Organisational Change and Gender Equity: International Perspectives on Mothers and Fathers at the Workplace

Citation

Holyoak, L. (2001), "Organisational Change and Gender Equity: International Perspectives on Mothers and Fathers at the Workplace", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 50-51. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.2001.22.1.50.1

This is a timely book for those in the UK, especially given recent debates about parental leave. It is also relevant to those elsewhere as it provides a vehicle for quite detailed international comparisons, which are so often missing in the research in this field.

The book is introduced by the editors and then divided into three sections (each with its own preface) on the following topics: mothers and fathers in the workplace; workplace programmes and policies and organisational change and gender equity. In each section there is a chapter on the experience in the USA, UK, Australia and Sweden. The book finishes with a conclusion, again by the editors. Contributors to the book include many well‐known names in the field such as Suzan Lewis and Ellen Galinsky; and the international perspective is certainly to the fore in the bringing together of experts from three continents.

Part one, on mothers and fathers in the workplace, looks at employment patterns in the four countries and attempts to examine the differences between, but also the commonalities among them. This section does not hang together very well as some of the chapters are based on surveys that have been carried out for other purposes. This has led to the problems of quite old data (as old as 1992 in one case) being presented as current thinking, and different data sets addressing different questions so that it is difficult to compare across cultures, although each chapter within itself tells quite an interesting story.

The second part is much better. This examines the programmes and policies currently in vogue in the different countries, all of which are trying to bring gender equity to the fore as a business issue. All the chapters begin with at least a brief historical perspective, which really highlights to the reader how each country got to be where it is today and why differences in policies are so great and might stay that way for some considerable time. This becomes particularly apparent in the chapter on the Swedish experience, where government policy has long been based on the idea of ensuring the wellbeing of children (unlike the other countries where equality between the sexes has been the driving force). This has led to public provision of child care on a scale which is not seen in other countries and has also avoided pigeon‐holing this area as a women’s issue (though that is not to say that the sexes are equal in Sweden, nor that all companies are as supportive of policies as they could be).

Part three is a compilation of case studies from the four countries, examining the ways in which organisations are addressing these issues and what factors make for successful organisational changes in this area. The chapters on the USA and Australia each give an example of one project, though different points emerge from them. Suzan Lewis’ comparison of two UK organisations allows some interesting principles to be drawn from their very different experiences, and makes the point about societal change being a necessity (which is echoed in other case studies). The chapters on the Scandinavian experience are very different, presumably by necessity, given the longstanding commitment of companies to family‐friendly working. The first of the two chapters seems out of place, though it is very brief and not uninteresting. The second shows that even in companies with commitments to good working practices in this domain, the experience of what this means in reality can be very different for different employee groups, and can lead to a different sort of conflict in employees as they try to espouse the company’s stated policy and reconcile it with how it actually affects them as workers.

It is unfortunate that this book starts with a relatively poor section which might put some readers off; but the useful concluding chapter and the readable and useful chapters in the second and third sections make up for this. On the whole, an interesting and useful book.