Work Life flexibility at work work life balance families and work

By Ken Matos, FWI Senior Research Associate

I participated in a conversation with several professional women about the importance of workplace flexibility. During this conversation one of the women said that it was important to have gender neutral programs that included both men and women. She was quickly but politely rebuffed by another of the women who shrugged off the idea of investing in flexibility and parenting support programs for men. She said that at her company, men didn’t use such programs so it was a waste of resources to offer them. She also stated that flexibility programs were about helping women advance and so flexibility was really a women’s issue. While the other women scrunched up their faces at this no one disputed her argument. Being very low in the hierarchy of people in this discussion I too kept my opinions to myself. In a few moments the conversation had moved on though I had not.

This idea of flexibility being a women’s issue is not new. It’s one of the banes of the work life movement, this idea that only women have lives outside of work. What was surprising for me was to hear a woman not only saying the same thing but with such conviction. She seemed proud that she had claimed some piece of workplace territory exclusively for women and kept it from being needlessly diluted by the presence of men. I felt clear that her motives were the purest commitment to the support and advancement of women, not at the expense of men, but simply regardless of men. Yet, despite her probably pure motives, her facts and rationale had some pretty big holes.

First, while I have not seen her company’s data, and so cannot argue the issue of short term return on investment for her particular firm, I do know that nationally men are using flexibility about as much as are women. According to Families and Work Institute’s 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce there’s no significant difference between the percentages of men and women who use traditional flex place options, choose starting/quitting times to meet their needs or take leave/make schedule changes for elder care responsibilities. In fact, men are more likely than women to have compressed work week schedules (50% versus 41%) and make short notice schedule changes once a month or more (35% versus 27%). Women were more likely than men to take time off after the birth/adoption of a child (93% versus 83%), though the difference isn’t nearly as large as one would expect.

Even if I didn’t have access to data that proved a major piece of her argument wrong, I would still believe that her perspective is shortsighted. There are a number of reasons why including men in flexibility programs is essential to the future of the work-life movement and the long-term benefit of women.

First, excluding men from the flexibility discussion, costs the movement allies who could put their resources and influence behind improved work life fit for all. Let’s face it, true, unadulterated altruism is a rare thing in this world; few people, men or women, will put their efforts behind a movement that explicitly excludes them. The most effective social movements emphasize the convergence of issues and goals among all stakeholders. Win-Win situations are the most effective scenarios for convincing someone to make a change, especially, when by all common wisdom, that someone is already winning. Men who are told that flexibility is not for them are not going to spend any discretionary effort on supporting such programs, even if they otherwise agree with the programs’ founding principles.

My experience during this conversation is a great example of how this plays out. I was the only man present during this conversation, which I took as a result of history: to date flexibility and work life fit has been advanced primarily by women, even if it is not just a women’s issue. Being in the minority didn’t strike me as bad but rather as an opportunity to be an early adopter among men and help enhance life for everyone. That feeling of common purpose cracked when I heard a respected professional woman say, without any substantive resistance from her female peers, that flexibility efforts for men are a waste of resources and flexibility really is a women’s issue. Suddenly I went from being in a room of allies to being in a room of women whose issues were not worth my attention if my experience was not worth their consideration. Admittedly, assuming all women agreed with this argument because no one forcefully disagreed with it is a gross generalization, but it was still my gut reaction. While I have the information and the relationships to defuse that identity politics bomb, I doubt that can be said for a majority of men who will tune out the discussion once they hear that is excludes them.

Second, one of the coping strategies for not getting what you want is to convince yourself that you never really wanted it. The television you can’t afford really doesn’t have that great a picture and those out of stock pants wouldn’t have fit anyway. Men who apply this perspective to the ‘women’s issue’ of flexibility will likely devalue its benefits and seek some self-affirming explanation for why they don’t really need it. In a situation where they are denied something because they are not women, the easiest male positive explanation is to increase the value placed in ‘masculine’ ideals like stoicism and endurance, positive reasons why men could or should go without flexibility. The natural next step in this line of thinking is that those who have flexibility lack these positive qualities, putting logical, if untrue, weight behind the idea that women are weak and need flexibility. These men will then either deny flexibility to others because they see it as a crutch for the weak or doubt the capabilities and tenacity of those given flexibility. So not only can framing flexibility as a women’s issue cost potential allies but it can also create enemies.

Some people would argue that focusing on men’s needs for flexibility is a distraction from attending to the needs of women. This zero-sum approach to flexibility is deeply flawed because most men and women will pair up to form collective ventures called families. The way in which the workplace treats men or women will inevitably rebound to impact the other sex. A third drawback to calling flexibility a women’s issue is that less workplace flexibility for men means less home-life flexibility and a correspondingly greater need for workplace flexibility among women.

Simply put, if men are tied down at work and unable to convince their supervisors and colleagues to give them the flexibility to go pick up their kid from daycare, then the responsibility falls back on the mother or another caregiver. If it is easier for the mother to get flexibility from work, then she will begin to accumulate more and more home and work responsibilities… after all she’s got the flexibility to do both. Restricting flexibility to women is a slippery slope that traps women in an increasingly stressful position of managing two domains full time. As a result, flexibility ceases being a benefit that makes life better for women and transforms into a necessity for just getting by. The zero-sum approach to flexibility efforts is a no win situation since the sex with a majority of the flexibility is only going to reap the majority of the work.

Some say that even were men fully encouraged and supported to invest in home, elder and childcare they would still refrain from doing the work involved in these tasks because men don’t really want to be so involved at home, and just say they do for positive press. My response is simple; if men never get the flexibility to make more involvement at home possible they can never prove their detractors wrong.

Finally, the entire question of whether flexibility is a women’s or a men’s issue is meaningless. It is based on assumptions about how men and women should spend their lives that our society has and continues to spend a great deal of time and energy trying to escape. Maintaining a gender binary in this issue only sets us up for more pointless debates in the future. For example, who gets flexibility when the woman makes more money and the man is primary caregiver? Who gets flexibility when the woman wants to access the developmental opportunities from an extended business trip and no amount of flexibility will get her home in time to pick up her child from daycare? Who gets flexibility in a gay male couple with children, a question underscored by the recent passing of same-sex marriage in New York State just hours before that city’s Pride celebration weekend? Let’s get out of this childish fight over who needs flexibility more. It’s a divisive and ultimately pointless argument. Flexibility for anyone who needs it is good for everyone.