Call for Papers 'Work-Life Balance in crisis times and beyond' Social policies, cultural values and work-life balance in crisis times and beyond
This is a CfP for a workshop on Work-Life Balance in Crisis Times and Beyond. In the recent years, many industrialised countries formulated their gender equality policies, aiming at reconciling employment and private duties of parents and carers by accentuating accessible and affordable care services to reduce “disincentives for women to work more” (EC 2017). Apart from personal attitudes, women still have fewer opportunities for labour market participation in many countries. The reconciliation of work and private life/parenting is hence signalled out as challenge at all stages of agency. This challenge has reached its peak during the current Covid-19 crisis, which changed work-life balance tremendously, especially for women. While most research focuses on monolateral effects by analysing the top-down impact of policies on care provisions and individual orientations regarding female labour force participation across countries (Sainsbury 1994, Korpi 2000, Grunow et al. 2018), the bottom-up voicing of individual ideals and values in work-life balance (WLB) policies remains largely unexplored. This bottom-up approach displays not only how people access policy benefits, but also by how they claim and express their demands. Current research hardly accounts for how social policy offers are accessed and used depending on individuals’ background. This is particularly true for natives and migrants, who often differ in their cultural values (Gewinner 2019, 2020). Little is known to what extent internalised cultural notions and ideas of reconciliation of work and family are persisting in disadvantaged, as compared to privileged, individuals, and prone to state and corporate family and labour policies. This is crucial, since the range of influence of state and corporate WLB policies can address people differently (Sainsbury 1999), especially during crises. Migrant family formation and ….