Unresolved Dilemmas

Women, Work and the Family in the United States, Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Faisa Kauppinen, Tuula Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138360662
• eBook ISBN: 9780429778643
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally printed in 1997. Women are a considerable portion of the labour force. The majority of them also establish relationships and become mothers. Combining work and family has created considerable problems for women, domestic circumstances and main responsibility for housework and children still affect women, meaning they enter the labour market with one hand tied behind their back. How do women today cope with the dilemmas caused by their dual roles? This book takes a critical look at the concept of dual roles, and makes an assessment of women's locations in the workplace and at home, considering both continuities and change. The book concentrates on a wide variety of issues around work, family and their interrelationships. Unresolved dilemmas from different cross-cultural perspectives are considered, integrating the problems of modern women.

1 Introduction: Dual roles and beyond

Tuula Gordon/Kaisa Kauppinen

During the past few decades the proportion of women in the labour force has increased dramatically in all industrialized societies, women form a considerable part of the working population. Most women also establish relationships and become mothers. Combining work and family has created considerable problems for women — problems that are not typically experienced by men. In the labour market sex segregation still persists, and it extends both horizontally and vertically. As long as labour markets remain segregated, and pay and prospects of those located in the predominantly female sectors are less favourable than in the predominantly male sectors, sex inequalities cannot be eradicated. This knowledge does not, however, lead very far towards an understanding of the processes involved. We also have to note that domestic circumstances and the main responsibility for housework and the care of the children still affect women; they enter the labour market with one hand tied behind their backs.

Families have been critically studied in feminist research, and they are considered one major source of women's subordination. The binary opposition between the public and private spheres needs to be examined. Women's entry into the public arena, even though partial, seems irreversible. Yet the public/private dichotomy is central in maintaining gender differences. Even when women enter the public sphere, they are seen as representing the private sphere, as is evident in the types of work women do (service work, health care, education, etc.). Similarly, when men enter the private sphere, they maintain the status conferred on them in the public sphere and, hence, have fewer responsibilities in the home.

The construction of the concept dual role has been ideologically significant in maintaining the public/private divide. Women's lives are not seen as an integrated whole — their work role is not supposed to alter their maternal and marital role in any fundamental sense. This conception of duality is challenged in this book. The term can be viewed as a rationalization covering the contradictions raised by the need to recruit women into the labour force, while still upholding their role at home. Until about the mid 1970s, women's participation in the labour force assumed a U shape: women worked outside the home before marriage, became home—makers when their children were born, and then returned to work outside the home in their middle years. In the mid—1990s women pursue a more continuous pattern of labour force activity.

A careful, systematic assessment whereby both continuities and changes are considered is important for women's position at work and at home,. The international perspective of this book enables an examination of the variety of processes in different countries, depending on the participation rates of women, the cultural understanding of femininity and masculinity, and the character of the welfare state.

Societies differ in the extent to which they provide special programs for employed women and men in terms of child care, maternity/paternity leave, flexible hours, and the degree to which gender ideologies call for a more active role of fathers in child care and household work. Depending on the benefits society provides, employed women and men engage in differing courses of action when managing the demands of combining work and family life.

One of the characteristic features of the Nordic Model has been the high participation of women in the labour market. From 20 years of age until retirement, 72 to 83 percent of the women and 81 to 92 percent of the men work in the five Nordic countries. Women and men are employed in different professions and have different employers. Women are underrepresented at the higher levels of organizational hierarchies, the percentage of female bosses being in no way proportionate to the percentage of female employees.

Increased international competition and an unstable labour market have forced companies to adjust through rationalization and restructuring. Flexibility is the main trend. The changing work conditions will lead to a harder work life for women.

In a competitive economy, companies are demanding more of their labour force, and men are also vulnerable to these pressures. Making the 60—hour job the norm for men will not further gender equality. This demand is in conflict with the equality programs that aim to further men's participation in their family roles. Today, more and more young men in the Nordic countries are trying to share parental leave — at least for one or two months. A new picture of fatherhood is emerging in which presence, closeness and care is combined with shared economic responsibility.

Even though women's participation in the labour market has greatly increased and men are challenging their old role patterns, the traditional gender division of tasks still holds. Most of the women have the primary responsibility for home and family. The women feel stressed by their jobs and they are often torn between the conflicting demands of everyday life. For women, the total work load increases with the number of children living at home, and the combined and conflicting demands of career and family life are accentuated.

In this book we explore both theoretical themes and empirical issues relating to the unresolved dilemmas of women on the tightrope between home and work, but we challenge the construction of this in terms of dual roles. Instead we view women's lives as more integrated, though also fragmented, but in more complex ways than what duality implies.

In general, labour market activity has enhanced women's economic independence. It also influences negotiations about the division of labour in the home. The degree of salary balance between the spouses affects their interaction and their child rearing practices. Nowadays, it is also easier for women to opt out of marriage; this is a strategy used by many professional women. Overall, changes in the family have been considerable, and the nuclear family, though still a strong ideological construction, is in practice one of several ways in which people organize their lives (e.g. dual career families, delayed marriage, single—parent households, cohabitation, serial monogamy etc.).

Women have relied on education a great deal in attempting to improve their position in the labour market in particular and in the public sphere in general. But the increased numbers of women participating in duration either as students or as teachers have not influenced the form and content of education a great deal. Those involved in decision making and in setting the framework for the educational establishment from primary to higher education have been primarily men. Thus a final unresolved dilemma to be explored is the relationship between women's participation and empowerment.

The exploration of the questions we have set in this Introduction continues in Part One. The framework is set by problematizing the welfare state. Analyses of welfare states, Anneli Anttonen argues, have concentrated primarily on citizen workers. These citizens have implicitly been men. When women are included in the analysis, the question has been about the status of their citizenship. The Nordic welfare states have attempted to ensure the social (as well as legal and political) citizenship of women — they have been termed women friendly.

In the context of the broader debate on citizenship and women Anttonen explores the Nordic model — is it really woman—friendly and does it really provide social citizenship for women? She concludes that a woman—friendly welfare state is a state for women worker citizens, but it should not be considered the end point of development (see Sarvasy, 1992, who argues that a feminist welfare state is needed).

Hobson continues the problematization of citizenship by considering the constructions of key words around the concept of independence/dependence. She explores the male/worker centered notion of independence — earning one's income in the market. Hobson argues that it is also important to consider social dependency in the family in order to be able to analyze the gender inequality hidden by general notions of citizenship. She explores the meanings and dimensions of dependency, and develops them by using a case study of solo mothers to gain a clearer understanding of the welfare state, and of unstated assumptions of dependency and independence in such states.

The authors of the articles in Part Two all reflect on the themes of this book by considering them in the context of specific issues or specific societies. Amy Wharton explores relations between service work and family life in order to understand how women experience their involvement in social reproduction in two different spheres — at home and at work. She analyzes the boundaries between the two spheres by looking at transitions from one to the other and developing their analysis into a discussion of continuity and discontinuity between work and family. Even though there are continuities between service work and family life, women nevertheless have to expend emotional energy when crossing the border between home and work. This energy expenditure is connected with the theme of the book, focusing on unresolved dilemmas. Nevertheless, the autonomy employment affords working women is important and positive, but the nature of that autonomy is complex and is affected by both work and family responsibilities.

Sharon Lobel explores psychological intimacy between women and men in the workplace. Most women and men work in jobs in which their co—workers are predominantly the same sex. But it is interesting to explore the implications changing division of labour between the sexes. In this context Lobel problematizes the dichotomies between work and non—work and work and family life by emphasizing the existence and importance of intimate relationships at work — such relationships do not solely exist in the terrain of the home and the family.

Svetlana Yampolskaya argues that recent changes in Russia have had both negative and positive consequences for the economy, the people, and the Russian family structures. Despite the increased freedom gained, women have suffered more from sexism and gender inequality. Because of the breakdown of norms and values in society, Yampolskaya believes it is important that the family be strengthened in current Russian circumstances, despite feminist criticisms of the family.

Since Estonia's independence from the former Soviet Union there has been a review of women's place in society. A strong theme has been an emphasis on home and family. Many Estonian women have also expressed a wish to reconsider their labour market orientation. The article by Anu Narusk questions the rationale behind this thinking.

Cynthia Fuchs-Epstein explores how selves are constructed and how selves change. Change is related to structural opportunities or constraints and possibilities in the terrain of culture to reconsider who one might become. She considers the implications of non—traditional jobs — how they are connected to changes in the self and the ways in which women and men understand these changes. Epstein problematizes the concept of single identities and dual roles. Changes in the structure highlight the construction of selves as multiple.

In Part Three the exploration of unresolved dilemmas continues. Janet Giele notes the world—wide modernization in women's life patterns and the continuing cross—national trend towards the extension and elaboration of family policy. She explores the interaction between changes in women's life courses and in the broader societal work and family institutions. Because of the multiple patterns of women's lives — simultaneous participation in work, family and continuing education — there is pressure to invent social arrangements to support such changes. Changes in women's typical life courses have positive effects in terms of flexibility and personal satisfaction. However, by working very hard, women pay a high price for their increased autonomy. Women's dilemmas may seem unresolved, but they are not constant or do they alter in the process of interaction between changes in women's lives and in work and family institutions.

Tuula Gordon's article explores how the otherness of women is constructed — historically women have been defined in relation to men. Romantic love, partnership, marriage and motherhood form the cultural context of women and resonate in representations of them. Locating themselves outside the family provides opportunities for women, but it also places them in a contradictory and difficult position. She asks whether single women today have more independent possibilities in the context of the diversification of family forms and increased flexibility in the construction of gender. From empirical qualitative research on single women in London, the San Francisco Bay Area and Helsinki, Gordon concludes that constructing an independent life, reaching the status of the individual and obtaining full social citizenship are still areas of struggle.

Rosemarie Nave—Hertz's article on single mothers raises the question of possibilities for alternative constructions of women's lives. Not all women are located in the family and in the transitions between family and work in the same way. Family should not be taken for granted. Not all women are married, not all women have children, and not all women who have children are married. Issues concerning these women are often neglected in research that focuses on work and family, family being implicitly defined as nuclear. Single mothers in Germany have typically not made a positive choice to embark on such a life course, but have rather decided to proceed with an unplanned pregnancy. Subsequently their perception of their life course may certainly be positive. Nevertheless motherhood is still located in the context of the nuclear family, and women constructing alternative forms of motherhood do not find it straightforward.

Janet Giele noted the world—wide modernization of women's life patterns. In this context Hochschild and Tanaka's article provides an interesting snapshot of the cultural terrain inhabited by women in two countries with different sex—gender systems and different models of market economy. In some ways these women share the working mother's double day; in some ways they do not. Hochschild and Tanaka explore continuities and discontinuities by analyzing advice books for women. They concentrate on cultural collective bargaining — advice books describe cultural practices and beliefs that are bargained about. In both societies some cultural traditions are reviewed — the way forward for women is to reject many of these, but to foster some of them, as well as to create their own.

Safilios—Rothschild brings the discussion to the sphere of the private, the person, the emotional. She discusses the difficulties of combining a career and love; these difficulties, she argues, are greater than those of combining marriage with work. In order to clarify her argument she defines career woman specifically as one who invests a lot in her work. Thus not all professional women are career women, whereas skilled workers or office workers may be. Though women today are freer to be absorbed in their work than previously, the affective dilemmas discussed by Kollontai in the 1920s have not, however, disappeared. Love, by requiring absorbion, threatens a woman's way of life. Moreover, men who take it for granted that women are in paid employment may find it harder to come to terms with a lover's lesser willingness or availability to meet their affective and sexual needs. Thus though the high price that women pay for smooth transitions from family to work and back again, as discussed by Amy Wharton, might be resolved by positive changes occurring in women's lives, the affective dilemma between love and career, argues Constantina Safilios—Rothchild, remains. Thus she leaves us with a question: are unresolved dilemmas truly unsolvable?

We would like to thank Ms. Georgianna Oja for her language checking and Ms. Taija Veriö for word processing.

2 The welfare state and social citizenship

Anneli Anttonen

During the 1980s research on the welfare state relied increasingly on social citizenship approaches. The emergence of a modern welfare state in post—war Europe has been closely connected with the changing status of citizenship. Peter Baldwin (1990) speaks of a radical expansion of citizenship in post—war England. His main argument is that it was only with Beveridge and his most important interpreters, Marshall and Titmuss, that the notion of social citizenship became collectively anchored as a major turning—point in the evolution of Western society. Baldwin describes the Beveridgean welfare state as the social citizenship welfare state.

In The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), Gøsta Esping—Andersen divides the Western welfare states into social democratic, conservative and liberal regimes and demonstrates that the first type of regime has the most extensive social rights. According to Esping—Andersen (1990 p. 27):

Social democracy was clearly the dominant force behind social reforms. Rather than tolerate a dualism between state and market, between working class and middle class, the social democrats pursued a welfare state that would promote an equality of the highest standards, not an equ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures and table
• PART ONE: Setting the question
• PART TWO: Women at work and in the family
• PART THREE: Unresolved dilemmas
• Bibliography