YUFA
External
Balancing Work and Family Conference Report
Ottawa, March
4-6, 2005
by Andrea O’Reilly
31 May 05 – I attended this conference with particular interest because, as Director of the Association for Research on Mothering and scholar / teacher on motherhood, the topic of mothers and work has been central to my research, profession, and life for twenty plus years. Most research on family and work balance has focused on mothers because it is mothers who overwhelming do most or all of the homework: childcare, domestic labour, eldercare, and community care. The reality of women’s “double day” and “second shift” are well known among activists, practitioners and researchers. In attending a conference on the family I wondered and worried whether this gender-neutral perspective would discount the reality that it is women who bear the burden of the family / work conflict.
This report will review the conference from this perspective as Jody Nyasha Warner’s excellent report provides a detailed and in-depth account of the weekend’s events. What struck me first in approaching the conference from a gendered perspective was the ‘cognitive dissonance” between the topic being discussed and those discussing it. The vast majority of the attendees – it appeared well over 90 percent – were women and yet the terms used were family and parents. When I inquired why there were so few men present, I was told by many that it was the individual responsible for women’s issues in the union who would attend a conference on family and work balance, hence the scarcity of men delegates. Needless to say this is serious problem in the union movement and one that needs to be addressed immediately. As long as childcare, flextime, parental leaves and so forth are seen as women’s issues, they will remain women’s problems (to be dealt with by individual women) and will never be understood as an urgent social issue. Fortunately, at this conference, I heard both men and women say that the matter of work and family balance should not be seen as a woman’s issue, but rather a union issue.
Having said this, the reality is that it is women who do the bulk of childcare and domestic labour in all families regardless of whether the woman works part- or full-time. Work and family conflict has emerged as an issue in the last thirty years because women have entered the paid work force in large numbers. Prior to this, the necessary work of home and community maintenance was performed by full-time mothers. (As an aside, it is important to note that in immigrant / working class / rural families, women have always been engaged in ‘productive’ labour and were simultaneously responsible for domestic labour and childcare. This conflict became newsworthy [if you will] only when large numbers of middle class women had to juggle work and home. Furthermore, the demands of home and work have increased over the last thirty years: commuting time, longer work hours, more ‘intensive’ mothering etc.) Today the work of social reproduction still needs to be done but we no longer have full-time workers (i.e., stay at home moms) to do it. Peggy Nash and Alice de Woolfe provided this much needed gender analysis in their opening addresses. Both of them began their talks with the observation that the majority of mothers are in the paid labour force and yet society continues to assume that the essential work of social reproduction will get done. Alice de Woolfe pointed out that “we are in the middle of a time of social change and have not really come to terms with the absence of women’s unpaid care”. A discussion on family / work balance must, I believe, begin with this question: How is social reproduction (childcare, domestic labour, eldercare, community work) going to get done in our changed reality (a majority of women working in paid labour force)? Many families, particularly among the upper-middle class, have, as Peggy Nash noted, “outsourced” some of the tasks of social reproduction: domestic labour, childcare, dry cleaning, take-out food and so forth. However, only a few of the tasks of social reproduction may be outsourced in this manner and only a few families have the financial means to do so. So what is the solution?
From the talks, workshops, and discussions at the conference, the solution seems to be twofold: a national childcare program and reduced work hours (with a particular emphasis on eliminating overtime). I agree that a national childcare program would go a long, long way to enable mothers to combine work and family. (Such a program is long overdue and is a reality in most European countries.) Likewise, reduced work hours, but I think more importantly flexible work hours, would go a long way to enable families to do the essential work of social reproduction (from dentist appointments to children’s field trips). But what was not discussed at the conference and what I think is as important in achieving work / family balance is a redistribution of unpaid work in our homes and in our communities. Simply put: fathers / husbands must do more, much more: from remembering the it is time for the kids to have their immunization shots, that Aunt Mary is in hospital and flowers must be sent, and that Junior’s shoes have a hole in them and must be replaced before his game on Saturday. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, women did complain of this during washroom breaks. Since the inequities in unpaid labour are recognized as a substantial cause (some would argue the main cause) of family and work conflict for women, it must be made far more central to union discussions on this topic. It is not enough to ask the government for a national childcare program, our employers for reduced work hours, if ‘our’ brothers’ in their homes are not doing their fair share. This blind spot is due, at least in part, to the gender-neutral approach to the issue: i.e., family and work balance. At future conferences, the gender inequities of social reproduction must be part of all discussions on family and work balance. As we offer sessions on reducing hours in paid work, we must likewise offer a session or two on increasing men’s unpaid work in the home.