WORK, LIFE COURSE, AND GENDER

Abstract

Since Norwegian family-friendly policies are gender neutral while the division of labour in families is gendered, some argue that the generous state support for families may end up upholding the status quo; it may perpetuate the existing inequitable division of labour between mothers and fathers in the home and in the labour market in which some women take long maternity leave and work part-time. Since many gender equality measures are intended to increase the percentage of women in male-dominated occupations and positions, they are aimed at occupations with upwardly mobile trajectories. A typological distinction between ‘career’ and ‘non-career’ work is made in the analysis of biographical cases of men and women in two different organisational settings. Their thoughts and actions in relation to their occupational trajectories over the life course are examined in different layers of context in order to understand how a complex set of factors affects ways of adjusting to the phase of being parents of young children. The paper concludes that the relationship between gender equality measures and family-friendly policies is not necessarily characterised by tensions, but must rather be considered in relation to a complex set of circumstances in men's and women's life courses that include family, education, and occupation as well as organisational settings that for the many do not involve career jobs.

Keywords:

• work
• life course
• gender
• family
• case studies
• biographies

Notes

¹The project's acronym was TRANSITIONS. It was financed in the period 2003–2005 and had partners from Bulgaria, France, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK. Data included documents and statistics on the national policy level, documents and manager interviews in the organisations (10 in Norway) focus groups (eight groups with 33 participants in Norway), and biographical interview (21); see Lewis et al. (2009) for details.

²Norwegian Multinational Company.

³In 2004 maternity leave was 42 weeks full pay or 52 weeks at 80 percent pay. Paternity leave was four weeks full pay, not transferable to the mother.

⁴Measures that seek to achieve gender balance between occupations (horizontal segregation) can be aimed at men and are often argued from the standpoint of a third party; e.g., more male teachers and nurses are needed for the benefit of patients and pupils.

⁵An overarching focus in the book echoes Hochschild's (1997) analyses and concerns the social contract between employers and employees which has changed from a focus on time spent in work to a focus on the results produced. Such changes make working time individualised as individual workers are made responsible for the results produced over a set amount of time. In turn this creates tensions with family life for both men and women (Kvande and Rasmussen 2008).

⁶See Nilsen and Brannen (2002) and Brannen and Nilsen (2004) for a discussion of the individualisation thesis.

⁷It is a common situation in the whole of the public sector for budgets to be tight. This situation is described in the New Public Management (NPM) critical literature as stemming from the logic of budget balance and profit that is at the core of the NPM ideology that has become more wide spread in public sector organisations (Christensen and Lægreid 2007).

⁸Occupational careers may be horizontal or vertical (Becker 1952) and the notion of career can refer to different areas of life apart from wage work (Hughes 1937; Becker 1953).

⁹The potential of typologies is also demonstrated by George and Bennett: ‘The relationships among types, typologies, typological theories, and their usefulness in case study methods for theory development are important but underdeveloped topics’ (2005: 237).

¹⁰The normal working week in Norway is 37.5 hours.

¹¹‘Cash-for-care’ is a scheme that was introduced by the state in 1998 to make it possible for one parent to stay at home with the child till the age of three. It involves a monthly payment (approx NOK 3,000) dependent on one condition only: that the child is not in a state-sponsored childcare facility.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ann Nilsen

Ann Nilsen is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Bergen, Norway. Her fields of expertise are general sociological theory and methodology and life course and biographical research. She has carried out a number of empirical studies and participated in cross-national teams in studies of young people's transition to adulthood and young Europeans’ transition to parenthood. Her publications include the co-edited books Futures in Transition: Young Europeans Work and Family (2002) and Work Families and Organisations in Transition: European Perspectives (2009). She has also contributed to methods texts including Handbook of Social Research (Sage, 2008) and Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioural Research (Sage, 2010), and published several journal articles