Home, community and work: Women’s working lives in the North East of England and the Work-Life

Balance

Jeanne Moore and Heather Easton

Centre for Social and Policy Research

University of TeessideIAPS

Vienna, July 2004

Barriers to Employment and Widening Horizons Projects- Overview

Regional studies with funding from the European Social Fund (ESF): January 2003 until February 2005

Barriers to Employment: The first study sought to identify the particular barriers to women’s employment and progression in the North East. Widening Horizons: The current study explores less obvious personal, social, cultural and physical barriers as well as evaluating the potential of mentoring as supports for women.

This study

• Seeks to explore the relationship between working and domestic lives, working and home-based patterns as part of the wider debate on work-life balance.

• What is the the role of place and community as supports and barriers to employment and progression (Bridge, 2002; Jarvis, 1999; Russell, 1999; Weiler and Bernasek, 2001).

Neighbourhoods, community and work

• The relationship between people and their neighbourhoods has generated extensive research (Galster, 2001; Unger and Wandersman, 1985). However, little is understood about the ways in which employment and working life interacts with these components.

The role of neighbourhood?• The neighbourhood can play an important role in

people’s personal, social and place identity and social position. (Kearns & Parkinson, 2001;Proshansky, 1978). But what about its relationship to their working lives?

• Community is a contested concept as it can include territory or not (Voydanoff, 2001; Kagan & Lewis, 1998) whereas neighbourhood is always spatial. Community is used because it can be both spatial and contain an evaluation, sense of community.

• Neighbourhoods can act as both opportunities and constraints (Kearns & Parkinson, 2001). Does this apply to women’s working lives as well?

Work and home • The role of home in everyday life continues to the focus

of considerable research (Moore, 2000), particularly in examining home in relation to particular contexts. Home and work located within the home e.g. homeworking (Moore & Crosbie, 2002; Crosbie & Moore, 2004).

• For most people across the EU, paid work is located outside of the home and their time is divided between two very different environments, at different times and with different associates (Googins, 1991 as cited in Campbell Clark, 2002).

Social capital of value?• Social capital as a community’s human wealth, the sum

total of its skills, knowledge and partnerships and a powerful motor for sustainable development ( Gould, 2001).

• Ignores existing knowledge on inequalities and theorising around gender and the family. (Edwards 2004)

• More exploration of the spatial aspects of social capital. How does it help us explore the opportunties and constraints of community and neighbourhood?

Placing work and home debates• Place plays an important role in thinking about work and

home. The transactional view shifts from analysis of the causes of change to the study of its transformations (Altman and Rogoff ,1987).

• The experience of home and work are not examined as fixed, but as something in flux, a living process or a construction (Tognoli & Horwitz, 1982). Time may be a key factor.

Work-life Balance

• In recent years a new discourse surrounding the work/life balance has emerged replacing family friendly policies (Bryson et. al, 2000, Duncan, 2002, Hartley, 2002).

• The balance implies distinct and separate worlds.• Home, community, family and work are not

distinct worlds: Individuals’ experiences of family and community share elements of each of these social domains (Toth et al 2002)

Work-life balance: gendered and personal?

• Absence of gender in debates. Women’s experience of balancing work and family life is shaped by their over-riding responsibility for caring for children and domestic work.

• In 2010 (UK) only 20% of the workforce will be made- up of white, able-bodied men under 45 years in full time work. (Jones, 2003).

• Seen as a personal problem that an individual has to co-ordinate the different aspects of their personal life. But also social, spatial, political, organisational. (Lewis, 2000).

Two exploratory questions

• Does living and working in the same community shape the experience?

• How do women experience and interpret the balance between their working and home lives? How important is time?

Method

• Mixed methodological approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods: questionnaire administered to 648 employees (371 women) across the seven case studies; semi-structured interviews and life-grids held with female employees (35) and women from communities in the region (23).

• This range of methods provided both an overview of barriers and experiences across the region, from the questionnaires, as well as an in-depth exploration of women’s particular experience across seven case study companies, using interviews.

At home• Most of the women in the sample felt at home in their local

community 248 (74.9%) which shaped their lives.• On average the women across the case studies had lived in

the same place for more than 17 years and most felt at home there.

• ‘I can take my dogs out in my pyjamas and no one even looks at you. Daft things. Aye makes me feel at home.’ (Kathleen, aged 32)

• ‘I feel that I belong to a community. I have a real sense of erm belonging to Newcastle and the North East. So I can’t really ever see myself moving now. Part of that is to do with responsibilities to my mum and my grandmother but even if that wasn’t there I still don’t think I would move.’ (Carol, aged 35)

• Living and working in the same community: women

• 41.4% reported that they lived and worked in the same community and 58.6% did not.

• Those who did were more frequently married• More (76.2%-39.6%) thought it was important to do so

(live and work there).• More got jobs through social networks (28.2%-17.3%).

Women who live and work in the same community

• They have lived in their local neighbourhoods significantly longer than those women who do not live and work in the same community (21.4 years compared to 15.3 years; t=4.105, df=358, p < 0.001).

• They have also worked for their current employer for significantly longer (9.3 years compared to 7.1 years; t=2.500, df=314, p < 0.05).

• Women who live and work in the same community are also less likely than those who do not to want to change their job (14.7% compared to 34.6%) and they are less likely to want to move from their current accommodation (19% compared to 24.5%).

 

• There is a significant correlation between feeling ‘at home’ in work and at home in the local community. (r = .172, r2

= .0328, sig. At the 0.05 level). And feeling part of the community at work and feeling part of local community (r = .202, r2 = .0349, sig. At 0.05 level)

• More likely to feel at home in the community if felt at home at work. A logistic regression analysis was performed with feeling part of the local community as the DV: E.g Feeling part of a community at work is associated with an increase in odds of feeling part of the local community by 4.086

Community at home and at work are inter-related

Living and working in the same community: Positives

• Some of the women who took part in the interviews explained how it was necessary and important for them to live and work in the same community for positive reasons: opportunities and lack of travel.

• ‘… the problems we’ve had in this area with the coal mines closing down and the unemployment problems and all that and you kind of relate to it and at least it already feels like we are doing something to sort of you know regenerate the area, give people jobs, that type of thing and I think that helps the fact that you live here and you know all of the issues.’ (Davina, aged 34)

 

• ‘I wouldn’t want to have a big journey commuting. No, no I wouldn’t want to have that. Too much hassle I think, especially with children….I suppose if erm if they were at nursery near our home and they didn’t have to do the journey, but then they would have to be you know dropped off earlier and picked up later so yeah it just makes it easier, that there isn’t a large journey.’ (Simone, aged 36)

Positives

Constraints of living and working in the same community

 • ‘I did feel really cut off; I was living here but working

over there. So I couldn’t go out for drinks after work with people over there and by the time I came back over here, got you know got changed and come out, everyone was on their way home, I didn’t see my friends so much. And just felt quite cut off, so by being so close you know home and work I just think it’s important that you know I give myself relaxation time after work.’ (Claudia, aged 31)

Constraints

• Karen has felt isolated where she is living. ‘ I feel like I’m an outsider, even though I’ve been there eight year, probably because of, like me, work. Obviously when I first bought the house and everything and I worked full-time and it was like I did nights.. and it did restrict you from like seeing people around there and the only time they ever saw me was coming in or going out and that was it and then I had [daughter] and I do see my two next door neighbours, I say ‘hiya’ and that’s it. They’re very funny, they all, they seem to like have a clan, and they all stay in that and that’s it’

Experience of work life balance

• Many women talked about the way they have to juggle work and family life and the impact of family responsibilities on women’s careers and progression in the labour market has been well documented (Cabinet Office, 2001; Dench et al., 2002a).

• Women generally did not view work in isolation, but made employment choices in the context of wider roles and responsibilities.

Time

• Pippa, aged 50…I don’t have enough time for myself, cos by the time I go home and erm tidy up and do the meal, sort things out, take ma daughter to the Sea Cadets, take ma son to Duke of Edinburgh, take ma daughter to Stagecoach and run their friends here, there and everywhere. I don’t have a lot of time for myself.

No time

•  ‘A couple of times. Especially if I’ve been working loads of hours and my partner’s been ill and in hospital, if I’ve had my two days off. I’ve got to spend my two days at the hospital. And there’s been courses around but they’ve been on my two days – do I either go to the hospital or do my course? So I’ve really had to focus on what’s most important. And it’s hard finding a balance with that because I want to do both, but time doesn’t allow both.’ (Sharon, aged 44)

Not worth the move or promotion

• ‘When I did make an application to another authority for a promotion, when I sat down and thought how convenient here was to us, how my childcare was all here, how the extra travelling would affect my childcare, I ended up withdrawing and I just thought I’d stay where I am. It’s totally the convenience of the place, it’s a seven minute drive from home.’ (Elizabeth, aged 45)

Distance between work and home gives time

• Penny, aged 49 • Oh I’m used to it, it gives me time sitting in

the car to sort of wind up and wind down and change from the home environment and what was going on there and think about what I’ve got to do when I get there. And the same the other way coming back.

Gendered

• Gemma, age 38 • I still feel like I could do with more support at home. I

think. You know when I go home I just you know want to put my feet up because I’ve been at work all day or whatever but actually I never feel I can do that without feeling guilty. Am I you know to sort of be allowed I mean I know if I talked to my husband about it he’ll say you know don’t be ridiculous of course you can sit down and put your feet up but erm but then when he gets like he gets when the house is a mess I sort of feel well you know this is my fault. You know I should have done this.

Conclusions

• Women who live and work in the same community are more settled: they stay longer where they live and where they work. They may also be constrained in their working opportunities shaped by access to social capital.

• Balancing work and family life may also be shaped by social capital. With fewer personal and community resources issues of money, time and space become more crucial.

• Women’s choices in relation to work are shaped by their personal and family commitments.

• Differences in social capital may make living and working in the same community more of a constraint than an opportunity.

Conclusions and further work

• Balancing work and family life involves women making spatial and time for the good of their family.

• There are personal, social, spatial and temporal implications of having a good balance- making the family work.

• Home and work not just spatially and temporally distinct worlds. Transactional approach adapted to focus on relationship between working and family roles, spaces and temporalities. Essential to focus on women’s experiences.

• Continuing work is exploring the role of social networks in shaping working lives as well.