Women’s work: how mothers manage flexible working in careers and family life.

• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12169

252 New Technology, Work and Employment

New Technology, Work and Employment 35:2

ISSN 0268-1072

Book Review

Women’s work: how mothers manage exible working in careers and family life.

Zoe Young (2018), Bristol University Press. Pages: 232; Available for £24 in

paperback

Zoe Young’s 2018 book ‘Women’s Work: How mothers manage exible working

in careers and family life’ explores the experiences of 30 women balancing the

demands of motherhood with professional and managerial careers. The book draws

on qualitative data, allowing narrative accounts of women’s lives to be presented

in order to explore the interconnectedness of work and family life. Throughout

the book, the author holds a critical lens to the idea of work–life balance being

a panacea for professional women, arguing that, while exible working may have

the potential to facilitate greater equality in the workplace, the concept of work–

life balance as enacted in organisations places constraints on women’s careers.

The book begins by delving immediately into one participant’s narrative and

thereby immediately asserting the centrality of the women’s voices to the academic

discussion. The introduction continues by exploring academic research on the key

themes that run through the book—that of modern motherhood, time and work–

life balance, exible working and maternal employment. Signicantly, Young points

to the ‘inherent incompatibility’ (pp. 12) of societal expectations of modern moth-

erhood in the sense that it must both involve ‘intensive mothering’ as well as

paid work.

The book continues with eight chapters which discuss the choices women make

around careers and motherhood. The majority of the book considers what work–

life balance means to working women by looking at the extent to which women

can make free choices, and the practical and emotional dimensions of exible

working. Young then explores the outcomes of exible working choices for her

participants, before turning in the concluding chapter to the implications of the

research for individuals, organisations and policy-makers. Her ndings suggest

that there are opportunities for exible working to help balance the demands of

work and family life if the interactions between the two are fully

acknowledged.

Throughout the book, Young draws attention to the numerous ways jobs can

be redesigned to become more exible with advances in technology creating new

opportunities. Technology has had a signicant impact on the ways and places

in which work can be carried out and Young points out that, as a result, ‘bound-

aries – spatial, cognitive and spatial – had become more permeable’ (pp. 108).

The extent to which this permeability represents a positive step is contested. The

women in this study simultaneously welcomed the uidity of movement between

personal and work time but also described it as ‘a choice … that they had no

choice but to make’ (pp. 109) in order to ease the stresses of day to day life. It

seems clear, therefore, that for the women Young interviewed technology had

become at once both enabling and constraining. This apparent contradiction serves

to highlight the employers’ role in choosing whether technology is used as a true

enabler or becomes a tool to legitimise work intensication under the guise of

exibility.

Alongside the thematic exploration of the data, each chapter, with the exception

of the last, contains vignettes in which women’s stories have been returned to a