Using the concepts of order and disorder to explore the issue of work-life balance

1
Using the concepts of order and disorder to
explore the issue of work-life balance

• Liz James Louise Wattis
• Liverpool John Moores University

2
Combining Work and Family Life Removing the
Barriers to Womens Progression

• To assess the impact of UK family-friendly
  policy workplace flexibility the potential of
  policy from the Netherlands
• To explore the ways in which childcare persists
  as a barrier to employment progression
• To investigate the lived experience of work-life
  balance for women

3
Conceptualising Work-Life Balance

• Contested terms
• Implications of separation (Fergusson, 2004) and
  stasis
• Non-market work discounted (Levitas, 2001)
• Process not product
• How can the concepts of order and disorder help
  us to explore womens diverse experiences?

4
Concepts of Order and Disorder

• Macro level economic social order
• Micro ordering of everyday lives
• Sense of structure, regularity, smooth running of
  life, everything in its place
• Significance of boundaries in maintaining order
• Implications of permeability
• Implications of disorder

5
Late Modernity

• Baumans understanding of modernity as concerned
  with the creation of order creation of order
  became a task uncertainty became characterized
  as failure
• Order depends on the maintenance of boundaries
  spatial metaphorical
• Shift into late / liquid modernity
• Individualization marketization

6
New Labour Policy

• Family-friendly agenda concern with work-life
  balance
• However
• Agenda dominated by business concerns (Lewis,
  2003)
• flexible working seems to be more concerned with
  accommodating life to rather demanding and
  unquestioned working hours rather than one of
  reorganizing work to allow time for domestic and
  caring responsibilities
• (Perrons, 200369)

7
Acting unencumbered maintaining the work-life
boundary

• You dont mention your children. I dont ever
  mention my children. So for people to come into
  your work and talk about your children and your
  family is not..
• Do you find that quite strange. Why is it that
  you dont discuss?
• I think its because you just want to go in and
  do your job and thats . My children, yes I
  never forget about them but its a separate
  thing. Ann
• Its just a thing you dont mention dont bring
  it to work, just leave it at home. Kim

8
Ordering priorities

• The bottom line is the service to the client and
  meeting your targets and making the, however many
  million pounds they make in a year because like
  all of us have individual targets, well actually
  the teams have targets and you are very much
  judged on whether you make those 5 targets or
  not. Kathryn
• The nature of what we do is you have got to be
  very reactive you know if a client turns up at 24
  hours notice then youve got to well you know
  that takes preference over everything else. Liz
• My son would be sick and rather than us worrying
  about him being sick, we would be arguing about
  whose meeting was more important. Megan

9
Ordering family life

• Data echoes Bailey - use of the terminology of
  work to describe the mothering day (200063)
• And Lyon Woodward
• Childcare and domestic time are organized in
  segmented and rationalized ways, while their paid
  work has the character of more open and fluid
  time (2001207)
• Also problems caused by marketized childcare and
  journey-to-work difficulties

10
Ordering family life

• Planning and organisation
• On a Sunday night we plan for the week and youve
  got to take clothes to the child minders and
  stuff for the children for when they come home
  from school to change. There is a lot of
  planning ahead to be done. Ann
• The ideal spontaneity is out the window,
  everything is planned Mary
• Shift-parenting
• I mean it gets to the stage where we have to have
  diary meetings to work out when I can go out when
  hes not away, and we do it like that really.
  Paula

11
Work disorders family life

• Overspill, boundaryless work Lewis (2003)
• If I need to take a 7 o clock conference call for
  any reason, I can take it at home. I mean its
  not always ideal because it means sticking the
  kids in front of the video, but you can do it.
  Liz
• If a client rings you on your mobile on a Friday
  you cant say, sorry, Im not dealing with you
  Genevieve
• I was away one weekend and he called my husband
  on Saturday morning to say that there was some
  really bad news, that sounds like someone has
  died. But some document I had been working on on
  Friday needed to be on a clients desk first thing
  on Monday morning 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
  and she helped me and I sat up all Sunday night
  and finished it. It didnt even go anywhere. Mary

12
Emotional implications

• Attempts to order psyche
• I think you need a huge amount of strength to
  carve out that boundaries between work and home,
  and to get both things working quite well.
  Genevieve
• I have two completely different personas. Ailsa
• Disordered emotions
• Examples of conflict, guilt, anxiety, stress,
  worrying about
• I was actually at the open day for him going to
  school and I actually almost physically had a
  panic attack after the open day cos I started
  thinking what am I going to do? Stella

13
Class divisions

• Women encountered similar gendered values
  expectations, but choices and constraints faced
  depended on class
• Women in professional managerial occupations
  had a greater opportunity for using flexibility
  creatively more money for child-care, but
  greater work-related stress intrusions of work
  into family space time
• Women in retail personal service occupations
  more likely to work part-time, but likely to have
  their hours rigidly set
• Well I try to achieve a balance, I do try you
  know as I say thats why I work six till nine
  just to try and achieve that balance to be home
  for them and here for themMe personally probably
  not but on a family scale I try to balance
  itYeah if I had the choice to not go out at six
  oclock I would gladly take it but I havent got
  that choice at the minute. But what can I do you
  know, were fine. Sheila

14
Conclusion

• Concept of WLB implies separate ordered spheres
  in rational balance, but real life is messier
  and more interconnected than this
• Bauman inevitability of disorder
• Attempts at creating orderly separation have
  heavy personal costs, divided along class lines
• Have reached end of either/or model, but have not
  found a good way of incorporating both/and
  figures
• Debatable how far this is possible in dominant
  socio-economic order
• Utopian solutions?