Today kicks off a two-week blog series on “Work/Life in Our Communities” coordinated by Fem 2.0 and including some of my favorite people and organizations. Each day will include a radio conversation and posts from some of the web’s most important women’s bloggers at AAUW, Feminist.com, Feministe, MomsRising, NOW, and Blogher, among others. I’m excited to hear what promises to be a high-level discussion.
However, I do have a couple of concerns about the conveners and panels. The group includes women’s activists, bloggers, and academics, with no meaningful representation by business, and very little by men. If we really believe, as the organizers say they do, that work/life is not a women’s issue, we need to take it out of the “women’s rights” arena. (Tomorrow there is a session on male roles, but there might have been more value in approaching inclusion of the male perspective throughout the conference, rather than in a separate panel.)
I’m a pragmatist. I know that corporate America is never going to adopt work/life just because it’s the “right” thing to do. We need to be engaging companies on their terms — talking about the bottom line and how work/life strategies can either make or save them money. Cali Yost over at Work+Life Fit talks about this frequently, pointing out that “work+life is not about ‘nice,’ it’s about long-term, strategic, global competitiveness.” While I laud the Fem 2.0 conference, I see it as another discussion happening in an echochamber.
The panels are also heavy on academia and light on practical experience. If you are going to focus on work/life in the women’s sphere, it would be worthwhile to include some women who actually work in management roles at large companies. Some of the solutions I hear proposed by the blogging, journalist and activist communities don’t take a 360 degree view of the issues.
For example, there’s lots of talk in the feminist blogosphere about how adopting a more European maternity leave system could make women’s lives better, but little mention of how the same system can lead to smaller numbers of women in top management. There’s frequent discussion of how technology can help us work more flexibly, but less recognition of the kinds of technology changes companies will need to make to support large numbers of employees working remotely. And there is too little honesty about the trade-offs of scaling back.
Consider a real-world situation: what does a manager at a small company do when one or two employees take lengthy maternity leaves or ask for part-time hours? How does this affect the rest of the department’s work/life? When we talk about what is “fair” for parents, there needs to be profound understanding that fair for some of us can quickly devolve into unfair for others. Work/life is not about children or eldercare or any specific situation; it’s about solutions that promote revenue and allow businesses the flexibility they need to secure and maintain the best talent pool possible.
I see a role for academia and activism in this conversation, but they won’t take it far without some practical discussion of how corporate work models need to fundamentally change to make work/life a greater priority. More importantly we need hard data, research, longitudinal studies, and concept papers on work/life that come from outside the women’s rights sphere to show our businesses. Only when corporate America is convinced that work/life will make them wealthier, more competitive, and more sustainable will we see real change. That requires a different kind of conversation all together.
P.S.: I hope the radio sessions are archived somewhere…right now they are all scheduled for the middle of the day, when I work.
Related links:
- From The American Prospect: Work/Life Balance is Not a Women’s Issue.
- From Work+Life Fit: Stop Talking About Work+Life Flex Solely in the Context of Women…Really, Seriously, Once and For All.
- From PunditMom: Work/Life “Balance” – Changing the Conversation.
I couldn’t agree more that is a mistake to focus the discussion on what women/people want and need rather than why it is sound business sense for employers and society at large. It’s also critical to talk about costs, difficult choices and results. I write about this in my blog, http://WorkingWithChronicIllness, because this conversation is critical to people with illness and work. It’s foolish to think that corporate America, small or large businesses are going to make changes that they don’t believe are in their best interest. In talked about this in my book, Women Work and Autoimmune Disease: Keep Working, Girlfriend! – we can ask for change but it has to be change that is in everyone’s best interest. Flexibility for all workers is in everyone’s interest when done with a strategic perspective, rather than knee jerk. I look forward to listening to the radio shows and reading the blogs over the next two weeks.
Thank you for, as you so often do, bringing everything about this conversation into crystal clear focus. You couldn’t be more right. We must find ways to broaden the so far positive business case data. And we must find ways to tell the success stories that reach beyond mothers.
I wrote recently about a single male in the professional services sector who negotiated a unique contract with summers off so he could engage in his other passion. The irony? I couldn’t use his name because from his company’s perspective, “What if everyone wanted a deal like that?” He was making them a small fortune in his nine months on. The business case was clear and indisputable.
What if indeed?
I think it’s imperative that voices from all sides of the issues are represented because there is nothing worse than pontificating into an “echo chamber” as you said. I also think Chrysula’s point is a good one. That single guy has a great gig going on that mutually beneficial. But the company doesn’t want word to get out. Being discreet about offering job flexibility is, inevitably, going to cost them talented people.
I actually just wrote a post about having to choose between working full-time and earmarking more than my salary toward daycare, or continuing to work part-time and making just enough to grab dinner and movie with my husband. This is an important conversation to have with people who are in positions to address the problem.
Or maybe we need to up the ante? Anyone wanna start working on a bill to pass some new work/life friendly legislation?
No worries Mama Bee – I’m on the discussion and an am entrepreneur, have worked with most major entrepreneur organizations (in the US), and GW now avails themselves of those skills and has me teach Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership. My point for the panel is to stop waiting for someone else to do something. We must inform ourselves, and lead the charge. The term “grassroots” wouldn’t exist if there weren’t some meaning there.
Kathy Korman Frey
Writing from my blackberry, on the way back from the gym, with my husband, on a Monday, because we’ve entrepreneured our own work-life
First of all, thank you, TMB! I’ve been a lonely voice in the wilderness stating emphatically that work+life fit is not a women-only issue, AND that there is a broad, robust win-win business benefit from a more strategic use of work+life flexibility. Thank you for linking to the two posts. Readers who are interested can find more where they came from on my blogs.
Again, I love reading the comments on your posts. They reinforce what a terrible job the 20+ year old work+life field (I include myself in that group for the past 15 years) has done transcending the media’s relentless pigeon-holing of this issue. We need to broaden the debate to describe all of the success stories from both the business and personal perspectives. There aren’t enough of them yet, but they are out there.
Great concerns, and totally valid to bring up. I moderated this morning’s kick-off call and just want to say that:
-BlogHer is a small business with 44 full time employees. We have had employees out on maternity leave. We have employees with a variety of flex schedules and telecommute days. We also happen to HQ in California, which is one of the few states where the state provides paid maternity/family leave, so our employees are lucky in that regard. I brought up the issues of proving this is valuable to the bottom line a few times, and it seemed like the authors of the study in question had some pretty good answers about it.
-As a non-mom, I also made sure to ask how the policies they recommend would benefit those of us without children. (And non-parents may feel like the demands or expectations on them are to fill in the gaps flexibility affords others.) They had some good comments on this issue too, although honestly…not as convincing. The focus is definitely on families, meaning parents and children. But even I have to concede that the vast majority of women are indeed moms by the time they are my age (45).
I do believe they are going to archive these all, so I hope you’ll listen!
Thanks.