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549 .. 4*. Work and Family: The Gender Paradox and the Limitations of Discrimination Analysis in Restructuring the Workplace NANCY E. DOWD TALK ABOUT WORK and family is assumed to be women's talk. It is talk about women's lives, our feelings. Talk about work and family is tied to women's entry into the workforce and the concomitant redefinition of ourselves and our roles. It is also talk about responsibility and conflict, the conflict between work and family.... But talk about work and family ought not to be assumed to be only women's talk. Men are harmed and affected by the existing work-family structure.... Moreover, ifwe accept the circumscription of "women's talk," we not only limit our perspective, but also obscure the powerful impact of factors other than gender on the structure of work and family.... I argue that it is essential that we recognize this fundamental paradox about work and family: that the structure of work and family, and the nature of the conflict between work and family, is not just a women's issue and a gender issue. We must constantly take women and gender into account because they are inseparable from the existing structure and assumptions offamily and work.... At the same time, however, we must get beyond gender, to redefining the relationship between work and family.... The Context: The Nature of Work-Family Conflict The conflict between work and family responsibilities is pervasive and serious.) Between one-third and one-half of working parents report nearly daily conflict between their work and family roles; this translates into one-quarter or more of the workforce.2 The manifestations of that conflict are complex and multi-layered.... A. Levels ofConflicts At the simplest level, the conflict between work and family is expressed as conflicts of time. While they are the easiest to identif" and potentially resolve, time conflicts include some of the most intractable work-family problems.3 Due to the number of hours com24 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 79 (1989). Permission granted by the Ha",ard Ci\;( Rights Ci\;! Liberties Review . () 1989 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyrighted Material 550 I NANCY E. DOWD mitted to work and the scheduling ofwork, many men and women do not have enough time for both family and wage work. Contrary to the assumptions ofsocial and economic theorists, increasing industrialization and the continued entry of more individuals into the paid workforce has not led to a more collective or commodified approach to household or caregiving work.4 There is a particularly strong need for care-giving work, which is socially essential, highly individualized, and very time-consuming. Thus, a fundamental conflict exists between the time needed to perform family and wage work. For women, the time conflict is exacerbated by an overload offamily and childcare work. Women's entry into the paid workforce has not led to equitable redistribution of work. Rather, the predominant pattern has been the addition of wage work to women's existing unpaid household and childcare work,5 While men are doing more, they are not doing much more.6 As one researcher observed, "Under optimal conditions , we note the wife doing five times as much domestic work as her spouse and usually more."7 Even if the inequity in the distribution offamily work responsibilities were resolved, however, it would not alleviate the conflict in the time demands ofwork and family roles; it would only more equally distribute the stress. The workplace structure presumes a worker with minimal or no family work responsibilities. In addition to problems caused by insufficient time, there are problems related to the use and control of time. On a regular basis, the time schedules of the school day and the school calendar clash with ~he workplace day and workplace calendar. The lack offlexibility in the workplace creates particularly difficult problems when family emergencies , such as a sick child or an unexpected snow-day, occur during working hours. Non-emergency situations are no less a problem, since the scheduling of routine appointments , or attendance at significant events, is never guaranteed. Even more fundamentally, family time and work time conflict due to the clash between the occupational cycle of the workplace and the life cycle of the family and individual family members. Our occupational patterns are in many respects geared to the family life of a single individual or a worker who is supported by a non-working wife. The demands are greatest and...

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