The ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ of Work-Family Reconciliation: Unsettling Gendered Notions and Assumptions

Abstract

In a context of population ageing, changing labour markets, growing recognition of a variety of family formations and concerns about child poverty, ‘traditional’ male breadwinner approaches to welfare have lost much of their saliency in recent years. Instead, there has been a notable shift towards adult worker approaches in which women as well as men are increasingly expected to be fully active in paid work (Lewis, 2001, 2002). Work-family reconciliation policies — including various paid and unpaid leaves, opportunities for more flexible working arrangements and development of child and other care services — are seen as an important way of enabling this. In this chapter we explore the ‘public’ and ‘private’ of work-family reconciliation using a gendered perspective and aim to further contest and unsettle notions of ‘public’ and ‘private’. Issues of work-family reconciliation are centrally concerned with the roles of men and women and so policy discourses and initiatives have to negotiate gendered assumptions about what is considered ‘public’ or ‘private’.

We are grateful to Adam Whitworth for contributions to earlier drafts.