Chinchilla, Director of the International Centre of Work and Family (ICWF), at the IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain and Leon, Researcher at the ICWF, preface this book with the statement that “it is often said that work and family reconciliation policies will be the most significant social policies to emerge from the 21st century”.
Theirs is one of many books dealing with this issue of how women, in particular, can combine their family lives with paid work. Based on new research with female managers, this book is aimed specifically at professional women, as well as HR executives and CEOs.
There are four key points of focus in the book: history, issues, advice and examples. Beginning with outlining the developments which led to an increasing proportion of women in the workplace; the book then covers the issues arising from this social change – particularly the complementary roles of state, employers and women themselves in dealing with these issues. The second half of the book deals with practical solutions for both women and business leaders, by way of tips and case studies.
So what is new or different in this book?
First, it comes out of Spain, rather than the UK or USA. In some ways this means it is dealing with issues and solutions that have already been promulgated by British and Americans working in the field. The contribution, then, is that this perspective strengthens the understanding of the universality of the issue, at least in the developed world.
The second contribution of note is the book's approach to the topic of reconciling paid work and family life for women. This book's perspective comes from a recognition that human needs span material and affective worlds, rather than just material. And female ambition occurs not just in relation to the world of paid work, but also in having a fulfilling and successful affective life through their family. For men, traditionally, and still very much today, there is not this dichotomy. Their role in creating a fulfilling and successful family life has been as financial provider, a role that is congruent with their role and ambitions in the world of paid work, rather than in conflict, as it is for women.
Nevertheless, some men are beginning to feel conflicted too, those who desire more time with their children and partners, and a greater hands‐on role in raising their children. The change in the traditional nature of men's role is also being driven in part by the change in women's role as women with male partners combine professional careers with having children. For them to do so requires that their male partners have to take a more demanding role in family life.
As a result this book comes from the emerging perspective of the world of paid work having to change to accommodate the reality of the twenty‐first century family life and gender roles, rather than an acceptance that women have to try to work like men while still bearing primary responsibility for the raising of children. The book's introduction set the tone for this stance with a quote from Timothy Leary that “Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition”. The authors want to see government legislation and support for women to have working lives that acknowledge their roles as mothers (for example, through better reconciliation of work and school hours). They want women's roles as mothers to be recognised as a social right, rather than the current private battle that it is for individual women.
Another point which emerges strongly throughout the book is that women's traditional roles and family life, the affective world, are of equal value to the material world of paid work. And this is where I think having a book from a southern European perspective contributes to the Anglo‐American situation. Southern European cultures have traditionally placed more value on family and emotional life. The push for gender equality led by women in Britain and the USA has come later here. But it has come as a result of striking demographic consequences of gender inequality: the lowest birthrates in the world, along with Japan, and high divorce. And this in Catholic countries like Spain and Italy. While it is commonly believed female labour force participation leads to low birthrates, this outcome applies only within countries, not to inter‐country comparisons. Countries like Sweden with higher labour force participation, actually have higher birthrates than Spain or Italy. An alternative explanation is that low birthrates occur in countries with strongly entrenched traditional male roles, which preclude their helping in the home or helping with childcare.
Alongside the strong gender role differentiation as an issue in expanding the workforce, Spain also has a problem of low productivity. The authors make the point that longer working hours and management by hours of presence in the workplace rather than achievement of objectives, has not resulted in productivity increases. Conversely, they point to the increased profitability of organisations that operate from a climate of trust and flexibility which leads to loyalty, commitment, motivation and creativity from employees. They also argue that the main asset of not only a company but the whole of society is people, and make comparisons between human ecology and environmental ecology.
Another aspect of this book which was new to me, is the use of the term “cement ceiling” referring to self‐imposed barriers within women which result in their fleeing the alien culture of workplaces and senior roles where they feel their essential being as mothers is not recognised or valued. Long hours at work are one manifestation of this lack of recognition of family commitments. In order to protect themselves from the cost to their affective family life, they self‐impose avoidance of promotion to positions that do not accommodate their dual ambitions and needs. When placed in a situation where they have to choose, they put their children and family life first.
The implication of this for organisations is the loss of talent. In a declining and ageing workforce, companies and the economy cannot afford to shut out highly‐educated or professional women who have children, from management positions. Nor can developed countries afford to continue the decline in their birthrate caused by highly‐educated, professional women choosing not to reproduce as the solution to the conflict between paid work and family. Men will also be the losers if women decide either not to have their children if men are not going to share the sacrifice in terms of careers, or to divorce them if their partners do not share the load on the domestic front. This trends are already happening as shown in declining birthrates and increasing divorce rates in Spain and elsewhere.
Beyond the insight into Spain and gender in the workplace, another contribution of this book is in showing the differences men and women bring to the workplace as linked to enhanced creativity and creating a more human workplace: the affective, intuitive, relationship and experiential strengths of women combined with the rational, objective, abstract strengths of men. Although some readers will take issue with this gender binary as essentialising male and female natures, there is nonetheless value in seeing the way that the cultural difference of Spain leads to a wholesome emphasis on acknowledging the needs of human beings as human beings at work.
Overall, this book is easy reading and a good starting point for someone new to the subject. It is not too technical or academic and contains qualitative interview quotes rather than statistics, tables and graphs.
The main flaw I encountered was poor referencing. For example, a UK study quoted which I wanted to track down gave the reference as a study by Bristol University 1999 quoted at www.Zenit.org. This website is the papal website, and no such reference exists in 2006. A punctilious researcher would have gone to the original study and referenced that. Authors have a duty of care to their readers which this kind of sloppiness overlooks.
