Macpherson, Suzi --- "Reconciling Employment and Family Care-giving: A Gender Analysis of Current Challenges and Future Directions for UK Policy" [2011] ELECD 862; in Busby, Nicole; James, Grace (eds), "Families, Care-giving and Paid Work" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Families, Care-giving and Paid Work

Editor(s): Busby, Nicole; James, Grace

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802628

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Reconciling Employment and Family Care-giving: A Gender Analysis of Current Challenges and Future Directions for UK Policy

Author(s): Macpherson, Suzi

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

1. Reconciling employment and family
care-giving: a gender analysis of
current challenges and future
directions for UK policy
Suzi Macpherson

INTRODUCTION
In recent years there has been extensive analysis of `work and family
reconciliation' policy at European level. Feminist academics have made
critical contributions to analysis of this policy agenda, using a gender lens
to explore, among other things: policy differences between countries (Han-
trais 2000; Crompton and Lyonette 2006; Lewis 2009); organizing working
time (Perrons et al. 2007; Boulin 2007); promoting gender equality (Guer-
rina 2002; Stratigaki 2004; Lewis 2006); and the place of choice in women
and men's negotiations between employment and caring roles (Hantrais
and Ackers 2005; Gregory and Milner 2009).
Gender analysis of the `work­life balance' policy agenda in the UK has
focused on: women's employment and work­life balance in specific occupa-
tional settings (Crompton and Lyonette 2007; Perrons 2003); working
hours (Warren 2004; Fagan 2001); men's experiences of work­life balance
(O'Brien and Shemilt 2003; Warin et al. 1999); promoting gender equality
(Lewis and Campbell 2007; Pascall 2008; Lewis 2009); and the place of
choice in women's decisions about labour market participation (McRae
2003; Hakim 2004). Many of these themes have long framed feminist
analysis of gender inequality within the labour market and domestic
spheres. The focus on choice is more recent, emerging initially through
work such as Hakim's (2000) preference theory, which argues that women
in modern Western societies are now expressing preferences and making
...