Competing family models, competing social policies

I shall argue that policy-makers and social scientists concerned with family policy and social policy will in future have to take greater account of women's values, preferences and life goals. Even in modern societies, women's views are often still overlooked. Listening to women In 1998 and 1999, the British Cabinet Office's Women's Unit organised a major research programme entitled `Listening to Women'. The research used focus groups, social attitude surveys and opinion polls to collect information on women's values and priorities, what women saw as the policy priorities, and women's perceptions of the main barriers to achieving their goals, including the difficulties of combining paid work and family life. The results provided a rich portrait of the diversity of women's views on jobs, children and family policy (Bryson et al, 1999; Worcester et al, 1999). For example the studies found that one-third of women today believe home and family are women's main focus in life, and that women should not try to combine a career and children. Even in the youngest age group of women who had not yet had children, one-fifth still believed women cannot combine a career and children. On the other hand two-thirds of women agreed that having a job is the best way for a woman to be an independen