Women in Power: The Gendered Nature of Work and its Impact on the Implementation of Family Leave Policies

There are basic ideas about gender???s impact on market work, work that takes place in the paid labor force and care work that takes place in the home. Women, particularly mothers, live and work in a world shaped by assumptions and stereotypes about their gender roles. In fact, most women are expected to and actually do the bulk of the care work in families. However, the percentage of women who also participate in market work has increased dramatically since the 1950???s. As a result, these women have problems balancing their work and home responsibilities. Family leave policies designed to reduce the work/family conflict have been unsuccessful because they ignore the fundamental problem, gender bias.\ud The paper argues that gendered ideas about market/care work influence women in power to implement family leave policies more than their male counter-parts. However, in order to understand the leadership women take on family leave implementation we must first examine how and why the policies fail. Chapter one is a discussion of the rapidly declining traditional nuclear family and its influence on public policy design. The chapter also reviews the methods which include a literature review of secondary sources including books, essays, quantitative and qualitative research.\ud Chapter two examines family leave policy design based on the traditional nuclear family and assesses the policy implementation failures. This is\ud iii\ud accomplished by reviewing studies on gendered roles of men and women in the paid market and the unpaid care work sector, and then by examining the literature available for family leave policies. These policies include, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), California Paid Family Leave as well as family policies in the three leading Nordic countries. The policy discussion includes a review of the history, implementation concerns and growth of the policies.\ud Once we understand how and why the policies fail, we can turn our attention to the leadership women take on family leave implementation. Therefore, chapter three examines women in power and their impact on family leave policies. Literature that addresses this issue directly was not available or nonexistent. However, a review of women in powerful positions such as Board Directors, Senior Executives, Justices, Legislators, Politicians is examined to determine whether they create, modify or implement Family-Friendly Policies or support ???women???s issues??? in ways that benefit women more than their male counterparts do. Family leave policies can be thought of as family-friendly, therefore their support of such policies is used to infer support of family leave.\ud While chapter two examines the macro level barriers to family leave implementation, chapter four discusses the micro level difficulties. Chapter four reviews some of the workplace obstacles that impact women???s ability to advocate and mobilize around ???women???s issues???. The discussion reveals that when women support one another or champion an issue, that it comes with significant consequences that many women choose to avoid.\ud iv\ud Finally, chapter five reveals the findings that suggest, women in leadership positions do have a progressive influence on the implementation of family leave policies and/or ???women???s issues.??? The research indicates that when women have power they often use it to promote family friendly policies and/or ???women???s issues.??? However, so few women achieve positions of power that their ability to meaningfully affect these policies is relatively small.\ud In order to resolve the implementation problems we see from family leave policies we have to address the underlying gender bias that creates the issues in the first place. This paper suggests that women's ability to implement family leave policies will be dependent on a shift in gender role expectations. Family leave implementation will have greater success if women (and men), begin to advocate for larger systemic changes. These changes include radical policy re-design modeled after Nordic Countries, the enforcement of equal pay legislation, a campaign to normalize dual responsibility in care work and desegregating employment. However, as JoAnn Heffernan Heisen, World Wide Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Johnson and Johnson suggests, it is women, because of their experience with the work-family conflict, who will have to act as change agents to remove barriers that keep men and women from equally taking and accessing family leave