The Balance Gap: Working Mothers and the Limits of the Law

by Sarah Cote Hampson

Overview

In recent decades, laws and workplace policies have emerged that seek to address the "balance" between work and family. Millions of women in the U.S. take some time off when they give birth or adopt a child, making use of "family-friendly" laws and policies in order to spend time recuperating and to initiate a bond with their children.

The Balance Gap traces the paths individual women take in understanding and invoking work/life balance laws and policies. Conducting in-depth interviews with women in two distinctive workplace settings—public universities and the U.S. military—Sarah Cote Hampson uncovers how women navigate the laws and the unspoken cultures of their institutions. Activists and policymakers hope that family-friendly law and policy changes will not only increase women's participation in the workplace, but also help women experience greater workplace equality. As Hampson shows, however, these policies and women's abilities to understand and utilize them have fallen short of fully alleviating the tensions that women across the nation are still grappling with as they try to reconcile their work and family responsibilities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503602151
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	03/21/2017
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Sarah Cote Hampson is Assistant Professor of Public Law at the University of Washington Tacoma.

Table of Contents

Contents and Abstracts

Introduction: In Pursuit of "Balance"
chapter abstract

This chapter provides the theoretical outline of the book, and explains why we should care about how women form their legal consciousness around work/life balance policies in public universities and the U.S. military.

1Navigating the Rules in Public Universityies
chapter abstract

This chapter focuses on the experiences of women faculty in public universities. It explores both the formal and informal rules and norms that women navigated when making decisions about claiming their rights to work/life balance laws and policies within their institutions.

2Navigating the Rules in the U.S. Military
chapter abstract

This chapter focuses on the experiences of women who are currently serving, or who have served, in the U.S. military. It explores both the formal and informal rules and norms that women navigated when making decisions about claiming their rights to work/life balance laws and policies within their institutions.

3Looking Out and Speaking Up: Individual Agency and Networks
chapter abstract

This chapter compares the case studies presented in Chapters 1 and 2 and focuses on the instrumental design element of the theoretical framework for the book. It explores how individuals act with agency to form their own legal consciousness around work/life balance policies, and the legal consciousness of those around them, using institutional consciousness networks (ICNs). These networks can function as a way for women to gain legal knowledge, seek emotional and professional support, and exercise resistance to institutional culture.

4Status Speaks: The Importance of Rank
chapter abstract

This chapter examines more closely and compares the institutional structures of public universities and the U.S. military. It does so specifically by focusing on these institutions through the lens of rank, an institutional structure that controls the institutional cultures of both institutions fairly significantly. This chapter focuses on how rank plays a role in shaping women's legal consciousness formation in both institutions.

5In the Shadow of the Ideal Worker
chapter abstract

This chapter focuses on the ideological construct of the Ideal Worker. This construct affects the legal consciousness of women in both public universities and the U.S. military by stereotyping mothers in these professions are "nonideal." For women faculty, this stereotype casts them as "not serious" about their careers, while women service members are stereotyped as shirking their duties. The chapter concludes by discussing the ways in which current work/life balance policies may in fact reinforce these stereotypes rather than combating them.

Conclusion: Can Mothers Ever Be Ideal Workers?
chapter abstract

This chapter summarizes the findings of the book, concluding that legal consciousness formation can be observed through instrumental, institutional, and ideological processes. Having revealed in previous chapters the limitations of current public policy aimed at achieving work/life balance, this chapter offers some suggestions for improving the efficacy of these policies. It concludes, however, that significant cultural and institutional discursive shifts must take place in order for public policy to have any meaningful impact on women's lived experiences as working mothers.

Editorial Reviews

"Elegantly written and timely, The Balance Gap highlights how family leave policies seeking 'work-life balance' often ignore the institutional rules, gendered norms, organizational status, and hierarchies that collide with heightened expectations of – and for – mothers in the workplace. A rigorous call to action in transforming how we view the ideal mother, and the ideal worker."

Drake University - Renee Ann Cramer

"Hampson has written a smart and thoughtful book, based on research in "understudied" environments."

Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy - Cynthia Harrison

"The Balance Gap offers an important analysis of why all workplaces are not the same even if they follow the same family friendly policies. By contrasting the university with the military, we see how social and environmental context are having as much or more effect on a woman's likelihood to take advantage of their policy rights as the policies themselves."

UC Berkeley - Mary Ann Mason

"Elegantly written and timely, The Balance Gap highlights how family leave policies seeking 'work-life balance' often ignore the institutional rules, gendered norms, organizational status, and hierarchies that collide with heightened expectations of – and for – mothers in the workplace. A rigorous call to action in transforming how we view the ideal mother, and the ideal worker."—Renee Ann Cramer, Drake University

From the Publisher

"A valuable read for scholars and activists alike, The Balance Gap integrates empirical evidence and legal theory in an admirably readable manner. Hampson drives beyond policy to the reality of working mothers' lives, challenging the deep tension between the notion of work/life balance and the enduring fetishization of the 'ideal worker' as a human machine who produces regardless of the cost."

Princeton University - Anne-Marie Slaughter