However, this process is still not finished and there is a place for further development. In this paper author is going to raise questions of changing of family structures and changes of relations within families, to discuss outcomes of these changes for workers, employers, European states and the EU as a whole.
Aim of this paper is to discuss EU reconciliation strategies from a perspective of current demographic situation and social trends. To discuss the problem of work-life balance in European society and specific problems those are not regulated by reconciliation strategies.
Theoretical background
Issue of family transition and contemporary
social policies, supporting gender equality are under research of numerous
authors, who, having a wide aspect of questions to discover more or less touch
issues of our interest. Thus Lewis J. in her article “Work family
reconciliation, equal opportunities and social policies: the interpretation of
policy trajectories at the EU level and the meaning of gender equality” mostly concentrates
her attention on development and modification of policies and how their framing
was constructed. She pays attention more to policies itself than the actors.
While Lewis S., Gambles R. and Rapoport R. pay attention to work-life balance
(WLB), focusing on critical analysis of three main (from their point of view) components
of WLB concept – gender neutrality, personal choice and cultural neutrality.
Margarita Leon in her work “Gender Equality and
the European Employment Strategy: The Work/Family Balance Debate” makes a
research of gender equality issues embedded into the European Employment
Strategy (EES) (that mostly touches issues of childcare and parental leave as
instruments of greater involvement of women into labour market). She stresses
that attention, paid to childcare provisions and parental leave regulations are
not equally addressed by the EES, with less priority to parental leave.
Lane L. in her work “Conceptualizing Work-Life
Balance in the Swedish Life Puzzle Debate – Is it just about time?”
questions whether it is possible to balance work-family-life and solve this
“puzzle”. The author states that the question of time is central but not the
main one. One of the main challenges for the contemporary employers is to
provide people with good work environment allowing them to enjoy their job and
be productive and socially helpful and to let them enjoy their family and free
time life.
Research
Reconciliation policy, being an important EU
policy discourse since the 1990s has itself presented the gender equality
approach, making now no accent on women rights and aiming to provide equal
treatment for both men and women in questions of harmonization of work and
private life. In a broader sense, reconciliation strategies are everything EU
does to harmonise work and private life of people. Reconciliation strategies,
being firstly associated with policies of equal opportunities developed later to a much more wider
instruments of social harmonization, which regulated not only the issues of
work/family harmonization for male and female workers, but also meant care
about children and elderly people. As Leon M. states: “the European Pact for
Gender Equality (2006b), underlines the importance of addressing the
work/family conflict in a variety of ways. These include increasing and
improving care provision for the elderly and children, and articulating
flexible working arrangements for both male and female workers.” (Leon 2009,
p.7). Thus, reconciliation policies have reflected the changing family
structure and contemporary demographic trends, such as population aging. The
reconciliation policies became more broad and developed with transition of
social trends.
In the
early 1990-s work/family reconciliation policies were more considered through
the prism of achievement of equal opportunities (mostly were meant equal
opportunities at labour market) and necessarily involved changes in the
behaviour of men. (Lewis, J. 2007, p.426). These policies reflected social
shifts towards gender equality.
In the late 1990s reconciliation policies were
regulated both by ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ law, like creation of childcare places (soft
law) and like a parental leave, which was regulated by a directive (Council
1996 Directive) that made a leave non-transferable (men could not transfer it
to women). These reconciliation policies were now harmonizing and touching
family life, reflecting the changes in family and shifting of roles of men and
women within the family. Both parents were now bread-winners as well as those
who had to take care of children.
And finally, in 2000s, the reconciliation
policies touched questions of population aging, as it became more obvious the
necessity to pay attention to this tendency. Therefore the European Pact for
Gender Equality (2006b) includes increasing and improving care provision
for the elderly and children (Leon 2009, p.7). As well as articulating flexible
working arrangements for both male and female workers (Leon 2009, p.7), paying
attention to the importance of work-life balance (WLB) for both men and women.
Discussion
As it is stated by Lewis S.: “WLB appears to
capture a widely felt need to prevent paid work from invading too much into
people’s lives” (Lewis 2007, p.361). And really, perhaps reducing of working
hours to 8/day was a first step towards work-life harmonization. The EU has
approved several policies to regulate the WLB, where the perfect outcome will
be “to challenge organizations to create workplaces that combine employees’ demands
for good working environments, their desire to be good parents and productive citizens
of their communities with organisational goals of efficiency and
sustainability.” (Lane 2011, p.14). However, the main steps and achievements of
reconciliation policies is an improvement of childcare services and parental
leave, given equally to fathers and mothers. These are regulations, influencing
the life of family which I would name “external”, a part of family life, that can
be regulated externally. However, the EU can not regulate the ‘internal’ life
of family and its inner rules. No Directive can regulate who is cooking today
or who is cleaning or who is taking care of household. This is inner family
balance, which is regulated by norms of a culture, culture of duty division in
different nations. So, a personal position in WLB is also influenced by a
cultural tradition of work and normal for each culture quantity of hours,
devoted to work (here we can compare examples of American and Italian
cultures).
Gender equality led to greater involvement of
women into the labour market, which was followed by certain implications for
society.
1. Implications for employment.
-
The
rise of competition for work places between men and women. Women became as
professional as men and with development of gender equality they got an
opportunity to take the same positions as men. However this can lead to greater
tensions at labour market.
-
The
creation of new work places and vacancies. Involvement of women into the labour
market has created such thing as ‘part-time jobs’, as well as ‘women’s jobs’,
as well as created new services, like childcare services with many workplaces
(mostly taken by women).
2. Implications for society.
-
Changes
of family structure and family obligations (discussed above)
-
Demographic
changes. Given equal opportunities with men to work, women became also
interested in making a career, which in some cases leads to wish to have
children later or not to have them at all. Therefore we can see a bigger gap
between number of young and old people. Concerning EU reconciliation strategies
– the EU directive can regulate the time of parental leave for both parents,
but it can not force women to give birth to more children.
3. Implications for the EU
-
Decreasing
number of population (as partly a result of greater involvement of women into a
labour market)
-
Demographic
gap (as partly a result of families to give birth to children later and to a
smaller number of children)
-
Economic
development (which is partly a result of inflow of a greater labour force –
more women tend to work)
It is
also a question what actually this work-life balance is. Is it a time, equally
divided between work and private life? This also can be questioned in relation
to cultural traditions. There are cultures in which it is normal to spend more
time at work, continuing working at home after the normal working hours,
cultures where it is abnormal to leave your working place after the formal
working day has ended and cultures with a strong family tradition where it is
improper to bring work home or mention work and speak about work in a family
circle.
WLB nowadays is also a question of personal
choice. Today, when most European countries tend further development of gender
equality, both at work and within the family, it is up to a person, which
sphere of its being – work or personal life to prioritize. However, this choice
is of course dependent on social tendencies. It was impossible to see a woman, working
equally with men as well as men, who have absolutely devoted himself to
childcare and household. Can we then say that in that time work-life balance
was broken for both sexes, but for men in a direction of work and for women in
a direction of family? And if at that time both sexes were obliged to play these
social roles, are they today, with equal rights and opportunities, free to
choose what to prioritize? In case they are not interested to equally divide
their time between work and personal life?
Conclusion
Reconciliation strategies, aimed at
harmonization of work and family life have made a considerable change into
social structure, at the same time as experiencing continuous development, when
reflecting recent social trends and tendencies. However, they are influential in
what the author has called ‘external’ part of family life, which is connected
with direct interaction with ‘outer space’. The better harmonization of
work-life balance is possible (to tha author’s point of view) with inner
harmonization of family life, which is connected with division of work
obligations within the family. And this change is not quick; it is a more gradual
and slow process, which is connected with cultural change and change of
traditions within the national states. WLB is also a question of a personal choice,
which became possible for both sexes with development of gender.
Author: Kate Kononyuk
Author: Kate Kononyuk
References
Lane, L. (2011) Conceptualizing Work-Life Balance in the Swedish Life
Puzzle Debate – Is it just about time? I Hojer, I. & Hoger S. (ed) Familj, vardagsliv och modernitet, pp.83-98
Leon, M. (2009) Gender Equality and the European Employment Strategy: The
Work/Family Balance Debate, Social Policy
& Society, 8(2) pp. 197-209
Lewis, J. (2006) Work family reconciliation, equal opportunities and
social policies: the interpretation of policy trajectories at the EU level and
the meaning of gender equality, Journal
of European Public Policy, 13(3) pp. 420-37
Lewis, S. Gambles, R., Rapoport (2007) The constrains of a ‘work-life
balance’ approach: an international perspective, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 18(3) pp.
360-373
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