Employment, flexible working and the family

TLDR

The paper situates the rise in female employment and changing gender norms within broader shifts toward individualism and critiques of first modernity, arguing that existing social‑change theories remain relevant. The study proposes treating employment and family as interlinked phenomena and outlines a research agenda to investigate this integration. The authors critically review feminist debates, family transformations, and flexible employment practices. The analysis finds that employment–family tensions are intensifying as part of capitalist development rather than indicating a fundamental societal shift.

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper assesses some of the implications of one of the major social changes to have taken place in the West during the second half of the twentieth century — that is, the increased employment of women, together with normative changes in gender relations and in women's expectations. These changes have been linked to an increase in individualism, which itself is associated with the transcendence of ‘first modernity’. Thus it is suggested that new approaches to social analysis are required (Beck). Here it is argued that, rather than develop completely new approaches in order to grasp the changes that are under way, the ‘economic’ and the ‘social’ (that is, employment and the family) should be seen as intertwined, rather than approached as separate phenomena. Past debates in feminism, changes in the family, and flexible employment are critically examined. The growing tensions between employment and family life are discussed. It is argued that these changes are associated with the intensification of capitalist development, rather than reflecting a fundamental transformation of society. Existing approaches to the analysis of social change, including Polanyi's analysis of the development of ‘counter‐movements’ against the ‘self‐regulating’ market, will, therefore, still be relevant to our enquiries. In the concluding section, a programme of research that would examine these changes is outlined.