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Within the US, recent calls for greater work-family justice have not only forced organizations to re-conceptualize work, but to re-define the role of organizations themselves. This shift has been striking during times of socio-political change as demonstrated most recently by organizational responses to the reversal of Roe v. Wade, with many companies pledging funding for birthing people seeking abortions. While this type of support is valuable, the singular focus on abortion rights within the reproductive justice context minimizes the scope of its intersectional legacy. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for the organizational application of a comprehensive framework for reproductive justice (CFRJ) guided by intersectional Black Feminist epistemology. We will show that many US organizations have already engaged in reproductive justice by weaving together a mosaic of three socio-political moments (the pathway to marriage equality, restrictive immigration policies and COVID-19), that garnered organizational support and advocacy. These moments reflect the comprehensive nature of reproductive justice as conceived by the Black Feminists who originated the term. These 'turning points' demonstrate the organization's capacity for leadership during times of crisis. The paper concludes with recommendations that explore potential pathways for moving forward in supporting work-family and reproductive justice within organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of individual and household characteristics on time allocation decisions for both women and men, and how these effects have evolved in Urban Guatemala using data from the National Survey of Living Conditions (2000 and 2014). We built a multivariate Tobit to model the decision of individuals to allocate time, distinguishing between three different types of time uses: housework, childcare and paid work. The results suggest that time allocation is strongly determined by gender. For both periods, on average, women devote more time to housework and childcare than men, while men spent more hours in paid work than their counterparts. However, men that report themselves as spouses tend to allocate significantly more hours to housework and childcare in 2014. Moreover, women's time allocation is more responsive to individuals and household characteristics than men in both periods. Finally, we find that educational attainment plays a central role in shaping how individuals allocate their time between market and non-market activities, especially for women. For instance, while housework time is negatively associated with education level, time devoted to childcare increases with instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, a Belgian women's organisation experimented with a 30-hour work week for all of their full-time employees. This work time reduction was an excellent opportunity to study these female employees' wishes, expectations and experienced reality concerning their extra non-work time. Their wishes and expectations – as well as how these relate to their perceived reality – was studied through longitudinal questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus groups. The women wished for more time for themselves and their intimate relationships. However, their wishes reflected an ideal situation. Their expectations reflected their wishes but were slightly more realistic. The perceived reality did not fulfil all of their wishes. The 'me-time' that they wished for prior to the experiment did not always emerge to be the 'me-time' that they had. Some women appropriated a less conventional form of 'me-time', such as housework, which helped them to ease their mind and relax. Others felt unable to fulfil their wishes through (social) context factors such as the embeddedness of time structures, time schedules and the rhythms of family and friends. This paper reflects on the gendered norms and values and inequalities in time use that can help to explain the discrepancies between preferences and experienced reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel theoretical model for the community-based enterprise, which could assist in achieving UN sustainable development goals within craft communities in developing nations. This model focuses on building enterprise skills in vulnerable communities, sustaining traditional crafts and strengthening community capacity for self-determination. This article distills qualitative data from case studies, participatory action research workshops and field observations within traditional handloom craft communities in Sri Lanka. It explores the prevailing status of community-based entrepreneurship practices and argues that under current practices, entrepreneurial culture is not deeply embedded in community life, leading young people to move away from the traditional way of life and damaging the cohesion of traditional communities. This study establishes the need to sustain levels of social capital, support family networks, and encourage innovation to develop enterprise in craft communities. We recommend various strategies for overcoming structural and socio-cultural barriers to enterprise and to establish community-based sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The closure of schools and preschools due to the Covid-19 pandemic constrained millions of workers with children to modify their care arrangements. In Italy and France, governments adopted different measures to support parents in handling the additional care workload, including promoting access to telework. However, we argue that equating access to telework to a childcare policy, especially during the pandemic, had significant consequences in terms of gender and class inequalities. Based on multi-sited fieldwork in Italy and France, the article analyses the impact that telework as a social policy had on gender and class inequalities, stressing common trends and pointing out that caring for children while teleworking reinforces economic and gender inequalities. Moreover, the paper identifies strategies implemented by parents to cope with the challenge of child-caring while teleworking, highlighting that promoting such a policy can have unequal consequences depending on parents’ social and economic capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the everyday lives of young women living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Engaging a feminist intersectional and youth studies approach and drawing upon interviews and focus groups with 45 young women (16–25 years) from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, we reveal how culture, ethnicity, socio-economic and living conditions impacted the gendered and emotional labor expected of young women (i.e. caring for younger siblings, vulnerable family members, various chores, part-time work), and how the practices of care for others impacted young women’s capacity for their own educational, social and career development. Ultimately, this paper highlights the remarkable agency of young women during the pandemic, their compassion and empathy for others, their learnings and reflections, and how this period of radical social disruption impacted their future imaginings for themselves. In so doing, our analysis raises important questions for youth-focused pandemic educational, social and employment policies, calling for more intersectional approaches that consider how COVID-19 is continuing to significantly and unevenly shape the identity development and life trajectories of young women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assuming that policy design can impact gender equity in caretaking, this paper examines how expectant mothers and fathers understand and respond to specific parental leave policy elements when shaping their parenting practices. Taking Germany as a case study, this research draws on semi-structured interviews conducted between October 2019 and March 2020 with 18 couples, who were expecting their first child at the time of the interview. Germany's parental leave policy has shifted substantially since 2007, most notably with the establishment of non-transferable parental leave months for fathers. Exploring the link between policy design at the macro-level and parental involvement at the micro-level, this paper focuses on how mothers and fathers make sense of their leave entitlements when dividing leave, which (policy) aspects they consider as helping or hindering an equal leave division and how mothers and fathers anticipate using parental leave benefits. Results indicate that the current parental leave policy design enables greater equity in caretaking by normalizing some leave-taking by fathers. However, by providing an option for fathers' leaves to be split and to be taken concurrently with mothers the policy limits fathers' solo parenting responsibility and consequently prevents a transformation of gendered parenting practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of leave-taking fathers in South Korea has quintupled in the last five years, but those taking leave are still a minority of the total eligible fathers. These minority fathers, however, take some of the longest leave in the world. Driven by such notable trends, this paper inquires how norms about childcare and working hours shape Korean fathers' decision to take leave as well as work-family balance after leave. I find that fathers are often pushed to take leave as a last resort in light of poor work-family balance and absence of more desirable alternatives to care for a young child. While these conditions continue to constrain parents after the end of the fathers' leave, fathers respond in divergent ways: making continued effort to balance employment and family life, reverting to work-centric lifestyles with grandparental support, or going through career changes to address continued childcare needs. My findings highlight that incentives targeting fathers to take leave need to go hand in hand with more fundamental reforms to working hours and reliable ECEC to sustainably support gender equality and work-family balance of dual-earner parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the conservation of resources theory and social exchange theory, this paper explores how job incumbents’ work-to-family conflict and enrichment influence their spouses’ satisfaction with their work-family balance, which in turn impacts their spouses’ intentions to provide social support for the job incumbents’ work issues. We employed a mixed-method design. Study 1 involved a field study of a paired sample of 171 job incumbents and their spouses. Study 2 involved a scenario-based experiment (N = 274). The results showed that the relationship between job incumbents’ WFC and their spouses’ intentions to provide social support was mediated by the spouses’ satisfaction with the focal job incumbents’ WFB. We also found that job incumbents’ WFC interacts with WFE to influence their spouses’ intentions to provide social support via their spouses’ satisfaction with their WFB. This study offers new insights into the relationship between work-family experiences and social support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although employees increasingly need support to reconcile work and family, many lack a thorough knowledge of work-life practices such as flexible work arrangements, leaves, and dependent care programs, or they hesitate to use them. Building on social network and social contagion research, this paper argues that employees assess work-life practices not in isolation but through relational processes of social priming, social influence, and social comparison. I delineate six dimensions along which employees assess work-life practices–visibility, relevance, employer's motivations, instrumentality, fairness, and relative generosity–and analyze social contagion processes in networks of strong and weak ties, expressive and instrumental ties, within and outside the organization. I then examine how the national context may intervene in these processes by making the information that flows across ties more or less gender normative and by setting employees’ expectations for employer work-life support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical framework of women's empowerment developed from an intervention in South India. The framework is unique in that, in addition to common empowerment indicators, it emphasizes the relational aspect of empowerment including the role of men, family, and gendered power structures—and the flexibility of these to change. This is especially pertinent to India, which has struggled to meet global targets for indicators of improved gender equality. The mixed-methods study found evidence that women who felt they had more support from their husbands and family also had more success in the project, and that family support was an overall indicator for empowerment. This paper's contribution is in reframing women's empowerment to better represent the often overlooked structural factors that could intrinsically resist or counter the establishment of new states of social equality and stability, specifically the integral role of men and the wider family in the women's empowerment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a commentary on the article entitled "The changing nature of work," by Cary Cooper which was published in the periodical "Community, Work & Family." He points that the nature of work are changing since time began in the Industrial Revolution. He adds that the change is driven by the expectations of consumers who are experiencing the changes in the workplace to meet the requirements. He also gives credit to the large proportion of managers who strive to enhance the work experience for all workers while improving the efficiency of the production process.

This paper reflexively considers the muted narratives of a desire for pregnancy and parenthood in teenaged women's accounts of their journey to motherhood after deciding on abortion with their first, unexpected, pregnancy. By contrast their accounts were replete with good citizenship narratives that attested to pregnancy avoidance. Through the use of the Listening Guide, a feminist, layered, reflexive approach to data analysis, these accounts are considered in the wider social and cultural 'narratives' in the interview data, and the interviewee/interviewer relationship. It is suggested that the young women draw on dominant cultural tropes of the good teenager and mother, shaped by the desire to present themselves to the interviewer as acceptable citizens. It is debated whether the young women choose relative silence regarding their growing desire for pregnancy to avoid judgment in a society that problematises young motherhood, or are silenced by the same dominant discourse. Discussion considers what such a muted narrative might represent in a political and socio-cultural context. With narrow definitions of what is acceptable in the teenage years, and for motherhood, the young women's desire to present as acceptable may eclipse valuable contextual considerations that are important to practitioners and policy makers in providing effective support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that societal norms around gender roles can shape gender-based outcomes of working from home. This paper extends these findings to see how individuals' gender role attitudes can moderate the relationship between working from home and work–family conflict, but again with varying outcomes for men and women. We use data from around 3150 employees who participated in wave 10 (2017–2018) of the German Family Panel Survey (pairfam). Results suggest that compared to employees with fixed work locations, those who work from home report higher levels of family-to-work conflict, but not higher work-to-family conflict. Positive associations between working from home and both types of work – family conflict are found only for women, not for men. Specifically, the positive association between working from home and family-to-work conflict is mainly present among women with traditional gender role attitudes, while the positive association between working from home and work-to-family conflict is mainly present among women with egalitarian gender role attitudes. No such variation, however, was found for men. This study highlights the importance of taking gender and gender role attitudes into account when examining the consequences of working from home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has been conducted on job insecurity and participation in the workplace. However, to date, empirical research on the relationship between job insecurity and citizen participation is extremely scarce. To fill the void, the aim of this study is to examine the nexus between job insecurity and citizen participation in Chile and South Korea where embraced the New Public Management principle. Grievance and resource theory of participation offer contrasting predictions for the influence of job insecurity on citizen participation. Analyzing the wave 7 of the World Values Survey, this paper verifies the two lines of enquiry in examining the influence of job insecurity on citizen participation. The results of an ordered logit regression model demonstrate that the impact of job insecurity on citizen participation varied depending on the types of job insecurity and citizen participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although distinctions between full-time and part-time work are vital for understanding inequalities at work and home, consensus and critical reflection are lacking in how employment status should be defined. Full-time and part-time work are often represented as a binary split between those working under or over a specific number of hours. However, this paper, using exploratory mixed methods, evidences problems with assumptions based on working-hour thresholds and highlights the importance of workplace culture and household contexts. Using the UK Labour Force Survey we reveal ambiguities in the reporting of employment status for 12% of workers when comparing definitions based on number of working days, working hours and self-assessment. Ambiguities are particularly prevalent among working mothers with almost a third, who would be regarded as working full-time using hour-based measures, classified as ambiguous according to the measures used here. In-depth interviews with parents who self-classify as part-time workers, despite working over 35 hours a week, reveal mechanisms behind ambiguity within this group linked to organisational norms, previous working hours and divisions of household labour. The paper therefore argues workplace and household contexts are crucial to understanding employment status and recommends this should be taken into account in new multidimensional measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exists comprehensive literature on women's empowerment; however, studies on the measurement of empowerment in the agricultural context are scarce, particularly in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Pakistan. In this paper, we used the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which includes five domains, i.e. resources, production, income, leadership, and time, to measure women's empowerment in the agriculture sector. A survey of 600 rural women and 18 focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted by using multi-stage sampling. The results show that about 72% of the women are disempowered, and attribute to low socio-economic conditions, i.e. they have limited access to resources and little leadership skills as rural women in AJK are not free to speak in public. The results further reveal that women are also disempowered in some other indicators, such as autonomy in production, income, and leisure time. So, based on the current findings, it is proposed that government should strengthen these areas through effective policies to improve the status of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family supportive supervisor behaviours (FSSB) has received growing attention as an effective set of behaviours to facilitate the integration of work and family responsibilities. However, the FSSB construct remains limited in its sensitivity to context and our understanding of FSSB remains embedded in experiences from high-income global North countries and in white collar and private organisational settings. This paper presents a context-sensitive interpretation of FSSB for breastfeeding at work among public school teachers in South Africa–a middle-income global South country. Thematic analysis of in-depth interview data from teachers who are mothers, and principals as supervisors, underscored intersecting layers of contextual complexities that advance understanding of FSSB for supporting breastfeeding at work. Patriarchal culture and pervasive gender-based violence in South Africa compromises mothers' access to FSSB, while historical socio-spatial inequalities endemic in the public education sector limits the viability of all dimensions of FSSB to improve breastfeeding at work. The study findings have implications for the application of FSSB in diverse geographical, socio-cultural, and economic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates three potential mechanisms of educational differentials in formal childcare uptake in Belgium, a country characterised by high availability, but also pronounced gradients in childcare uptake. We investigate whether and to what extent educational differentials can be accounted for by (i) differences in employment opportunities of mothers with different educational backgrounds, (ii) variation in local childcare availability which may entail different access, or (iii) differential availability of grandparents as an alternative source of affordable and flexible care. We use data from the 2011 Belgian census, which provides us with information on the socio-demographic characteristics of the entire population legally residing in Belgium. The census was linked to tax register data which gives insight into the uptake of formal childcare as childcare expenses are tax-deductible, as well as municipality-level data on childcare availability. Using logistic regression analysis, we investigate the uptake of formal childcare among two-parent families with one child younger than 2.5 years old. Results indicate that educational gradients are mainly due to differences in employment opportunities rather than differential availability of formal childcare at the local level or informal childcare availability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the premise that family care work is more than an individual struggle – it is a public issue requiring collective engagement towards structural change. But how do carers themselves become engaged in forms of activism designed to achieve such change? In this paper, we present findings from an exploration into how five activist-inclined carers of older adults (all daughters) interpret the meaning of care work. We examine whether and how their narratives manifest an understanding of care as a public issue and responsibility. Cases were theoretically sampled from a larger qualitative dataset; each woman participated in 2–3 interviews over a 2-year period. Findings illuminate the complexities of identity, emotion and broader discourses as these intersect in the daughters' narratives. Echoing the invisibility of carer needs and of the gendered nature of family care work, participants' activist inclinations tended to foreground the needs of older adults; to the extent that they supported structural changes to help families, this was to assist carers in their primary responsibility for parent care. Moreover, none of the women framed their efforts as part of a feminist struggle. Discussion addresses implications for the empowerment and engagement of carers within broader advocacy movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the research evaluating the import of paternal migration for children's outcomes has taken 'left-behind children' as a single group. Taking a life course perspective, this paper distinguishes fathers' short-term and long-term migrations, as well as return migration, as they affect children's productive activities. Using the Mexican Family Life Survey (2002–2009), we followed school-aged children from two-parent households in 2002 and observed their activities as they transitioned into adulthood from 2005 through 2009. We found that fathers' short-term migration is negatively associated with children's labor force participation, especially for 12 – to 18-year-old boys, suggesting that paternal migration may interrupt adolescent boys' labor market transition in the short-term. Fathers' long-term migration and return migration does not significantly alter children's activities. However, the negative role of fathers' long-term absence and benefits brought by the paternal migration trip are important mechanisms for educational persistence and the labor force entrance of 12 – to 18-year-old girls, highlighting the conditions under which certain mechanisms may work. This suggests that migration is a family process, with the outcomes lying in the interplay of the stages of migration, children's life stages, and how gender is treated within cultural and familial contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the passage of the Minneapolis Sick and Safe Leave city ordinance, a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project was launched to examine the perceived accessibility and usage of paid sick leave by African American employed caregivers as a work-based family support tool. This paper presents qualitative findings from the Paid Sick Leave and African American Families study, in which four focus groups (n = 32) were conducted. Participants were employed African American caregivers from the Minneapolis metropolitan area. Participants discussed how the intersections of their work and family environments and how their families created family-level meaning making around employment, income, and family caregiving. Themes that arose from the focus groups were: (1) an importance of defining family for themselves expressed through kin affinity and family ascribed membership, (2) an expressed desire for their family to be together, (3) family prioritization over work conditions they felt was inconsiderate of their personal or family sense of worth and (4) family legacy expressed as the culmination of families' prioritization, togetherness, and defined membership and is the intergenerational transmission of the family's, identity. Implications for future research and policy are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor worker health is estimated to cost employers more than half a trillion dollars per year in lost productivity [Japsen, B. (2018, November 15). Poor worker health costs U.S. employer's half trillion dollars a year. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from ]. Stress, especially as it pertains to work-family conflicts, has been shown to be a primary contributor to employee health problems [Gisler, S., Omansky, R., Alenick, P., Tumminia, A., Eatough, E., & Johnson, R. (2018). Work-life conflict and employee health: A review. Journal of Applied Biobehavioral Research, 23(4), 1–46. ]. This paper investigates how physical health symptoms resulting from increased work-family conflict may be mediated through increased alcohol and cigarette use, and how that relationship is moderated by factors such as family-friendly policies implemented by the organizations, time management, sex of the individual, and norms around the use of these substances among employees. The study examined 1275 blue collar/front-line workers from 60 different small businesses. Alcohol and cigarette use were found to partially mediate the relationship between high levels of work-family conflict and negative physical health symptoms. The availability and ease of use of family-friendly policies moderated the effects of the relationship as well. Results and implications are further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To better understand the gap between women's childbearing aspirations and actual levels of childbearing, this paper investigates the importance of employment, relationship and motherhood transitions for predicting women's desired number of children. Women born in 1973–78 participating in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health were asked, at three-time points over six years, how many children they would like to have by the age of 35 years. Women who delayed childbearing, did not marry or enter a cohabiting relationship aspired to fewer children, whilst those who married aspired to more children. Notably, the two-way interactions demonstrated that for women without children, and for women who had had their first child between waves, shifting from secure work to being out of the labour force was associated with desiring fewer children. This finding supports the argument that policies which promote women's attachment to the workforce enable women to more effectively pursue their aspirations for both motherhood and careers. The findings make a new contribution to the field by indicating that life transitions are more important predictors of desired number of children than background and demographic factors that have long been associated with, and used as explanations for, women's childbearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a life-history grid to collect narrative data on the labor market transitions of young people aged 20–34 (n = 98) in order to analyze the support provided by relatives in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. Drawing on social capital theory, we explore these mechanisms by analysing the flow of resources within family networks (one-step social capital) and how relatives mediate with other agents in the labor market (two-step social capital). Hence, we address the diversity of material, symbolic and informational resources provided by relatives during labor transitions in order to understand the mechanisms involved in the intergenerational reproduction of occupation inequalities. Although the 'strength of weak ties' thesis usually associates the use of family networks among disadvantaged groups, our results show that the mobilization of relatives is equally important in upper-class background, in which mechanisms such as nepotism and influence on third-party employers are activated. Among the working classes, family ties help job seekers to reach non-redundant connections in the secondary segment of the labor market. The article contributes by providing a detailed map of the roles played by relatives in a southern European context characterized by precariousness and unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results of a comprehensive literature review of empirical studies investigating travel for work and how it relates to individual lives. The paper presents information on how work travel has been operationalized in the literature. The paper describes findings concerning how feelings about travel, individual well-being, the work/family interface, family relationships and social connections have been found to be affected by work travel. The empirical articles on workers who travel have been conducted in multiple countries and via diverse methodologies, which provides richness to the findings. The lack of uniformity in how work travel has been operationalized presents challenges for drawing conclusions about the effects of work travel. Recommendations concerning how to move the field forward are presented, including uniting the employment-related literature with the family literature to provide more holistic and useful implications for the study of work travel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a plurality of paternal forms available to men, certain enactments of fathering remain immobile. In South Africa the 'father as provider' discourse, which establishes the legitimate father as one who provides financially for his family, continues to be regarded as the primary mark of a good father. Using photo-elicitation interviews to interrogate the persistence of this discourse, this paper examines how adolescents from two low-resourced South African communities construct fathering. Using a critical intersectional discursive framework, the analysis focuses on how gender, race, class and culture are implicated in the reproduction of the 'father as provider' discourse. Participants' constructions suggest that the father's duty to provide is intensified within marginalised contexts. Central to participants' reproductions of the 'father as provider' discourse was a neoliberal conception of 'freedom of choice'. The paper concludes that South Africa's post-apartheid reliance on discourses around liberal democracy has cast the low-income father's ability to fulfil the provider role as a conscious choice. While the father is made responsible for his failure to provide, broader structural oppressions are in turn rendered largely invisible by such discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the study of work time, a wealth of influential ideas has emerged about the potentially damaging impact of too many hours in the labour market on the rest of peoples' lives, as well as about the negative economic ramifications of short hours working. The paper focuses on the temporal and economic well-being of female employees in Europe, stimulated by the importance of work time in debates over time poverty and work life integration. It asks whether women in shorter hours jobs are happiest with their time for paid work and leisure, but also what might the lower wages from reduced hours working mean for women, particularly those in low-level occupations. The paper shows first that although working fewer hours contributes to women's satisfaction with their time in many countries, it is long full-time hours that have the strongest (negative) relationship with women's temporal well-being across Europe. Second, the paper demonstrates the damaging impact of working in low-level occupations - both part-time and full-time - on the economic well-being of women's households. It stresses the importance of a combined work time and occupational class approach in the ongoing analysis of women's working lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ultra-Orthodox population is the fastest growing population in Israel and this study is the first to examine the relative centrality of life domains among Ultra-Orthodox men in Israel and compare them with secular and traditionalist men. The participants were 206 secular, 98 traditional, and 199 Ultra-Orthodox employed Israeli men. While previous literature found that higher levels of religiosity were associated with lower work centrality, in this pioneering study no differences were found among secular, traditionalist, and Ultra-Orthodox men with regards the centrality of work in their lives. In addition, no differences were found among the groups with regard to the centrality of community and family. With that, as expected, centrality of religion increased with increasing level of religiosity. Finally, the centrality of leisure was highest among secular and the lowest among Ultra-Orthodox employees. Overall, demographic variables have a low capability of explaining life domains centrality among the three groups. The meaning and importance of these findings are discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze individuals in rural communities within Ireland and two regions in Canada (Newfoundland and Ontario) to explore the relationship between employment, lifestyles and life satisfaction. A total of 106 participants were interviewed, with the vast majority being over forty years of age. We explore their employment experiences, and address two questions: how strongly is life satisfaction related to employment among older, rural adults?, and are there gender differences with respect to rural employment and life satisfaction? Relatively few of the participants we interviewed within these communities held permanent, full-time employment locally. Many of the ones holding (only) seasonal/casual employment or self-employment indicated that it was difficult to make a living, but were determined to stay and 'make a go of it'. While the participants tended to tolerate, rather than be fully satisfied with, their employment conditions, the vast majority were satisfied or very satisfied with life, and many pointedly described the benefits of living in their chosen community. This held for women and men, and for those near 40 years of age (and among the few in this study who were younger), to those of retirement age. Typically, they were happy, but at a price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many lost their jobs. It was during this pandemic that people payed more attention to freelancing. However, even before the pandemic, this phenomenon was already gaining ground in the Philippines. The purpose of this paper is to explore Filipino professionals' lived experiences as they transition from the corporate world into a work from home job as online freelancers. This study used a qualitative research design using the phenomenological approach. Eleven participants willingly responded to the key informant interviews (KII). They were professionals who left their previous corporate job to work from home as online freelancers. Results revealed that the challenges they encountered were distractions at home and lack of recognition. The identified themes for the advantages were freedom, more time with the family, and flexibility. Based on the study's findings, it appeared that the benefits of freelance work outweigh the challenges. Freelancing creates alternative employment opportunities for Filipinos, both professionals or not. The implication of the study points to the need for education or information dissemination so that those who need jobs or want to transition from the corporate world can venture into freelancing, especially during a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationships that hold community, work, and family together are globally diverse. This complexity is not always acknowledged, and the importance of local context and understandings are often missed. For the field to advance, new perspectives must be welcomed as they will shift boundary conditions of what is positioned as privileged. This will open space not only to add empirical richness but invites theoretical innovation. This paper draws on emerging theory from the global South. Southern theory holds the promise of new ways of understanding community, work, and family, not just as an add-on where Southern examples are provided. Taking account of global knowledge inequalities that have occasionally marginalised perspectives from the periphery, we can now develop new research agendas, new concepts and lexicons, and reframe research questions. These may disrupt what is currently assumed to be the status quo and provide scope for fresh questions and new answers. Putting Southern theory into practice in my own research on supporting breastfeeding at work among low-income mothers in South Africa, helped to emphasise the salience of context. I suggest an agenda for community, work, and family research that gives emphasis to the importance of location and the inequalities in knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a persistent notion that women exit academia due to family responsibilities, research on exits is scarce. Based on 32 interviews, the paper explores how male and female PhDs recount the choice of leaving versus remaining in academia in terms of aspirations, opportunities and constraints. The main question is whether the exit/remain decision reflects gendered work-family strategies in a modern dual-earner society like Sweden. The narratives form a fourfold typology of strategic and accidental stayers, as well as strategic and accidental leavers. The analysis points to assymmetric opportunities connected to both gender roles and internal/external employment prospects. Family concerns formed a prominent reason for exit but problems of job insecurity and care involvement were highlighted by both men and women. Female but not male stayers could forsee obstacles and applied a range of strategies to minimize the impact of family on their careers. All in all, findings did not conform to prevailing notions of female exits but suggest that the academic career system present women and families with complex dilemmas even in a country with supportive policies. In future, exit processes should be furthered studied in other institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how in Britain the time fathers and couples spend in employment shifts in the first years of children’s lives, the conditions under which this happens and how fathers feel about and experience time with their families and time in paid work. In order to achieve these aims new longitudinal analysis of the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is carried out together with secondary analysis of narrative case studies drawn from a qualitative study of Fatherhood across the Generations. By linking these datasets the paper examines the potential for corroboration and complementarity between different types of data. Further, it seeks to show how qualitative cases corroborate, elaborate and expand on the main employment trajectories in the MCS population of fathers and how these extend understandings of fathers’ experience of time within families. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies have demonstrated the importance of informal social relationships in lone mothers' everyday lives, not least regarding their ability to reconcile paid work and care duties. This paper examines lone mothers' relationships with their friends. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Swedish lone mothers, it aims to analyse how friendship relations are described by the lone mothers, to what extent they are characterized by different forms of reciprocity and if the mothers perceive their friends as being part of their families. Inspired by Alberoni's thoughts on friendship, and Finch and Mason's view of reciprocity, the analysis reveals a complex picture of friendship relations. It is argued that friends often play a significant role in the everyday lives of the lone mothers. Friends were seen as key elements in some mothers' lives, and sometimes were defined as 'family', providing emotional as well as practical support; but they were almost entirely absent in the lives of others. The support from their friends was often surrounded by norms of reciprocity. The results indicate that although the help from friends sometimes was decisive and appreciated, the mothers found it difficult to ask friends for help. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to investigate the link between women's labour force participation and intimate partner violence, using the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) across 20 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries between 2010 and 2015. The study contributes to the existing literature by incorporating a macroeconomic dimension to previous framework measuring the risk factors of intimate partner violence. The findings reveal a positive link between employment status and the risk of intimate partner violence, where working women in SSA have 19% higher odds of abuse compared to non-working ones. This result holds robust across sexual, emotional and less severe physical abuse and is particularly relevant for the Eastern and Western parts of SSA. It is further observed that more educated women and those married or started living with their partner at a very early age face higher risk of partner abuse. Similarly, gender discrimination in social institutions and polygyny are important risk factors for the occurrence of violence. Women's empowerment in Africa, through greater access to the labour market needs to be accompanied by appropriate laws, to reduce any form of gender inequality at both the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For heterosexual couples who enter into parenthood, having a first child often has a significant impact on the ways in which their lives are organised. Importantly, women typically take on the greatest share of household and care work, reflecting broader cultural norms in relation to gender. Drawing on case studies of four Australian heterosexual couples, this article examines the ways in which the couples discussed the distribution of household and care work. By tracking the same couples from prior to pregnancy to after the birth of their child, we are able to focus on expectations and ideals in relation to unpaid and paid work, and how these relate to what happens in practice. The cases suggest four key issues, namely (1) the positioning of household and care work as not being work, (2) the positioning of women as 'lucky' if their male partner is 'helpful', (3) the primary orientation of men towards earning a paid income as a way of providing for their family, and (4) the unequal distribution of caring responsibility. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these issues with regard to how the division of labour is understood in the context of heterosexual first-time parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because middle-class women do not report intimate partner violence (IPV) due to social stigma, few interventions address their problems. In addition, there is a dearth of literature on the role of paid work in middle-class women's lives, as prior studies have focused on several ways IPV hinders women's work and job performance. This hermeneutic phenomenology study reveals that 10 middle-class women did not consciously enter into an empowerment process at work but experienced empowerment while performing job responsibilities. The paper explores how women contrast their IPV relationships with their work, in which they have access to resources, experience success, rediscover a sense of self and eventually make changes in their personal lives. Most importantly, this study argues that work plays a critical role in enabling these women to embark on the process of empowerment. Recognizing the interdependent nature of and positive spillover from work to personal issues can enable human resources practitioners and social workers to implement interventions with far-reaching benefits. Organizations need to increasingly focus on enabling a work culture that fosters empowerment, which has powerful social implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although numerous studies show that living in a neighborhood that is characterized by disorder (crime and dilapidation) can be psychologically distressing, very few studies have considered the element of exposure time or duration of exposure to adverse neighborhood environments. In this paper, we explore the intersection of commuting, mental health, and the subjective experience of neighborhood disadvantage and impoverished community life. Using data from the Welfare, Children, and Families project (2001), a probability sample of 1057 low-income women with children living in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, we test whether the association between neighborhood disorder and psychological distress is moderated or attenuated by commuting time and distance. Our results show that although neighborhood disorder is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and somatization, disorder tends to be less distressing for residents who are able to spend time away from these environments through longer commuting times and distances. In other words, working away from one's neighborhood of residence may help to mitigate the adverse psychological consequences of neighborhood disorder. Our findings support previous research on the stress process and neighborhood disorder. Our work builds on the commuting literature by re-conceptualizing commuting time and distance as protective resources for disadvantaged populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers often approach employers to investigate employees’ work and family experiences. Organizational willingness to grant access to employees can vary, especially when the research topic is seen as controversial or contentious for the employer. This paper explores this methodological challenge using a research example from Manitoba, Canada, which explored the use of parental leave by male employees and the impact of managerial attitudes and corporate culture on usage. Sixty large employers were recruited with only seven of those organizations agreeing to participate. In this paper, the reasons organizations gave for declining to participate and the implications of their decisions for the research are examined. Although the final sample included 905 managers and employees, participating organizations tended to be employee-focused and family-friendly employers. Organizations declined participation for a variety of reasons: avoiding raising the issue with unions, awareness that their policies unfairly benefited female leave takers, and simply not seeing the relevance of a topic relating to men’s work–family experiences. A dialogue often absent from the literature, it is important to understand how employers can limit researchers’ access to employees on controversial topics. The existence of such barriers suggests alternative avenues to recruit participants directly when topics are contentious for employers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper sets out to capture the missing voices of fathers in discussions around gender, parenting and work. Using Critical Discursive Psychology (CDP), a qualitative methodology that frames discourse, language and action as socially situated, the paper sets out to understand the complexities of involved fatherhood. Using data from two distinct research projects that considered managing tensions around parenting and paid work, alongside the move to ‘involved fatherhood’, we examine the ways in which different discourses are operating in order to construct stories around gender and parenting. We are particularly interested in the ways in which participants use language and, specifically, discourses of parenting, working and caring. Through the interview excerpts we analysed how simultaneously participants position themselves in the discourses and were also being positioned by the wider societal discourses. We consider how CDP can contribute rich insights into the ways in which fathers are arranging sharing parenting caregiving responsibilities, using these insights to inform the policy landscape. We finish the paper by suggesting that CDP methodology can be mobilised by researchers wanting to capture missing voices in shifting policy landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the spring 2011, and again during summer 2012, the small coastal town of Hirtshals (approx. 6000 inhabitants) on the north-western shore of Denmark was home to two spectacular symbols of the success of an emergent offshore sector in the region, namely the upgrading and overhauling of two gigantic oil rigs. Providing temporary work for an estimated 800 persons who literally worked day and night for the 100 days each rig was at dock, these events affected the entire community. The paper presents evidence from seven biographical interviews with local men whose working lives were directly or indirectly affected by these events. As the interviews illuminate, respondents are often extremely mobile and flexible in terms of their jobs, in some cases ‘bungy jumping’ through working life in an apparent effort to retain local ties while pursuing global opportunities. The paper contributes to qualifying more general sociological discussions about the push for increased mobility and flexibility in a presumably increasingly globalising labour market reality. Ultimately, it seems that the multiple ways in which Hirtshals is marked as marginal – in terms of geography, socio-economic profile and discourse – may serve to normalise demands for flexibility and mobility, at least amongst parts of the local working population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are fathers in Scotland unlikely to use the full range of leave benefits available to them? Taking a capabilities approach allows us to explore the perspective that some fathers may experience an agency gap and thus not have the capabilities to utilise entitlements. This paper addresses the question empirically using a mixed-methods design which includes: analysis of data from the Growing up in Scotland study, 20 in-depth qualitative interviews with fathers of young children working in the public sector in dual-earner couples, as well as an audit of extra-statutory benefits offered to fathers by employers. We argue that the reliance on an extra-statutory leave system in the UK explains at least part of the gap between fathers' entitlement to and uptake of statutory leave, as such benefits are not routinely available to all parents. The extra-statutory entitlement is more than just a 'top-up' to the statutory; it is rather a conversion factor for the take up of statutory entitlement, by fathers. Organisational cultural norms support many employed fathers in taking a couple of weeks leave post-birth, but longer leave duration for fathers is not yet a usual parenting practice in Scotland, particularly lower down the income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of the 2015-2016 research project 'Fathers and Employers in Action' conducted to find out how employment situations influence fathering in Slovenia. We examine fathers' reconciliation of paid work and childcare responsibilities, the impact of various factors on fathers' practices, as well as managers' views of work-life balance in their companies and their personal experience. The empirical material was obtained through an on-line survey of 383 employed fathers and interviews with 11 managers, all with a child under 18. Apart from descriptive analysis, we conducted a multivariate analysis with time used for childcare as a dependent variable. Slovenian fathers reported that their employers offered very few measures aimed at facilitating reconciliation of work and family and did not understand their need and wish to participate in childcare. Fathers in managerial positions tend to combine uninterrupted careers with 'weekend fatherhood'. The analysis showed the interaction of factors affecting fathers' work-life balance. It also pointed to a need for employers to more strongly enhance their male employees' work-life balance, both by supporting the use of available statutory provisions, such as paternity and parental leaves, and by implementing measures at the organizational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much workplace support to parents offered by employers is gender neutral in design, but fathers' usage rates are generally very low and far below that of mothers. This paper reflects on men's dual roles as fathers and employees in relation to formal and informal work policies and practices, with the aim of answering the question: How could fathers feel supported by their work environment to take a more active caregiving role in the lives of their children? We take a capabilities approach to explore models of change, which supports the assumption that many fathers are somehow not fully enabled by their organisations to use policies. Focus groups were conducted within a large public sector organisation in the UK to capture the individual and interactional experiences of fathers. Findings suggest that workplace culture, line manager relationships, the 'modelling' behaviour of peers and gendered leave practices all impact on how fathers feel about using work-family balance policies, and whether they are likely to use them. The limits of workplace support for fathers can be challenged via the consideration of some key institutional conversion factors which if addressed may better enable fathers to exercise greater agency with regard to work-family balance entitlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns preconditions for the well-being of young people with mental ill-health combined with social vulnerabilities, also referred to as youth with complex needs. Research questions are: What barriers to sustainable work practices for young people labelled as having complex needs do professionals encounter? What do professionals identify as possible ways to overcome these barriers? Sustainable work practices are reflected in three themes: empowerment, relationships and collaboration. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews with 24 professionals, 3 men and 21 women, working in psychiatric care and the social services in two Swedish municipalities in 2016 and 2017. Major barriers are lack of continuity and co-ordination in staff and support, and fragmentation of work practices. As a consequence of the increased specialization of human service organizations, young people have to interact with many different professionals which could cause disparate interventions. Possible ways mentioned to overcome these barriers are supported through good interactional skills, using keyworkers as well therapeutic alliances, wrap-around services and case management. Complexity is linked to organizations and work practices rather than to young people. An often dysfunctional service delivery system in organizations with rigid boundaries may also affect professionals’ aim for sustainable support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue that the capability approach can suggest avenues to reform social policies in the direction of a more valuable and sustainable conciliation between people's different engagements in community, work and family. We thus develop a theoretical framework for assessing the extent to which social policies support the freedom to lead a valuable life and to choose how to combine in a sustainable way employment, family life and active citizenship. With this aim, we study the anthropological conception at the core of the capability approach and its implications for social policy. We argue that in the capability approach human beings are seen as receivers (i.e. vulnerable beings in need of support), doers (i.e. actors able to contribute to society) and judges (i.e. political beings with aspirations, values and desires). By the same token, the capability approach sheds light on three prerequisites for developing a sustainable community, work and family interface: a) recognizing the multiple dimensions of human beings (and not seeing them only as ‘doers’ or ‘human capital’ for the economy), b) including all human beings, with their strengths and weaknesses, and allowing them to lead valuable lives (and not excluding those that cannot abide by the ‘doer’ standards), and c) insisting that the development of such an interface is the joint responsibility of the individual and the community (and not only of the individual). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, using high quality data from the Work, Family, and Health Network in a sample of IT workers in the US (N = 590), we examine whether partners’ long work hours are associated with individuals’ perceived stress, time adequacy with partner, and relationship quality, and whether these relationships vary by gender. In addition, following the marital stress model, we investigate whether any negative correlation between partners’ long work hours and relationship quality is mediated by time adequacy or perceived stress. We find that women partnered to men who work long hours (50 or more hours per week) have significantly higher perceived stress and significantly lower time adequacy and relationship quality compared to women partnered to men who work a standard full-time work week (35-49 hours). Further, the increased stress associated with being partnered to a man who overworks, not lower time adequacy, mediates the negative relationship between overwork and relationship quality. Conversely, we find that men partnered to women who work long hours report no differences in stress, time adequacy, or relationship quality than men who are partnered to women who work a standard full-time work week. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will discuss the development of work-family research in the UK and cross-nationally, and the critical contribution of Suzan Lewis to this field. The first part of the paper focusses on the ways in which, in the context of the growth of dual earner lifestyles in Britain, Suzan's work made a key contribution. A central part of this story is also the collaborative role that Sue played both through initiating projects across universities in the UK but also in carrying out European Union-funded research and more widely, including leading multi-national teams. In particular, two studies will be considered: Young people's views about their future work and family lives (Futures on hold); and Gender, Parenthood and the Changing European Workplace (Transitions). The paper points to some of the key prerequisites necessary for working in cross-national research teams and the conduct of high- quality, qualitative cross-national research, especially studies that address different layers of social context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contributes to debates in the broad area of generational differences at work. Specifically, we locate this study within the literature of the work values and expectations of the ‘Millennial generation’, also known as ‘GenMe’. Much has been made in the media and popular practitioner literature about how the latest generation of workers have a ‘sense of entitlement’ and therefore expect more from the workplace than previous generations. In this paper, we argue that this mainstream view of the sense of entitlement as a concept is problematic and requires a more critical examination. We consider two divergent bodies of literature on the sense of entitlement in relation to generational differences at work – a managerialist approach, which conceptualises sense of entitlement to work–life balance as a negative trait, and a second body, based on the seminal work by Sue Lewis and colleagues, that treats sense of entitlement as a situated process rather than an internal characteristic. We use data from a study of young adults leaving university in the UK, inspired by Sue's work. Our analysis challenges the notion of today's younger workers as more ‘entitled’ than previous generations. This study extends existing research by providing a contextualised analysis of young people's situated accounts of sense of entitlement at work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]