Beyond Work-Family Balance: Advancing Gender Equity and Workplace Performance

Providing many examples from action research projects in more than a dozen organizations of different kinds, the authors show how using their method of integrating rather than separating personal-life considerations from the workplace can achieve positive outcomes, not only for workers but also for the work. The method offers a way of looking deeply into the work culture to find inequitable and ineffective work practices that are so embedded and routine that no one thinks to question them — they are just the way things get done. Once identified, these work practices can be changed to achieve what the authors call a Dual Agenda: a more equitable workplace where both men and women can achieve their full potential and a more effective workplace where the needs of the work, rather than gendered and outmoded assumptions, determine what gets done and how.

The heart of the problem lies in the gendered assumptions that underpin many everyday working practices . The authors point out that assumptions based on traditional masculine values and life situations include the defining of commitment in terms of long working hours that preclude time for family or personal life, and the valuing of stereotypical male competencies, such as heroic action and firefighting, above interpersonal and other competencies regarded as more “feminine”. Drawing on action research in a range of organisations they demonstrate how these assumptions and the practices that follow from them, undermine effective performance, but are so taken-for-granted that we rarely question them.

What really distinguishes this book is that the authors go beyond identifying problems to provide a well tried method for bringing about meaningful change It does not offer one size fits all solutions but does provide a process for reaching tailor made solutions. Their method of Collaborative Interactive Action Research (CIAR) includes examining working practice and the assumptions that sustain ineffective practices and gender inequity and then thinking collaboratively with work teams to come up with innovative solutions to what they call the “dual agenda”. The case studies used throughout the book are based on experience in a wide range of organisations so that everybody should be able to identify with at least some of the situations described. This should leave limited room for the traditional cry of “it won’t work here”.

For all those readers who are interested in organisational performance and change and in gender equity, whether or not they have already made the connections between the two, this book will make compulsive reading. Even the most cynical will find it difficult to totally disregard the central message that gender equity and effective performance go hand in hand.


Gender equity and the bottom line   May 14, 2002
Ellen Ostrow (LawyersLifeCoach.com)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

As a coach and consultant to attorneys struggling to make
the business case for effective and usable work-life practices, I found this book to be an invaluable tool and resource.
Law firms are bastions of gendered assumptions about ideal
workers. The insatiable demand for ever-increasing billable hours makes developing and maintaining a normal life outside of work an extraordinary challenge, particularly for women attorneys. "Beyond Work-Family Balance" clearly articulates the tacit gendered assumptions underlying current law firm work practices and effectively establishes the connection between gender equity and workplace performance.
I wish the managing partners of every law firm would read this.
I'll refer all of my coaching clients to it. At least it will
confirm that it's the system - not them - that has the problem.


Great Book! New Thinking!   January 16, 2002
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This book provides a powerful example that thinking out of the box
can open up a new perspective on a conflict that had seemed to be
unsolvable. And this book is an example that academic research can
lead to applicable and practical results.

The conflict between work life and family life is as old as the
industrial age. We all know it and we all experience it in our daily
life. The four authors, all of them experienced researchers, have
for most of their lives tried to better understand this conflict and
its underlying story. But with this book they went a step beyond
traditional approaches. Based on case studies they unveil a number
of assumptions on which this conflict is based. They challenge
norms and traditional thinking. Career choices, life opportunities,
values and reward structures are based on a specific western type of
thinking that historically has been shaped by white, married,
middle-class men. The result is a system that dominates most of our

work-life and effects our private life, that of men and women. The
authors question this system from two angles. First, they analyze
the often painful struggle between having a life and a career, and
how individuals are trying to balance the two. Second, they show that
the widely believed assumption: "this system is bad for us but good
for the organization" does not hold true. Organizations and work
processes are often inefficient and the individual behavior that is
based on these norms don't move the whole organization forward.

This book does not make the mistake of ending up with an easy answer.
The authors identify leverage points for significant change in
organizations. The book has helped me to rethink basic assumptions
about work and organizations in the industrialized world and to see
new potential for change.


Great Book! New Thinking!   January 16, 2002
This book provides a powerful example that thinking out of the box can open up a new perspective on a conflict that had seemed to be unsolvable. And this book is an example that academic research can lead to applicable and practical results.

The conflict between work life and family life is as old as the industrial age. We all know it and we all experience it in our daily life. The four authors, all of them experienced researchers, have or most of their lives tried to better understand this conflict and its underlying story. But with this book they went a step beyond traditional approaches. Based on case studies they unveil a number of assumptions on which this conflict is based. They challenge norms and traditional thinking. Career choices, life opportunities, values and reward structures are based on a specific western type of thinking that historically has been shaped by white, married, middle-class men. The result is a system that dominates most of our work-life and effects our private life, that of men and women. The authors question this system from two angles. First, they analyze the often painful struggle between having a life and a career, and how individuals are trying to balance the two. Second, they show that the widely believed assumption: "this system is bad for us but good for the organization" does not hold true. Organizations and work processes are often inefficient and the individual behavior that is based on these norms don't move the whole organization forward.

This book does not make the mistake of ending up with an easy answer. The authors identify leverage points for significant change in organizations. The book has helped me to rethink basic assumptions about work and organizations in the industrialized world and to see new potential for change.