Abstract
Several transformations in economic and social spheres are changing the meaning of work in Europe. Not only the quantity, but also the quality of work has become a policy objective against the background of intense globalisation, technological evolutions, maturing welfare states and shifting family structures. It is not only having a job, or even having a well paid job that matters nowadays. Current debates are also about the quality of jobs in terms of a suitable work-life balance and the contribution to quality of life in general. At the same time, paid work still acts as the main source for an adequate standard of living. The amount of energy and time invested in the work domain may lead to different kinds of imbalances as it can be over demanding, but also generate resources (Warren, 2004). Time poverty, for example, is sometimes seen as merely ‘yuppie kvetch’ or ‘complaints’ (Hammermesh and Lee, 2007) of the more privileged, whereas short working hours and other precarious working conditions lead to financial problems and social exclusion. Others, especially single parents, are more likely to experience both time and income constraints. Furthermore, balancing work and life is not merely a matter of individual choice as gender cultures are still relevant at the organizational as well as at organizational and country levels (Gregory and Milner, 2009).
This review essay discusses three edited books, each highlighting different aspects of a problematic balance between work, other important life domains, welfare and economic prosperity. In line with contemporary debates in work-life balance literature (e.g. Gornick, 2006; Gregory and Milner, 2009; McGinnity and Whelan, 2009), each book adopts a comparative perspective and pays particular attention to gender differences. Drobnič and Guillén start from a resource-demand approach, focusing on how aspects of work organization are related to difficulties in reconciling work with other life aspects. Bäck-Wiklund et al. adopt a similar theoretical framework, but in addition to job resources and job demands they also include resources and demands more directly related to the household. Bäck-Wiklund et al. employ satisfaction with work-life balance not as the main dependent variable, but see it as an intermediate aspect of the quality of life. The last book, edited by Fraser et al., considers the income dimension and more particularly examines the problem of in-work poverty.
The first book, Work-Life Balance in Europe: The Role of Job Quality, deals with the link between working conditions and tensions in reconciling work and private life. The book is divided into two parts. After introducing the theoretical and methodological background in work-life research, the first part examines a variety of work-related demands and work-related resources and how these may lead to negative work-family/home interference in different countries. The second part discusses in greater depth the different institutional, cultural and policy contexts in which European citizens balance work and life and considers how time use decisions are embedded in a specific institutional context. This second part is less focused on job quality, contrary to the subtitle of the book.
The introductory chapter is helpful for readers of Work, Employment and Society who are interested in a brief but comprehensive overview of conceptual and methodological issues in work-life research. Throughout the book this framework is further elaborated. In particular chapter six, where Salmi and Lammi-Taskula introduce the concept of ‘work-family dynamics’, is worth mentioning since it incorporates interactions between structural conditions and everyday life. In terms of the empirical contribution of the book, it is difficult to provide a short summary because the different chapters adopt a variety of terms of reference (‘work-household task conflict’, ‘work-family responsibility conflict’, ‘satisfaction with work-life balance’, ‘work-to-home inference’, ‘home-to-work inference’). These concepts mean slightly different things and should be interpreted as such. As a consequence the edited volume occasionally lacks coherence in places. On the other hand, the book as a whole succeeds in comprehensively covering the multiple aspects associated with the bi-directionality of balancing work and life, as intended by the editors.
Despite the variety of issues covered in the book, there are some common threads running throughout the chapters. For example, particular attention is paid to cross-national differences and several new insights are gained. Regarding discussion on the primacy of institutions or culture in explaining cross-national variation in work-family conflict, Chung provides some evidence for the former. Adopting a multilevel model, she indicates that cross-national differences in individual perceptions of work-family conflict can, for the most part, be explained by the degree of development and the intensity of family policies. Overall, however, cross-national differences are not as profound as often assumed. Fagan and Walthery find relatively small differences between welfare states in terms of satisfaction with work-life balance, after controlling for individual and job characteristics. Furthermore, the results of Rostgaard et al. and Magnus et al. suggest that variations in time spent with children is due more to individual rather than country differences. The findings in these chapters also show that while involvement in informal care is less intense in Nordic countries, it does appear to be widespread in these countries as well. Hence, the authors find no indisputable evidence for the crowding-out hypothesis which states that high formal support reduces the provision of informal care.
Another central issue in the book is the attention to gender differences. Mustosmäki et al. indicate that men and women have different opportunities in working life as they work in different kinds of jobs with considerable variation in job quality. As a consequence, it is expected that men and women experience work-family tensions differently. Although traditional gender roles are changing gradually, several chapters expand the existing evidence that women continue to bear a higher burden of domestic labour and family responsibilities. Advancing traditional work-life balance research, which often focuses merely on women, most chapters in the Drobnič and Guillén volume also examine the work-life balance of men compared to women. For example, Fagan and Walthery show that the work-life balance of men is more negatively influenced by job demands. Conversely, job resources, such as greater autonomy, improve the work-life balance of women in particular. Another interesting finding, which needs further investigation, is that men’s work-life balance improves when children grow up, while this is not the case for women.
The second book, Quality of Life and Work in Europe: Theory, Practice and Policy, edited by Bäck-Wiklund et al. takes household demands and resources more explicitly into consideration. Despite being an edited book, it has the structure of a monograph. After the introduction, the first part discusses theory, institutional contexts, methods and data. Subsequently, in the second part, there are five chapters with empirical results. Throughout the empirical part, a self-developed questionnaire is used. In 2007 the same survey was conducted in eight countries: Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK. In each country, four types of service sector organization were selected: a bank/insurance company, a retail company, an IT/telecom company and a public hospital. This led to a unique database of 7867 employees. As the study only focuses on certain service sector organizations, and in some countries the response rate is low, the authors urge caution in terms of generalizing their findings. In addition to the surveys, qualitative data were gathered, based on interviews and innovation groups. In each country, one of the four organizations that had completed the questionnaire participated in the qualitative phase. These qualitative data are used in the third part. This last part discusses policy implications, future challenges and provides an overall conclusion. The research also led to the creation of an instrument for measuring the social quality of work in European workplaces. In general, the organization of chapters makes it a coherent collection, which helps the reader to process the information.
The Drobnič and Guillén book discussed above and the Bäck-Wiklund et al. volume have a number of similarities. In fact, in the Drobnič and Guillén book, one of the chapters adopts the unique data from Bäck-Wiklund et al. Furthermore, both books adopt a resource-demand framework. On the other hand, there are some important differences. Whereas the Drobnič and Guillén volume focuses primarily on workplace factors, Bäck-Wiklund et al. broaden the theoretical framework by examining household-related resources and demands more systematically. Furthermore, contrary to Drobnič and Guillén work-life balance is not the main dependent variable, but is considered an intermediate aspect of the quality of life. In sum, the two books can best be seen as complementary to each other.
In the first chapter, Van der Lippe and Bäck-Wiklund describe several ambitious aspirations. The book aims to study how quality of life and work are interrelated by adopting a multilayered analysis, including institutional, workplace and household factors. It seeks to analyse how workplaces can be transformed into ‘healthy organizations’ with a socially as well as economically sustainable organization of work. The book is also intended to extend knowledge of the impact of public and organizational policies on the well-being of European citizens. Finally, it also analyses country specific future trends in this area. By using an appropriate mix of qualitative and quantitative research and a well specified research plan, the book is able to fulfil its promises. Yet, some issues are elaborated on in greater depth than others. The second aim, a better understanding ‘healthy organizations’, could have received more attention. An extra chapter discussing the results of innovation groups more systematically may possibly have provided more detailed insights in promising trajectories for reaching ‘healthy organisations’.
In line with the findings of Drobnič and Guillén, the empirical results of Bäck-Wiklund et al. indicate that job demands and resources are important determinants of satisfaction with work-life balance, although there are no indications that demands have a stronger effect than resources as some of the chapters in Drobnič and Guillén indicate. Including the household situation does not appear to matter as much as might be expected for analyses of work-life balance, but does reveal an important gender dimension. The empirical findings by Szücs et al. indicate that, in general, the number of hours spent on household chores and childcare, household income and having paid domestic help do not significantly affect people’s satisfaction with their work-life balance. On the other hand, social networks, childcare flexibility and living with a partner do appear to be valuable resources that increase individuals’ work-life balance. Higher education and the number of children are only negatively related to satisfaction with work-life balance for women. Conversely, for men, satisfaction with work-life balance improves when working in high status organizations like banks or insurance companies and when having a supervisory position. In addition, Szücs et al. show that satisfaction with work-life balance is an important indicator of overall quality of life. Here we also observe an important gender dimension. Quality of life is determined more by quality of work for men, whereas women appear to ‘need’ a family life (Fodor et al.). These gender differences illustrate that traditional gender roles are still pertinent, despite the growth in dual earner families. Another key finding is that people’s satisfaction with their work-life balance is determined more by their individual work environment than by the country specific institutional context (Beham et al.). However, when considering life satisfaction, country differences matter more, even when controlled for satisfaction with work-life balance. Furthermore, while resources such as household income do not matter for a satisfactory work-life balance, they do matter when considering overall life satisfaction (Szücs et al.).
The last book, Working Poverty in Europe: A Comparative Approach, differs from the two previous books as it adopts a combination of an economic and a social policy approach and focuses on household income. More particularly, the book is about people who are poor despite the fact that they are working, which is, as the editors argue, a ‘specific and relevant dimension’ in the literature on the tension between quantity and quality of work (p. 1). Intuitively, but also because European policy makers often argue that a job is – or at least should be – the best protection against poverty, ‘working poor’ sounds like an oxymoron. What makes working poor research so specific is that it combines labour market research, which focuses most of the time on individuals’ current employment situations, with poverty research that looks at yearly incomes at the household level. As a consequence, a variety of definitions exist of ‘working poor’, depending on who is considered working and who is defined as poor. Despite such conceptual complexity, by using similar data, a common definition and a coherent methodology throughout most of the chapters, the book avoids the trap of being an eclectic and confounding volume. This integrated method makes it an excellent example of what an edited comparative book should look like. First, the book has two introductory comparative chapters providing a descriptive overview of the profiles of working poor in Europe and an insight into the mechanisms causing in-work poverty. The second part consists of a number of country studies where these mechanisms are considered in more detail, with a special focus on the role of institutional and policy factors. Geographically, these studies cover the UK, France, Sweden, Spain and Poland. The third and last part discusses several cross-cutting topics such as persistence of in-work poverty, the gender dimension alongside issues of measurement, how wage inequality translates into poverty, the specific situation of migrants and policy effects.
The empirical findings in the first two parts supplement the existing evidence that in-work poverty is not merely a matter of low earnings. Household size, household composition as well as low work intensity at individual and household levels are other important mechanisms. The relative importance of these mechanisms depends on country specific risk profiles as well as state specific redistribution mechanisms. While these general conclusions are not new (e.g. Andress and Lohmann, 2008), the book does make some significant contributions to the literature. First of all, it contains an interesting selection of countries, covering different kinds of welfare states and some countries which were previously not extensively studied (Spain and Poland). An additional strength of the book is the cross-cutting themes section. Here the book really provides several new insights. The empirical results reported by Gutiérrez et al. on mobility and persistency of in-work poverty are especially worth mentioning. While the rate of in-work poverty as can be found on the Eurostat website shows a relatively stable pattern, making use of the longitudinal character of EU-SILC, the chapter indicates that in-work poverty is a transitory as well as a recurrent problem. Studying Spain, France, Poland and the UK, the results indicate that among those entering in-work poverty in 2005 less than a third in each country remained in it for three consecutive years. Analysing the determinants of entries into in-work poverty by a random-effects model, results suggest that despite expected differences, important similarities also exist across countries. In all four countries changes in the labour market participation of the household are more influential compared to demographic changes. The chapter by Peña Casas and Ghailani also critically assesses the measurement of in-work poverty by considering the gender paradox associated with that measurement. Contrasting the worse labour market position of women, the Eurostat indicator of in-work poverty gives a gender neutral picture. Consequently, the chapter empirically shows what is often assumed: if women had to rely on their individual resources, they would be worse off than men. In other words, women are potentially more at risk of poverty compared to men, especially in dual earner families.
In sum, the three books together demonstrate the importance of job as well as household demands and resources in order to balance work and life in the broad sense. With the increase of female labour force participation, research on balancing work and family has been building up a long tradition, especially in relation to role theory. Contemporary debates pay special attention to job quality in a comparative design, focusing on the impact of institutional differences. The focus is no longer merely on women balancing work and family, but is expanded to men as well as women simultaneously balancing work and overall welfare, with both time and income as important features. However, as the books reviewed in this essay indicate, traditional gender roles still persist and quality of work and life is not easily achieved. Bäck-Wiklund et al.’s question: ‘How can we design work and society to simultaneously get the most out of the human capital of all the workers, to reconcile work with parenthood equally for men and women, and to minimize social exclusion?’ (p. 231) is thus an important question that should be addressed by future research. In each of the three books discussed, graduate students as well as the research community can look for sound theoretical foundations as well as build on several new findings.