Who benefits from work‐life programs? Lessons in gender and race from OPM's Federal Work‐Life Survey

• Published date: 01 November 2024
• Author: Shilpa Viswanath,Jung Ah (Claire) Yun,Lauren Bock Mullins
• Date: 01 November 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13772

SCHOLARLY TAKES

Who benefits from work-life programs? Lessons in gender and

race from OPM’s Federal Work-Life Survey

Shilpa Viswanath

1

| Jung Ah (Claire) Yun

2

| Lauren Bock Mullins

3

1

Department of Public Management, John Jay

College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, New York,

New York, USA

2

Department of Criminal Justice and Public

Affairs, College of Business and Public

Management, Kean University, Union, New

Jersey, USA

3

Management Department, Chazanoff School of

Business, College of Staten Island, CUNY, Staten

Island, New York, USA

Correspondence

Shilpa Viswanath, Department of Public

Management, John Jay College of Criminal

Justice, CUNY, 524 W 59th Street, New York, NY

10019, USA.

Email: sviswanath@jjay.cuny.edu

Abstract

Engaging the US Office of Personnel Management’s inaugural Federal Work-life

Survey (2017), this study deconstructs the gender and race differences in

employee satisfaction with federal work-life programs. We examine whether

women of color employees in particular stand to benefit differently from the

federal work-life programs in comparison to their male and white colleagues.

Notably, this study operationalizes the federal employee’s work-life interference

and dependent care responsibilities to determine gender and race-related

differences in employee satisfaction with federal work-life programs. Study results

indicate that federal employees belonging to historically marginalized racial and

ethnic groups are satisfied to a lesser extent with partaking in federal work-life

programs than their white counterparts.

Evidence for practice

•Framing of work-life programs as mechanisms to dismantle institutional racism

and sexism in the federal workforce, instead of framing them as exclusive

benefits that merely support employees, might go a long way in transforming

the discourse around work-life programs and an inclusive workplace.

•Public sector employers and supervisors need to understand the unique

personal predicaments of all employees, but particularly women of color

employees, and consider these challenges when designing and implementing

work-life programs, potentially through intersectionality training.

•Public sector work-life programs need to work better for women employees,

especially women of color employees with considerable dependent care

responsibilities.

•From the perspective of recruitment and retention of a diverse federal work-

force, improving employee morale in the public sector, and sustaining high

organizational performance, it is vital to understand the use and perceived satis-

faction of work-life programs by a racially and ethnically varied federal labor

force.

“Breaking down barriers across races, ethnicities

and cultures is transformative. Our individual

and collective experiences can bridge seemingly

intractable divides. That is a wonderful goal. But

the experiences of Black people, or any racially

oppressed people, should not be subverted or

erased in the quest for an idealized but elusive

rainbow.”

Donna F. Edwards and Gwen McKinney, The

Washington Post, 2020

INTRODUCTION

Work-life balance is a concept that came into being in the

late 1800s when manufacturing laws were created to limit

the time spent at work for women and children (Raja &

Stein, 2014). Later the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938

instituted a 44 hour week, but it was not until The

Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1980s that work-

life balance was once again a topic of societal priority,

with establishment of maternity leave and flexible

schedules for working women (Raja & Stein, 2014).

Received: 11 February 2021 Revised: 26 October 2023 Accepted: 30 October 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13772

Public Admin Rev. 2024;84:1163–1183. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar © 2023 American Society for Public Administration. 1163

Eventually, the idea of balancing work and life became

important to men, who would also be afforded work-life

benefits (Raja & Stein, 2014). An employee’s inability to

balance their work demands and personal demands is

proven to cause job dissatisfaction, job turnover, and

absenteeism (Hughes & Bozionelos, 2007). Conversely, an

organization’s efforts to introduce work-life programs

have led to decreased absenteeism, fewer sick leave

requests, work flexibility, increased productivity, reduced

employee stress levels, and enhanced positive organiza-

tional culture among employees (Beauregard, 2006;

Breaugh & Frye, 2007; Ezra & Deckman, 1996; Glass &

Estes, 1997; Hughes & Bozionelos, 2007; Redmond

et al., 2006).

Public sector organizations have led the way for

private sector organizations to offer work-life programs

such as telework, work schedule flexibilities, employee

assistance programs, family and dependent care pro-

grams, and worksite health and wellness programs

(Feeney & Stritch, 2019). The underlying rationale for the

advancement of work-life programs in the public sector

has been that an employee’s demands in their personal

roles as a caregiver, parent, or spouse are often incompat-

ible and can cause conflict with workplace demands, thus

creating a need for employers to foster the integration

of personal and professional obligations (Den Dulk

et al., 2013; Facer & Wadsworth, 2008; Feeney &

Stritch, 2019; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Additionally, the

challenges of maintaining a work-life balance are more

arduous for women with additional family and household

responsibilities (Matos, 2015). Gender role theory and

assigned social norms reveal that women with more

dependent care duties and family responsibilities are

bound to have greater role conflicts in the workplace and

experience more stress and lower levels of job satisfaction

than men when faced with work-life conflict (Harris, 2004;

Kirkwood & Tootell, 2008). While in the past work-life pro-

grams have been studied in the context of equity theory

(see, e.g., Connell, 2005; Gatrell et al., 2013), role

theory (see, e.g., Cain et al., 2018; Lyness &

Judiesch, 2014), life course theory (Bock Mullins

et al., 2023), and compensation theory (see: Edwards &

Rothbard, 2000; Lambert, 1990), outcomes of work-life

programs have not been analyzed in the context of inter-

sectionality theory, which maintains that there are multi-

ple and overlapping sources of discrimination based on

such identity markers as race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality,

class, religion, and physical ability (Crenshaw, 1989). Our

study goes beyond emerging work-life research (see, e.g.,

Ko, 2022; S. E. Lee & Shin, 2023; Yu, 2019) and is unique

for three distinct reasons. First, it engages with the Office

of Personnel Management’s (OPM) inaugural Federal

Work-life Survey data and comprehensively analyzes five

federal work-life programs. Second, our study asks, could

the public sector make the workplace more equitable for

employees of color by way of work-life programs? More

specifically, our study looks at the intersectionality of

employee gender and employee race and ethnicity in

determining whether employees of color stand to benefit

disparately from federal work-life programs. Third, this

study looks at the differing demands and distribution of

dependent care responsibilities and work-life interference

across federal employee demographic groups to deter-

mine how federal work-life programs benefit employees

of color.

THEORY OF INTERSECTIONALITY

Intersectionality is an important conceptual lens for

studying work-life balance, as it allows for a more accu-

rate picture of the unique challenges faced by women of

color in the workplace. That is, certain demographic

groups may benefit more from work-life programs and

policies than others, as this research seeks to explore.

Revolutionary Black feminist thinker bell hooks (1984,

1992,2006) argues that distinct forms of oppression

stemming from race, caste, class, and colonialization are

deeply intermeshed and multiply to reproduce exponen-

tial oppression for non-white women. In a similar vein,

Crenshaw’s Theory of Intersectionality (1989) establishes

a framework for studying race and gender simultaneously

across various disciplines; it is often cited in feminist work,

arguing that gender does not exist in a bubble. There are

intersecting markers with gender, among them race,

which requires careful consideration. Crenshaw (1989,

1244) conceptualized intersectionality, or the notion that

the experiences of women of color are often the product

of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism. Further-

more, women of color are marginalized within both cate-

gories of their intersectional identity, as women and as

people of color. The theory of intersectionality posits that

an individual’s social location, as reflected in intersecting

social identities, tremendously influences their percep-

tions and experiences of gender and, therefore, must

be at the forefront of any investigation of gender

(Shields, 2008). Additionally, gender must be decon-

structed within the context of power relations within

these social identities (Collins, 1990,2000). According to

intersectional theory as Crenshaw originally defined it,

identity implies all the social categories in which an

individual claims membership and relates to the aware-

ness of self, self-image, self-reflection, and self-esteem

(Ashmore et al., 2004; Shields, 2008).

Likewise, social identities provide a way to organize

social relations, while also reinforcing them, whereas one

identity category has meaning by way of being related to

another category, as part of a dynamic process whereas

categories such as race and gender are formed

and sustained by the individual while each identity com-

ponent is recognizable by others and normalized

(Shields, 2008).

Interestingly, as Zinn and Dill (1996) point out, these

intersecting identities have the ability to create both

1164 WHO BENEFITS FROM WORK-LIFE PROGRAMS?