Richenda Gambles & Suzan Lewis 
The Myth of Work-Life Balance [PDF ebook] 
The Challenge of Our Time for Men, Women and Societies

Many regard the ways in which paid work can be combined or
’balanced’ with other parts of life as an individual
concern and a small, rather self-indulgent problem in today’s
world. Some feel that worrying about a lack of time or energy for
family relationships or friendships is a luxury or secondary issue
when compared with economic growth or development. In the business
world and among many Governments around the world, the importance
of paid work and the primacy of economic competitiveness, whatever
the personal costs, is almost accepted wisdom. Profits and short
term efficiency gains are often placed before social issues of care
or human dignity.

But what about the impact this has on men and women’s well
being, or the long-term sustainability of people, families, society
or even the economy? Drawing from interviews and group meetings in
seven diverse countries – India, Japan, the Netherlands,
Norway, South Africa, the UK and USA – this book explores the
multiple difficulties in combining paid work with other parts of
life and the frustrations people experience in diverse settings.
There is a myth that ’work-life balance’ can be
achieved through quick fixes rather than challenging the place of
paid work in people’s lives and the way work actually gets
done. As well as exploring contemporary problems, this book
attempts to seed hope and new ways of thinking about one of the key
challenges of our time.

Innehållsförteckning

About the Authors.

Foreword by Robert B. Reich.

Foreword by Tripti P. Desai.

Acknowledgements.

Prologue Global Stories from the Front Line.

PART I: Setting the Scene.

Chapter 1: A Pivotal Challenge in the Global Context.

Chapter 2: Evolutions and Developments in Seven Countries.

Chapter 3: Thinking about Change at Multiple Levels.

PART II: Making the Connections.

Chapter 4: The Invasiveness of Paid Work.

Chapter 5: Care and Connections: Families, Communities,
Friendships and Care of the Self.

Chapter 6: Reciprocal Relationships Between Men and Women: A
Critical Issue.

PART III: Moving Forwards.

Chapter 7: Visions and Strategies for Change.

References.

Index.

Om författaren

Richenda Gambles is currently working as a Lecturer in the
Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of
Oxford, UK. As well as being an Associate of the Work-Life
Research Centre, she has been involved with the Institute of Family
and Environmental Research as a Research Associate and has worked
at the Open University as an Associate Lecturer. She has also
worked as a journalist. She has a degree in Social Policy and a
masters degree in Gender and Social Policy, both from the London
School of Economics.

Suzan Lewis is Professor of Organisational and
Work-Life Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University,
UK, a director of the multi-site Work-Life Research Centre
and was formerly Visiting Professor at the School of Management,
UMIST. She has a degree in Psychology and a Ph D in Organisational
Psychology. Her research focuses on workplace practice, culture and
change in different social policy contexts. She has led many
national and international research projects on these topics and is
currently directing a European Union funded eight-country study on
gender, parenthood and well-being in changing European workplaces.
She has published extensively including The Work Family
Challenge, edited with her son, Jeremy Lewis (1996) and
Work-Life Integration: Case Studies of Organisational
Change, with C. Cooper (2005). She is also a founding editor of
the international journal Community, Work and Family,
published by Taylor & Francis. She has advised governments and
worked with employers and policy makers in Britain, the USA and
Japan, undertaking consultancy and research on work-life
issues.

Rhona Rapoport was director of the Institute of Family
and Environmental Research from 1977 until its closure at the
beginning of 2005. In addition, for over 20 years she has been a
consultant to the Ford Foundation working on affirmative action
issues and work and family issues in the United States and in
’developing’ countries, and in 1994-1995 she was
a scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation. During the 1990s,
she was also Distinguished Fellow and adviser at the Center for
Gender in Organizations at the immons Graduate School of Management
in Boston. She has a degree in Social Science from the University
of Cape Town, South Africa and a Ph D in Sociology from the London
School of Economics, which was based on work done in Uganda for two
years. A major concern in her work is the issue of equity between
men and women. She has collaborated with action research projects
in the USA and the UK as well as with a training programme on
organisational change and work-family issues for advancing diverse
groups in South Africa. She has published extensively over the past
50 years, often with her husband Robert. These publications include
Dual Career Families (1971) and Leisure and the Family
Life Cycle (1975). In 2004, she was awarded The Work Life
Legacy award by the Families and Work Institute in New York. She
has also won an award from the European Work-Life and
Diversity Council.