Search results

Major demographic trends are affecting the work schedules of U.S. employees with likely consequences for health and quality-of-life outcomes. These trends include long work hours, at least for some groups of employees, and an increasing proportion of employees in the U.S. and other countries who are working nonstandard work schedules. This chapter contains a review of the empirical literature linking the number of hours worked and the distribution of those hours at the individual and couple level to a variety of outcomes, cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In addition, because the majority of U.S. workers live in dyads (Jacobs & Gerson (2004). The time divide: Work, family and gender inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), major attention is given to the impact of work hours on the employee's spouse as well as on the employee. It is also noted that the relationship between work hours and outcomes might be different among employed single women with children. Data are presented from two new studies conducted by my research team to fill some of the critical knowledge gaps. Finally, I suggest some directions for future research.

The typical re‐entrant is in her late 20s or early 30s, and is married with two children — the youngest under six. She left school at 16 with no qualifications and went to work as an unskilled non‐manual worker, typically in a shop. During the seven years she worked prior to having a family she changed her job two or three times, generally to very similar work. And she left at first pregnancy, happily, intending to be away from employment for at least 10 to 12 years.

In March 2020, the Australian Government restricted the entry of travelers into Australia by closing its international borders in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). While Australian citizens who were resident overseas could return to Australia under certain conditions, the border closures significantly affected their ability to return to Australia and as a consequence had a dramatic impact on their lives and the lives of their families. This chapter explores the effects of the Australian government’s decision to close the national border by presenting the lived experiences of Australian citizens adversely affected by the government’s decision. The research is based on an online survey conducted in late 2021 and early 2022. Based on the findings, this chapter explores notions of Australian citizenship rights and privileges in the context of the pandemic, and the profound impacts the national lockout had on Australians as individuals, family members and on their sense of national identity. A central finding of this research reveals how citizens’ separation from family during the lockout placed considerable stress on the family as a social institution and caused significant impacts on Australians’ physical and mental health.

The paper sets out to explore how Japanese workers want to allocate their time to work and private life in different stages of life. To examine whether they prefer to reduce hours in paid work and spend more time on family and leisure.

A statistical analysis was conducted using data from a survey conducted among 3,800 Japanese automotive workers in 2000. Analysis consists of mean comparisons of ideal proportion of work across different stages of life, and comparison of attitudes toward taking leave by age and job type.

The results of this paper show that a majority of Japanese workers, regardless of age and job type, have a strong preference to work constantly without major career disruptions between ages 20 and 60, then reduce drastically the time spent in paid work after job retirement at age 60. The results suggest that, although Japanese today increasingly recognize the importance of integrating work and private life, deviation from the “normalcy” of work life, or constant working over life course, is still unlikely to be welcome.

Data used in this study were collected only among automotive workers. Caution should be used when generalizing the results to a broader range of industries in Japan.

This study addresses a simple but important question whether and how Japanese want to integrate work and private life over life course. This question deserves a close scrutiny to understanding whether a career perspective over life course is changing in today's Japan.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors informing spousal global mobility decisions within the context of sporting expatriation. Findings contribute to the non-corporate global mobility literature as well as providing an empirical enhancement to the family relatedness of work decisions framework.

In this qualitative study, in-depth interviews gave voice to 21 spouses of professional sailors who have experienced both trailing their spouse and staying behind.

Access to empathetic social support, the potential impact on children, and the spouse’s career were all found to influence the spouse’s dynamic global mobility decision making.

The study is limited by the cross-sectional nature of the research. Future longitudinal research into the impact of spousal preferences would identify the on-going effect of their decision(s) to relocate or to stay behind.

Providing organisations with an understanding of the familial issues their global talent may factor into their work mobility decisions will allow them to implement appropriate family-focussed support, irrespective of the choice to engage, or not engage, in global mobility.

By grounding the study in the under-researched sporting arena, the author contributes to the emerging non-corporate expatriate conversation. Furthermore, the family relatedness of work-related decisions framework was found to provide a useful conceptual foundation for understanding decision making in an international context.

In this article, I examine the role of judicial narratives in constructing, constraining, and delimiting the boundaries of social scientific and expert knowledge – specifically, in the context of gay and lesbian parents’ custody and adoption cases. Examining not only the judicial narratives in appellate cases over the last fifty years in the United States, but also expert reports and briefs obtained from attorneys in these cases and interviews with judges, attorneys and litigants, I investigate the role of judicial narratives in adjudicating between competing social scientific claims about sexuality and child welfare, constructing expertise, and ultimately deciding what is valid knowledge and what is not. I focus specifically on the ways in which judges credit and discredit social scientific evidence, experts, and knowledge claims. The power of legal actors and particularly judges to police the boundaries of knowledge and expertise in the context of the custody case and the judicial narrative is complicated by the observation that this form of social scientific knowledge is not only the object acted upon and shaped by these power dynamics, but is also itself a source of power and legitimation.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the use of an auto‐ethnographic life history can provide rich, original data to critically analyse the interplay between the socially constructed self, a career journey over time and societal change.

A reflexive auto‐ethnography is used as a conduit to explore a career journey. The author draws on the fluidity of ageing to make visible gendered organizational processes. The setting is New Zealand.

To understand the interplay of a career journey through a life history approach and intersectional analysis reinforces the life‐long significance of gender with ageing.

The author suggests that by reflecting on the complex interplay of one's own life through an intersectional approach can add a further dimension to scholarly thinking on the “doing” of intersectionality when considering the career journey of others.

Draws on excerpts from interviews with six women teacher/leaders in Taranaki, New Zealand to explore arguments that in Western cultures men maintain power and control of the sexual division of labour in the home, which is allied to a sexual division of labour at work. Uncovers some of the links between the women’s home and school experiences in their accounts of their negotiations of what have commonly been seen as contradictory subject positions of leader/wife; mother/career woman. Shows from the women’s stories about their personal lives and aspirations, however, that for reasons that were quite complex, some of them were themselves maintaining gendered divisions of labour. Suggests some implications for further research.