Breaking the Mold

It took awhile, but I just read Lotte Bailyn's "Breakingthe Mold: Women, Men and Time in the New Corporate World" ... . The fun in reviewing a book seven years after publication is the future perspective. In this case, the author was amazingly prescient!The book is written for social scientists, managers, unionists, and the general public, and is very readable. Basically, Bailyn challenges our thinking about work/family and especially about the way work is designed. Like Hochschild's work, much of the purpose is to make our society value time with families and particularly children. Like Fried's much later work, there is a clear feminist perspective. Like Williams' recent book, issues of fairness are framed in terms of current career structures and the ideal worker norm generating discrimination against women in particular and parents in general. Most impressive, in the concluding chapter Bailyn foresees the increases in worker autonomy and flexibility that were later documented in the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce, and she both predicts and explicitly responds to the backlash against w/f policies which did in fact develop. In other words, if you want a wonderful summary of where the field is headed today, it is virtually all here (without the latest references :-).But there is more. What moved me to read the book at this time was my own conclusion that solving the "time divide" between overworked and underworked Americans is going to be a bit trickier than just creating part-time professional careers (a daunting and worthy task in itself). The fundamental problem is that the overworked folks tend to be professionals and the underworked tend to have less education and fit into very different occupations. To shift work from the first group to the second will therefore require redesigning jobs and tasks.Here is where Bailyn's work remains path breaking today. Chapter three documents the distinct w/f pressures and opportunities associated with several different occupations. Although the chapter is brief, it provides enough information to draw the reader successfully into two of Bailyn's key arguments. The first is that jobs and occupations are sufficiently different that no one policy prescription will serve to resolve w/f conflicts. The second is that successful w/f policies will require redesigning work with the active participation of those doing the work. Since writing the book, Bailyn has set out to make these things happen in research projects with many other folks here (including Francoise Carre, Susan Eaton, and Paula Rayman, although I'm sure there are many others).Although I remain optimistic regarding the opportunities for public policy intervention, Bailyn is very convincing in her claim that we must allow employees to bring their family commitments to work if we are to succeed in creating better lives for American families. Indeed, I think this has already happened in large part, otherwise the backlash wou