Work-life balance and class: in search of working class work-lives

Warren, Tracey

Abstract

If we think about the sort of person who is working hard to achieve a balance between their family, personal and working lives, what type of character tends to spring to mind? Might it be a working mum negotiating the demands of child-care and running a home with those of a paid job? Certainly, any quick perusal of Internet images using ‘work-life balance’ (WLB) as a search term throws up multiple familiar visuals of ‘working mothers’. These women are often depicted with babies or young children, sometimes juggling, whilst dressed in smart offi ce wear. There is invariably a laptop computer in the mix. What about men and their work-lives? Well, if we add ‘men’ into our work-life search terms, then babies, and laptops and smart suits, again jump from the (fewer) available images. These prevalent depictions of WLB tellingly suggest that WLB is largely a matter for and a topic about women with children, who work in white-collar jobs, and for their male white-collar colleagues, albeit to a lesser degree.

Citation

Warren, T. (2016). Work-life balance and class: in search of working class work-lives. In S. Lewis, D. Anderson, C. Lyonette, N. Payne, & S. Wood (Eds.), Work-life balance in times of recession, austerity and beyond (112-130). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315683263

• Acceptance Date: Jun 1, 2016
• Publication Date: Aug 12, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jul 4, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 12, 2016
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 112-130
• Series Title: Routledge research in employment relations
• Book Title: Work-life balance in times of recession, austerity and beyond
• Chapter Number: 7
• ISBN: 9781138926448
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315683263
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/809825
• Publisher URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317405658/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315683263-14
• Related Public URLs: https://www.routledge.com/Work-Life-Balance-in-Times-of-Recession-Austerity-and-Beyond/Lewis-Anderson-Lyonette-Payne-Wood/p/book/9781138926448
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Work-life balance in times of recession, austerity and beyond on 22.09.2016, available online: http://www.routledge.com/9781138926448
• Contract Date: Jul 4, 2016