Balancing Work & Family - Blog #4

Time, support, respect, and love are elements that constitute a good family life. Time should be spent between all family members so that strong bonds can be built. It is important for kids to spend time with their parents so that they will feel loved and cared for. It is important that parents have leisure time to spend with each other as well. I think supporting your family members is a huge characteristic of good family life. It is difficult to feel confident if you do not have family support. Respect is also important because parents should have respect for each other which sets an example to their children that both parents are equal and valued in the family. Families provide a sense of identity for their individuals. I believe it is these characteristics that shape strong, independent, and happy people.

Balancing a career and a family proves difficult for people who are faced with this challenge. In our time, often both parents hold jobs and have less time to stay at home with children. Women feel more guilt for having a career than men which is likely a cause to the notions set by society that women should be nurturers. To balance a career and a family is costly and stressful. For instance, having to provide daycare for your children proves to be extremely expensive. One woman in one of the video clips suggests that women who work but want to have children should start out with doing something flexible. It is more difficult to approach an employer and let them know that you want to work less. This situation must be presented professionally to the employer. Many factors contribute to the difficulty of balancing a career and a family. People in this situation feel as though they are constantly in a rush or exhausted. Not having enough leisure time to spend with yourself and with your family can be permanently damaging to everyone in the family.

Changes in the traditional gender roles has made work and family life more complex because both parents are constantly busy and trying to balance both aspects of this lifestyle. Two-thirds of spouses today both work. Men are taking on more household responsibilities, but women still feel that they are responsible for making sure the house is clean and that dinner is ready. The fact that more moms are working now has added much more stress for females. More families today are single parent families, which is very difficult because they have no choice but to balance both lifestyles and they have to do it alone. Men and women are frequently forced to get additional part-time jobs just to make ends meet. More and more people also go to school, work, and balance a family life, and with that added responsibility of school, life becomes even more intense.

Employers in the United States could look to the United Kingdom as an example for being sensitive to their employees’ family needs and obligations. Employers should allow people to have more flexible schedules – whether it is through shift changes or working from home – in order to balance both aspects of life without becoming too overwhelmed. As long as the employee remains as productive there should not be an issue in allowing this flexibility. Many times employers do not think about the stresses that people face outside of the work environmnet, especially women, who must balance work and family. I think it is important for people to be considerate of these obligations and put themselves in others’ shoes from time to time.

Support is hugely important when it comes to balancing work and family. If a person has no support from their friends, family, or neighbors, it makes it extremely more difficult to manage. With the support from these various people, responsibilities can be divided up and shared. For example, car-pooling with neighbors is a huge time saver and benefit for working individuals. Having a spouse who is supportive of dividing up responsibilities is going to be much more productive than one who refuses to help. Having support from the people in your life creates more leisure time, which is often hard to come by in this day and age and in our society. Balancing priorities with the support of others is significantly less stressful than having no support.

Sex Segregation and Socialization - Blog #2

Sex segregation means that there are boundaries that exist between males and females, which often result in unfair conditions for women. Sex segregation is created in our society through a variety of means; unequal pay between genders, stereotypes, and the media.

I have never personally thought about sex segregation in the employment at Arizona State University, however, the majority of my professors have been and currently are male. Since being enrolled at ASU (for the past two years), I have only had two female professors. Most of the teachers’ assistants tend to be women. I have encountered more women working in advising positions or service positions on campus than men. This could be a result of the belief that women are more likely to take positions that “assist” rather than aiming for the top positions in society.

Socialization in relation to gender is encountered everyday in every aspect of my life. Even when I do not realize that sex segregation is occurring, it is still constantly there. In my home life, growing up my sisters and I played with dolls while my brother played with cars and legos. We fed our dolls, read to them, cuddled them, and were “nurturers” in training from a very young age. I think while children are being raised, female children are raised to put family as a top priority whereas as male children are raised to put independence and hard work as a top priority. Gender roles play a huge role in shaping individuals because they are everywhere. In a school environment, boys are more likely to play sports, be playful and goofy, and be more independent while females are cliquey and more judgmental to their fellow female peers. Girls are also viewed as more gossipy than boys even though boys participate in gossip as well. Work environments produce gender roles because many women take secretarial positions or other jobs that are thought of as “a woman’s job”. When I worked in a law firm, it seemed that at least 90 percent of paralegals and secretaries were females, while the majority of attorneys were males. While many women are still struggling to become the breadwinners of their families, it seems more women than men are inclined to work part-time or quit their jobs completely once they have children. All of these societal gender roles larger contribute to our patriarchal society.

While women today are less likely to be laid off than men, according to the NPR report, “Moms become Breadwinners as Job Losses Hit Men”, there is still an uneven impact on the labor force. Women are still only making .77 cents to every dollar a man makes. Also, the types of jobs that women have are not likely to provide benefits such as life insurance and healthcare. Women are struggling to fill the role of the mother as well as the sole breadwinner and many women have had to take on second jobs. Therefore, even though more men are unemployed, women are still not reaping the same benefits from being the breadwinners as their male counterparts.

Home and Work/Public and Private - Blog #3

Personally I have not really had to experience carework within my family. I suppose you could consider helping out with babysitting my younger siblings so that both of my parents could work, as an example. Fortunately though, no one in my immediate family has gotten seriously ill. I lost an aunt and a cousin to cancer, and I know that it was extremely difficult for their immediate family to balance their lives to care for them. It is necessary for someone to always be around to take care of them when the situation worsens and the ill can no longer do daily functions by themselves. You also know that you have a limited time with these loved ones and want to take advantage of that time. I cannot imagine how extremely emotionally and mentally difficult it would be to have to give up your career in order to fully care for another person.

“Juggling Work and Care” demonstrated how different businesses within the UK are accommodating to employees’ need when they must also be a caregiver. Businesses enabled employees to work from home, work odd shifts, and offered support to caregivers. An internet networking site, where information, suggestions, and experiences of caregivers can be shared, was created in the UK to better assist people in this situation. By doing this, employers found that there was no decrease in work productivity, and that their employees became more loyal and committed to the company. With a plan like this, people are able to keep their jobs and continue taking care of their loved ones. These options create less stress for employees and overall are a really generous and efficient way to cater to the needs of everyone.

“Women’s work” is described as being all the household work; laundry, cleaning, cooking, taking care of the kids. “Men’s work” is everything outside of the home or tasks such as car repairs and mowing. These ideals of gender roles have existed since the beginning of time and in modern day “women’s work” is not always considered “real work”. Society needs to focus less on these gender roles through the media and through general notions that this is the way things should be. Almost all cleaning supplies ads are targeted toward women; showing women cleaning, cooking, and running errands. I think society should portray women in professional environments more frequently and display men in household environments more often. I think the public should educate themselves on the pay disparity between genders. Also, society should recognize care as “real work” and that it is also an economically stimulating aspect of life. If society could rid themselves of these engrained gender notions, I think it would help achieve gender equality.