Family Futures

[

] 180

Work-family balance: issues and considerations

for the post-2014 agenda

Zitha Mokomane, Chief Research Specialist, Human and Social Development Programme,

Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa

nsuring

ork

-F

amily

alance

s part of its 2011 resolution on the ‘Preparations

for an observance of the twentieth anniversary of

the International Year of the Family’,

the United

Nations Commission for Social Development has iden-

tified work-family balance as one of the three critical

areas that member states need to pay particular atten-

tion to, and develop appropriate policies to address (the

others are family poverty and social exclusion).

With no standard definition, work-family balance can be

broadly construed as the equilibrium achieved when one is

able to adequately reconcile the demands of paid work with

those of the family. The converse is ‘work-family conflict,’

which has been defined as “a form of inter-role conflict

in which the role pressures from the work and family

domains are mutually incompatible so that participation

in one role (home) is made more difficult by participa-

tion in another role (work).”

By briefly reviewing some

of the established facts related to work-family conflict

and work-family balance, we can propose some notewor-

thy considerations for the post-2014 policy and research

agenda on the subject.

Work-family conflict and work-family balance have

become important policy issues in contemporary society,

against a background of prevailing socioeconomic and

demographic changes in both developing and developed

countries. With women worldwide being the traditional

household managers and caregivers for young, old and infirm

family members, a key change in this regard has been the

notable global increase in female labour force participation.

This is consistently shown by data from regional and inter-

national organizations including the International Labour

Organization (ILO) and the World Bank. In essence, to the

extent that the domestic workload of women remains virtu-

ally unchanged, their labour market participation often leads

to a ‘time-money squeeze’ between their family responsibili-

ties and the demands of paid work.

For many women this

squeeze is aggravated by another salient change: the increase

in female-headed households which is largely brought about

by increases in divorce, non-marriage and delayed marriage.

This transformation means that, unlike the ‘male breadwin-

ner-female caregiver’ family model that prevailed during

industrialization, mothers in many countries are increas-

ingly taking responsibility as the sole economic providers

and caregivers for their children.

Other key changes that have implications for work-family

balance include increasingly ageing populations whose care,

in many societies, is customarily provided informally by

family members; declining fertility or birth rates that are

leading to smaller family and household sizes, meaning that

families are increasingly less able to meet their traditional

support and care-giving roles; and increased migration,

which also leads to weakened traditional support for care

and other domestic tasks as family members separate physi-

cally and households sizes are reduced.

In countries most

affected by HIV and AIDS, the care burden for caregivers of

people infected and affected by the epidemic has been greatly

increased; and the majority of these caregivers are women.

Work-family balance can be achieved through a range

of family-friendly policies that can be broadly split into

two categories: parental leave policies and alternative work

schedules. The former allow parents to take time off work

to attend to family demands without jeopardizing their

jobs.

They include:

• maternity leave – job-protected leave that grants

women leave of absence before and after childbirth,

and in some cases after adoption of a child

• paternity leave – job-protected leave available to

fathers in the time immediately after the birth or

adoption of a child, making it possible for them to

spend more time with their families

• parental leave – a statutory entitlement to be absent

from work after the exhaustion of earlier maternity and

paternity leave

• temporary leave periods – for employees to take care

of children and other dependent family members.

Leave provisions can therefore be short-term or long-term

and can be paid, unpaid or a combination of both.

Alternative work schedules, on the other hand, provide

working parents with the flexibility to balance work and

family commitments instead of working a typical ‘nine-to-

five’ day or a five-day week.

With over three decades of academic interest in the

subject, there is now an established body of evidence

showing that the availability and accessibility of family-

friendly policies can lead to several positive outcomes for

individuals and society. For example, a number of papers

in a recent special issue on work and family published by

the journal

The Future of Children

showed that by making