For this week’s tutorial I will be presenting Melissa Gregg’s article, “The Normalisation of Flexible Female Labour In The Information Economy”. In this discourse, Gregg discusses on the concept of flexible work commitments for women thus giving rise to the assumptions and stereotypes surrounding the ‘flexible’ working women.
In most of her discussions, Gregg has synthesized her theories based on her findings from advertisements associated with the Information Technology (eg. Microsoft Office programmes and telephone service providers). I find this aspect particularly appealing as it helps to illustrate her ideas clearly.
For this presentation, I would like to focus on these arguments: a) Flexibility as a double-edged sword, and the effects it has on family life, and b) the class factor of the female workforce.
As mentioned in her article, Gregg seems to suggest that there is a double standard in terms of the expectations of the flexibly working middle class women. The ‘freedom’ in the mobility of working anywhere, anytime is a double-edged sword as the increased convenience and contactability would imply a greater amount of work. Since the work-life distinction is blurred by the interception of public sphere into the private, do you think that there will be an even greater compromise of the family dynamics and quality of family life? For instance, a woman can be successfully working from home but at the expense of say, her family’s dinner – a KFC takeout for example because she doesn’t have enough time (due to the blurred distinction) to prepare a healthy meal for her children and husband.
In addition, Gregg’s viewpoint is that ‘middle-class women’s “choice” to work … is a choice reliant upon the very different form of flexible labour performed by women in other parts of the globe’ (p. 287), because things like household chores and caring duties are ‘increasingly being shuffled down the class hierarchy’ (p. 287). Do you think it is just that ‘flexible’ labour is a privilege enjoyed by those in the middle class, the ones who ‘can afford not to work full-time’ (p. 291), and at the expense of working women from less developed countries offering ‘manual’ labour? An example of this would be hiring a domestic worker (often from countries such as Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines etc.) because the working mother has decided to focus more on her career thereby indicating that the work-life balance is not an ideal concept.
Another burgeoning question that came to mind as I was reading the article, who are the people behind the advertisements mentioned in Gregg’s article? The bunch of “creative” people – are they women? Are they mothers? If there really are mothers and women amongst them, do they adhere to the work-life concept since they belong to the creative industry? How are they coping with that lifestyle? Just a random thought!
Thank you all! xx
ps. If you are interested at all, Melissa Gregg has a blog! And from the clever title (Uncreative workplaces: home cooked theory) I'd say, it makes for an interesting read.
I found it interesting about the comment on takeaway meals.
ReplyDeleteFrom an advertising perspective, many fast food outlets have begun to target these "working mother families" with macdonalds putting out the "family box" and KFCs ever popular family meals.
It is interesting that they have taken this way of marketing and perhaps it demonstrates society's perception of working mothers, that they will opt for fast-food if they do not have the time. I think this is a skewed perception, in my family before we were old enough to cook for ourselves my working mother would opt for easy meals as opposed to fast food - and my dad would cook when he could.
Therefore I feel his stereotype is not a very valid one - with mothers fathers and even children, still being about to cook or find healthy meals - thus making it easier for women who choose to juggle work with mothering.
I was sitting on the bus to the city a couple of mornings ago, sandwiched between the suits and the breifcases.. and a couple in front of me caught my attention, the man and his much more petit wife/partner were both wearing matching pinstripe jackets (the women’s huge shoulder pads making her shoulders nearly as wide as his) and something about them just looked really strange..like her jacket and those shoulder pads were just about asserting her place as equal to the men in her workplace. And while I totally respect career driven women who strive to be in top positions within companies, in that moment the thought of a 9-5 high pressure career job seemed totally unappealing. And I had this glamourized (and possibly very unrealistic) vision of being a housewife with kids on swings in the backyard and cooking up a storm nigella lawson style in the kitchen..with a home office set up for typing out the odd freelance article.. (with no thought for cleaning toilets or any other not fun stuff) Much better than the shoulder pads everyday..
ReplyDeleteAnyway...i then realised it’s all very well having these fantisies because of what Hannah said about not working full time being a privelidge of the middle class women..we are lucky to have the choice between being career women, or housewives, or to combine the two, while women from less developed countries are forced into jobs of manual labour without the option for anything else.
As these stats show, there is still a huge division by gender on household chores and childcare. In particular, looking at the graph "TIME SPENT ON HOUSEHOLD WORK BY SEX AND STATUS IN EMPLOYMENT" you can see that women do more chores in the home than men with equivalent employment status. Is this also women's "choice"? Flexibility or the possibility of working from home is valued by women more possibly because of this unequal division of unpaid labour - if a working woman wants the same amount of leisure time as men she must somehow do housework and work-work, or possibly leisure and work, at the same time. In response to the first question then, is the issue that worktime is interfering with family time about the physical location of work, or is it about the wife preparing the dinner for the kids and husband despite working the same hours as the husband?
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