; Fagan et al., 2008; Gatrell, 2005; Hochschild, 1990; Van der Lippe and Peters, 2007; Ward et al., 2010). Going further theoretically than previous studies, we have found Zygmunt Bauman’s writing on order and disorder useful for understanding our findings and locating our interviewees’ attempts to manage dual spheres within the wider neoliberal economic and political context. The following section will explore this theoretical framework.

Order and disorder in Bauman’s modernities

Bauman has written extensively on the interconnections between global social processes and their ontological implications, teasing out the contradictions between public policies and private lives, between discourses and lived experience. Whilst most feminists’ use of Bauman’s work has concentrated on morality and ambivalence (see, for example, Lentin, 2006; Ozyegin, 2009), we draw on his analysis of the place of ‘order’ and its relationship to modernity to explore the reasons why an invitation to create a work–life balance, as evidenced within our data, was often experienced as the requirement to create order.

The concepts of order and disorder are central to Bauman’s critique of the project of modernity and his later writing on ‘post’ and ‘liquid’ modernity. Bauman argues that during the period of what he refers to as ‘solid modernity’, a crucial task of the post-Enlightenment modern state was the maintenance of social order: ‘the containment of human conduct within certain parameters, and the predictability of human behaviour within these parameters’ (1988: 10). However, the ‘practice[s] of ordering’ within ‘solid’ modernity cast the ‘ “raw” human condition’ (1992: xi) as chaos, that which was to be feared and controlled:

… one of the most conspicuous traits of modernity was an overwhelming urge to replace spontaneity, seen as meaningless and identified with chaos, by an order drawn by reason and constructed through legislative and controlling effort. (1992: 178).

The transition from modernity to a less structured set of social relations is referred to by Bauman (2000) as ‘liquid modernity’. This is Bauman’s redefinition of postmodernity, which he rejects due to its theoretical nihilism and inability to grasp inequality (Lee, 2005). According to him, the wave of economic deregulation ushered in by the ascendant neoliberal orthodoxy of the late 1970s ‘melted away’ the expectations and certainties of solid modernity (Bauman, 2000). The expectation that the state will be responsible for the upkeep of social order is no longer on the political agenda and has been replaced by individualization (Bauman, 2001). Previous rules and responsibilities for social life have dissolved; leaving individuals to make their own way through life without recourse to formerly prescribed social roles and scripts. According to Bauman (2000, 2001), this state of liquid modernity engenders uncertainty and a sense of ambient fear due to an insecure labour market (Bauman, 2000) and the hazardous burden of individual freedoms and choices (Bauman, 2001).

Within this ‘liquid phase’ of social relations, order gives way to disorder; narratives of order and progress are replaced by deregulation and impermanence (Bauman, 1992, 2000). In The Individualised Society, Bauman connects the ‘devaluation of order’ (Bauman, 2001: 35, original emphasis) and the dominance of disorder as arising from globalization. The removal of economic processes from coordinated state control has created instability. Relationships to order and disorder are now stratified as a global capitalist class revels in ‘creative disorder’. Disorder, however, is oppressive and precarious for those without the means to enjoy its spontaneity. In this way, order ‘becomes the index of powerlessness and subordination’ (2001: 35, original emphasis) for those who must endure localized economic insecurities brought about by global markets.

Bauman’s conceptions of order and disorder were conceived at the macro-level and relate, firstly, to modernity’s concern with ordering and containment, and secondly, to the disorder brought about by globalization. Bauman’s arguments, however, translate to the level of lived experience as our findings evidence both the practices of ordering and containment, as well as the dilemmas of disorder and disruption in women’s negotiation of the two spheres of work and care. It is clear that there are still recognizable elements of the solid order within contemporary experience (Atkinson, 2008; Branaman, 2007) and the ideologies governing responsibility for maintaining that order remain partially intact. Both notions of order and disorder are manifest within the practice of work–life balance. Within the contemporary deregulated labour market, it is taken as given that paid work is often unpredictable, demanding, and thus disordered. Conversely, to accommodate this, home life becomes the site of order. Our discussion of working mothers’ attempts to manage the dual spheres of family and work reveal how family life was organized in terms of containment and ordering. Attempts to achieve work–life balance frequently led to the need for such rigid ordering that a so-called ‘balance’ is achieved at the price of diminishing quality of life. Indeed, as Bauman (2001) argues, each form of order brings with it its own inevitable disorder, as it is precisely the sense that order is required that creates the notion of disorder as chaos and failure.

For us, working with and against Bauman’s theoretical framework therefore brings a means of conceptualizing the burdens of social reproduction and ordering, shedding light on the nature of the predicaments our interviewees found themselves in as they struggled to make work–life balance a reality in both prescribed and desired ways. We further argue that, although Bauman’s analytical framework illuminates aspects of women’s experiences, his analysis requires a greater attention to gender regimes in order to fully capture the implications of forms of order and disorder in shaping the lives of gendered subjects. Bauman’s ideas relating to order and disorder nevertheless provide an innovative theoretical lens with which to analyse these themes. The remainder of the article outlines the UK and European work–life balance policy context before discussing the practical and emotional strategies women applied to their management of dual spheres, highlighting the way in which both order and disorder shape contemporary experiences of work–life balance.

Gender, work and care

The European Union (EU) has recognized the need to address the issue of work–life balance since the mid-1990s, with initiatives introduced across member states throughout the 2000s (Lewis et al., 2008b). This was not driven by an equality agenda but by concerns over declining birth rates and recognition of the need to maximize labour force participation to sustain health and social care for ageing populations (Guerrina, 2002; Lewis et al., 2008b). The policy focus was on increasing mothers’ labour force participation, indicated by the 60% female employment target set by the 2000 Lisbon Council. Policy instruments such as enhanced leave arrangements, flexible working and enhanced childcare provision aimed to make work–family reconciliation easier and therefore encourage mothers back to work. These policies were based on the assumption that the male breadwinner had been replaced by the adult worker and focused on ensuring economic effectiveness, (Lewis et al., 2008a, 2008b), reflected in such measures being framed as ‘employment rather than family policy issues’ (Lewis et al., 2008b: 262).

In the UK, the post-1997 New Labour government adopted a supportive rhetoric regarding the reconciliation of work and care, recognizing the role of the state (Lewis et al., 2008a, 2008b). Legislation provided enhanced maternity and paternity entitlements (DTI, 2003b, 2005) and opportunities for leave and flexible working arrangements (DTI, 2000b, 2003a). The Work and Families Act (2006) improved these entitlements and rolled out flexible working to adult carers (Laurie, 2007). Indeed, the New Labour government embraced a child-centred discourse, pledging to address child poverty (HM Treasury, 2004b) and provide access to childcare within every community via children’s centres and free nursery places (HM Treasury, 2003, 2004a).

During this period, however, UK leave and flexible working policies were criticized as weak and inconsistent, accused of failing to take into account women’s caring preferences (Duncan et al., 2003; Hantrais, 2004). This highlighted the conflict between the economic and the domestic spheres (Crompton, 2001), and the inevitable prioritization of paid work given deregulation. Consequently, governments and individuals are unable to resist the pull of the market within an era of intensified capitalism and any real commitment by the state and employers to work–life balance and family-friendly policy remains unlikely (Crompton, 2002). The election of a Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK in 2010 may eventually lead to a reversal of the more supportive aspects of the previous government’s policy. The rhetoric may be intact ³ (Family Policy Institute, 2010), but it is incompatible with this government’s vision of a smaller state. In addition, increases in privatized childcare fees, public sector job cuts, alongside the changes to taxation and benefit cuts introduced in the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review (HM Treasury, 2010), have had a detrimental impact on women’s employment and have been described as ‘gender-regressive’ (Fawcett Society, 2012).

Work as a site of order: Spatial and temporal prioritizations

Our findings highlight the dominance of work demands in women’s negotiation of work and care. Women’s main concern was the welfare and care of their children; however, employment frequently presented itself as the priority, leaving women with little choice but to accept this. Many managers and colleagues failed to understand the impact of caring responsibilities, expecting women to cope with often unexpected and spontaneous demands such as changes to the time and location of meetings, long hours and overtime working. Interview accounts show how some women normalized and individualized the demands of paid work and compensated for caring responsibilities by attempting to ensure that work was not disrupted:

I think that at the end of the day if a client really needs you and there is something that really needs to be done that will always come first and whether it means you doing it at home or you end up coming into the office when you wouldn’t otherwise have been in the office or you are working longer hours … I know there are some things that you won’t miss, you know, like your children’s Christmas concert … but there will be times when you do not see them for days on a row because you’re just not getting home. (Julie, 39, partner in a large corporate law firm)

These demands varied across employment sectors and occupations and were related to the varying levels of responsibility and temporal demands placed on employees. The need to prioritize jobs was most apparent in higher-level management occupations in the private sector, as the above quote illustrates. Such occupations are frequently client-driven, emphasize individual responsibility and continue to define employees in masculine terms, allowing little consideration for responsibilities outside of work (Burchell et al., 2002; Crompton, 2001). Here, market considerations work against notions of family-friendly policy or practice and consequently women in the study were left to ensure that caring responsibilities do not impinge on work time.

Attempts to order care

Despite workplace demands, women continue to take on a greater share of work in the domestic sphere (Beagan et al., 2008: Gatrell, 2005; Hochschild, 1990). This was evident in our research and was the case for women working full-time, although women working the longest hours did share responsibilities more equitably with partners. Further, although the numbers of BME (black and minority ethnic) women in the sample were small, findings illustrate how experiences of domestic work may vary as a result of cultural factors related to ethnicity (see also Sayer and Fine, 2011).

Our findings also highlight the way in which it was primarily women who took responsibility for the planning and organization of the domestic sphere (see also Gatrell, 2005; Hochschild, 1990) to ensure dual roles were managed without disruption to paid work. Lyon and Woodward (2004) argue that women working in professional occupations attempt to impose order on home lives by organizing and structuring domestic tasks, whereas paid work ‘has the character of more open and fluid time’ (2004: 207). For example, we found that women used weekends to catch up with domestic chores and to prepare for the week ahead. The following quote demonstrates that such experiences were not confined to those working in the private sector but were evident in other higher-level occupations:

Honestly the other week, this is no word of a lie, I was up at 7 and then I thought god I better do a stew, do cottage pies, do this, put them in the freezer, and you’re like cooking at about half eight. (Stella, 42, manager of a voluntary sector organization)

Some women’s accounts of domestic life contained the language and culture of work (Lyon and Woodward, 2004), referring to diaries, calendars and timetables in order to organize childcare routines:

Yeah, I sort it all out, I do all the organizing. She wouldn’t be dressed or eat, if I wasn’t around … I do do a timetable for summer and he has a copy and we have one stuck on the kitchen wall and I know that is really sad … I am the calendar organizer, with my big timetable for summer with all the coding. (Jane, 35, works for a voluntary sector organization)

You are having to explain to a 7-year-old that you need to know 3 or 4 weeks in advance, you can’t do it [otherwise] … (Claire, 38, senior executive in IT/business outsourcing)

Despite these attempts to impose order, however, there were occasions when domestic life refused to be contained.

Disorder and overspill: Home to work

Women’s work is more open to disruption from the domestic sphere (McKie et al., 2002), and as our data highlight, it is frequently women’s responsibility to manage and contain such disruption. Women’s experiences of the overspill of caring responsibilities did vary as a result of occupation, working hours and the availability of informal support both inside and outside the workplace. Accounts of the stress and difficulties of managing situations such as children’s illnesses were commonplace:

My main problem is with the childcare, when they’re sick, or when there’s an emergency with the children … those type of emergencies, you can’t just say well hang on a minute I’ll have to organize it, you can’t, you just go there and then, and I find that the most troublesome, I feel embarrassed phoning up and saying I’m really sorry I can’t get in, I only work two and a half days a week if I can’t [get] in for two and a half days a week how pathetic is that … (Siobhan, 35, works for local authority in lower-level administrative post)

The positioning of care is also symbolic. As well as actual problems relating to illness and finding care in the holidays, some women, particularly those working in male-dominated professions, talked about how they felt the caring identity was ‘out of place’ at work:

It’s quite easy to put me into primarily as an engineer – great, I can cope with that, she’s just like one of us, and I think they can cope with that and up to that point it’s quite easy but then when you’ve got the children and it’s not, as an engineer but she’s also a mother and it’s a bit, ooh it’s a bit messy and a bit woolly, we don’t quite know where to fit it. (Margaret, 38, engineer)

Some women talked about how they engaged in a ‘denial of care’ which involved the concealment of ‘private’ parental identities and responsibilities whilst at work. Many women discussed the need to ‘act unencumbered’ (Crompton et al., 2003), by not mentioning their children or the difficulties involved in juggling care and work. Others felt that bringing care issues into their workplace and talking about children was inappropriate, thus emphasizing the notion of separate spheres:

You don’t mention your children. I don’t ever mention my children. … I never forget about them but it’s a separate thing. (Aileen, 41, consultant in IT/business outsourcing)

Within the context of many workplaces, women used a variety of strategies to ‘bracket’ and downplay their mothering identities. The same, however, was not possible in reverse and families were often aware of workplace demands.

Disorder and spillover: Work to home

Many interview accounts illustrated the ‘spillover’ (Hyman et al., 2005) from paid work into home life, which was viewed as more acceptable than home to work spillover. This mostly occurred in higher-level occupations in the private sector; however, excessive demands at management level were evident across sectors. Work impinged onto home life and effective care giving in a number of ways. For instance, women often found it difficult to leave work on time to get home or pick children up due to workload, client demands and meetings running late. Other interviewees talked about having to work away from home for days at a time. Such disruptions meant that women felt that they were unable to ‘do care’ effectively. The extent to which ‘masculine’ workplace expectations impacted upon home life is illustrated in the following comment:

I don’t feel guilty about working to a degree. I feel guilty working if, say it’s Wednesday and I haven’t actually seen her since Monday morning because I’ve had late meetings all Monday and all Tuesday, I feel massively guilty. (Laura, 32, associate in a large corporate law firm)

Other accounts demonstrated how work intruded into home life when women had to take work home or were telephoned by clients and colleagues on days off, a process exacerbated for some by new technologies which increase accessibility:

I was away one weekend and [my boss] called my husband on Saturday morning to say that there was some really bad news, that sounds like somebody has died, but some document I had been working on Friday needed to be on a client’s desk first thing on Monday morning and … so I have got to sit all weekend worrying about when I was going to get this done and I had family over that Sunday night, anyway I managed to, my secretary came in she helped me and I sat up all Sunday night and finished it. It didn’t even go anywhere. (Eve, 33, associate in large corporate law firm)

Often then it was impossible to disguise work intrusions into home space/time. In order to contain work and manage dual spheres, many women work part-time hours. A significant number of women in our study did this in an attempt to create and maintain a ‘balance’.

Containing work: The part-time solution?

Part-time work is the principal means by which many women manage the dual responsibilities of paid work and caring for children (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2003; Sheridan, 2004). It is also central to gendered labour market inequalities, as generally it offers little opportunity for training, career progression and economic independence (Jenkins, 2004; Rubery and Fagan, 1995). It is important to recognize, however, the differences and disparities within the category of ‘part-time work’, which are highlighted within our findings. For instance, many of our interviewees worked part-time in well-paid, meaningful and relatively flexible employment referred to as the ‘mommy-track’ (Lewis and Lewis, 1996). Having said that, in order to reconcile dual roles, women often opt for part-time ‘jobs’ (Westergaard, 1984) in feminized service, retail and elementary occupations, which offer limited flexibility (see also Fagan et al., 2008) and employee autonomy. Our findings highlight how such occupations offered the advantages of being predictable and making limited demands on women’s lives. As Samantha, a 39-year-old mail sorter, put it: ‘The thing I like about [this job] is that you go, you do it and you go home.’ However, as Fagan et al. (2008) show, choice of working hours and access to workplace flexibility are frequently determined by occupation and class, with many feminized part-time jobs offering little employee autonomy. Indeed, for some of the women we interviewed, set working hours, which were subject to change as employers saw fit, made work–life balance more problematic, particularly when care patterns changed:

I have asked for different hours but they can’t accommodate … I’d prefer to have different hours to be honest because every week I don’t know what I’m doing. (Jackie, 27, bakery assistant working 18 hours a week)

Furthermore, working in low-status part-time work has implications for women’s employment progression. Some of our interviewees did not identify with the notion of a ‘career’, demonstrating the way in which many working-class women are often discouraged from considering employment in these terms (Green et al., 2004):

No, I don’t think I’ve been held back. I think that if I’d had a career then maybe, but … I haven’t had a career and I’ve been going from one job to another. (May, 44, mail sorter)

For others, part-time work was bound up with a decision to halt progression within organizations, or step down from previous roles, as management positions were likely to place excessive demands on their time:

I want to become a manager but can only do part-time because I’m trapped at the moment … I’ve got to think of the children, but I also want to have a career myself. (Eve, 37, supermarket warehouse worker)

I know I couldn’t manage the job any longer which had the level of responsibility I’d had at that stage – the management responsibility. (Laura, 50, senior social worker)

This strategy was clearly a source of regret for some:

I mean you start off life with all these ambitions and then it’s as if everything goes on hold. Sometimes it’s very frustrating to think, ‘Where am I going?’ (Cathy, 45, mail sorter)

Some of the women interviewed worked weekends, evenings and split shifts in order to manage childcare around school times and the availability of their husbands, who generally worked full-time hours during the day. In practical terms, this resulted in shift parenting: women looked after children during the day or were on hand when children finished school, with partners taking over when women went to work in the evenings (see also Fagan et al., 2008):

It’s far from ideal really because we never see each other, you know … He gets up at six o’clock in the morning and I come home at nine at night and we see each other between nine and eleven at night. (May, 44, mail sorter)

Well I try to [achieve a balance], I do try you know, as I say that’s why I work six till nine just to try and achieve that balance to be home for them and here for them … Me personally probably not but on a family scale I try to balance it … Yeah if I had the choice to not go out at six o’clock I would gladly take it but I haven’t got that choice at the minute. But what can I do, you know, we’re fine. (Kay, 39, mail sorter)

The extent to which a satisfactory work–life balance was achieved is debatable, as ‘balance’ at the family level often came at the expense of women’s personal life and health. The ‘not me’ aspect expressed above indicates the ways in which women absorbed tensions at a personal cost and bore the brunt of competing demands and ideologies, as we outline below.

Disordered emotions

Johnston and Swanson (2007) describe the psychological consequences and tensions of combining the dual identities of worker and mother, which result from prevailing ideologies connected to care and motherhood. This is reflected in our findings where some women talked about feelings of stress, guilt and inadequacy both as workers and as mothers. This may be because women wanted to care for children full-time and not work. Yet even when they wanted to go out to work, the pervasiveness of gendered care ideologies is such that many mothers in our study did at times experience psychological difficulties when ‘outsourcing’ the care of their children. The following quote demonstrates how women experienced these arbitrary care ideologies:

I enjoy the job I am doing in the sense you’ve got to be doing something you like to do. Because I would much rather be at home looking after my little girl than sending her off for someone else to look after. And I think there is a lot of guilt around it as well – you do feel guilty going to work. I leave late in the morning, my partner takes my daughter to my sister-in-law’s, and some mornings she has little tears in her eyes as I’m waving her off and I think ‘Oh God, I have to go to work and leave you.’ And I know she’s ok when she gets there, but it’s just that you do feel guilty. Have I had a child to give her away to somebody else and get them to look after her? (Jane, 35, works for a voluntary sector organization)

Earlier discussions highlighted the difficulties involved in moving between home and work both practically and emotionally and the way in which women attempted to separate their identities as carers and workers. Many of the interviews emphasized the emotional work involved in juggling dual roles across the two spheres:

I find it terribly difficult to turn myself away to do something else at home it’s really, really difficult. I mean especially at the moment when I have been quite tired, my health has not been great. I think you need a huge amount of strength to carve out that boundary between work and home, and to get both things working quite well … And sometimes there is a lot of tension between us when I get home, because he is tired and grumpy and he wants me to take over and look after the kids. So none of that is easy, you know the transition. (Joy, 42, TV producer)

Overall, therefore, our data (and the body of work within which it sits) indicate that for women across sectors and types of employment, the creation of ‘balance’ became an exercise in the creation of exactly the right type of order or disorder required by the different spheres of their lives, an undertaking described by one woman as ‘perilous’ (Christine, 50, business analyst).

Conclusion: The gendered burden of ordering processes and practices

The concept of work–life balance implies separate orderly spheres poised in equilibrium. The ‘real life’ scenarios explored in our interviews and focus groups revealed a different picture. Consistent with related work, our findings convey the practical and emotional difficulties faced by many working mothers, suggesting that the concept of work–life balance merely serves as a rhetorical device, which has limited relevance for the lived experiences of women combining work and care. The gendered nature of work–life balance is reiterated in this discussion with most women taking primary responsibility for the organization and implementation of care and domestic work, whilst participating in paid work at varying levels, in a diverse range of occupations, and working both full- and part-time.

In addition, this article has drawn upon the concepts of order and disorder as utilized by Bauman in his writing on modernity and social transformation (Bauman, 2000, 2001). For Bauman ordering and containment are constitutive of post-Enlightenment modernity referred to as solid modernity. More recently, within the late/postmodern period referred to by Bauman as liquid modernity, he argues that disorder and insecurity become definitive features as a result of economic deregulation and globalization. We have argued that these concepts are useful for unpicking contemporary gendered experiences of work and care on a number of levels. Elements of both order and disorder were evident in women’s accounts of their attempts to impose order on the domestic sphere and absorb the disorder brought about by work. Women across all occupational levels were generally responsible for creating an ordered domestic sphere to ensure paid work was not disrupted. In these situations, women were required to become ordering subjects. Further, whilst examples of gendered requirements to construct order demonstrate the commonality of women’s experiences, the data nevertheless showed how practices of order and disorder were shaped by social class, mirroring the findings of other feminist work in this area (see, for example, Fagan et al., 2008; McDowell et al., 2005). For instance, as well as being ordering subjects in the domestic sphere, our findings show how it is working-class women who have an external order imposed upon them most forcibly because their work is more likely to be spatially and temporally rigid. Up to a certain point this enables work and home to be sequestered and managed effectively; however, the cost is low pay, limited employment progression and employee autonomy, and little opportunity to alter working hours and access family-friendly flexible working practices. This reflects Bauman’s (2001) notion of a stratified relationship to order in the sense of being an ordered subject.

Although this varied according to working hours, occupational level and organizational cultures, women in technical, professional and managerial occupations had the dubious privilege of being agents of their own order-creation. In these occupations women often had more autonomy and control over when and where they work, but the prioritizing of paid work and the acceptance of work as potentially disordered rendered combining work and care problematic for many women.

These research findings also resonate more generally with Bauman’s commentary on the precarious and insecure nature of contemporary labour markets within liquid modern times (Bauman, 2000). Within deregulated labour markets, the market takes precedence over other aspects of social life, borne out in women’s experiences as ordered and ordering subjects and their acceptance of market demands and paid work as disordered and insecure.

For Bauman (2001), the impact of disorder on the lives of individuals and subjection to order are markers of subordinate status. He does not, however, explore the gendered dimensions of this subjection. Working with and against Bauman’s concepts allows for an exploration of the ways in which ‘disordered’ capitalism in liquid modern times is sustained by this ‘ordering work’, largely undertaken by women, and the way in which their strategies cushion the disordering effects of workplace demands on family life, frequently at the expense of career progression. In this way, the gendered responsibility for ordering family life to fit in with the differentiated demands of the workplace indicates women’s comparative lack of power.