MAIS 602: Research Question, Proposal & Reflection

Abstract

The Study of Work Life Balance: How working parents fight gendered norms found in western corporate work cultures aims to address the inherent disparity in western corporate cultures found amongst working parents and the heavy demands placed on working mothers. The fabric of society underpins these pre-conceived gendered norms about who shows up in the workplace and how, limiting the ability for half of the working-age population, to effectively make contributions to society overall. Working parents are a large percentage of the workforce and yet private sector organizations perform such a disservice to their employees when they don’t have policies and procedures in place to fully support their employees. The current landscape of work is changing rapidly and continues to – the COVID-19 pandemic and the new digital age has fundamentally changed work and how people perform their work; this in turn means employers need to pivot to offer more flexibility and opportunities for working parents to find the work life balance they need. The new generation joining the workforce look at work very differently compared to previous generations and there needs to be more robust policies in place across the board to attract and retain working parents. This research aims to further the discussion of work life balance amongst working parents and why it matters.

Introduction

Both the term and concept of ‘work life balance’ is somewhat of a new phenomenon; it wasn’t something readily discussed, especially leading up to the new millennium. Partly due to the changing landscape of work and how people work in the new digital age coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, the definition of work and how people work has changed dramatically. Work life balance wasn’t part of the conversation until women and more specifically, mothers began working outside of the family home much more frequently. Even in the nineties, it was still uncommon, and I remember being one of those kids who had a ‘working mom.’ My mom struggled to find acceptance among the stay-at-home moms and couldn’t identify with the other working moms because they were few and far between. Working mothers who choose (for a variety of reasons) to work and have careers while still wanting to be parents, often find themselves at a crossroads as they navigate a new norm while also challenging pre-conceived notions about women in the workplace and their level of commitment to their jobs because they have children. The juggling act that ensues to make sure everything is managed is a hard act to maintain and from this, the concept of work life balance emerges. A good friend of mine once said, as I sat in the meeting and looked around, I realized I was the only woman in the room; I had been up since 11 o’clock the night before doing laundry, only to have to get up multiple times throughout the night to help my sick child and not one of my male colleagues in the room had to deal with this. And yet, here I was, on time, pretending as if I wasn’t surviving on three hours of broken sleep. I think work life balance emerged when the term ‘having it all’ started to circulate especially for women. The rhetoric of having a rewarding career and a family seemed to permeate everything, and for a time, career-minded women were all chasing this unattainable unicorn. Recently however, another shift has occurred, largely due to the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected working mothers and drove many of them back to the home to take care of their children; however, another shift occurred during the pandemic that hasn’t been as openly discussed – the impacts of working fathers and their search for work life balance. Many had the ability to work from home and did double duty to manage their children during this time which resulted in many fathers continuing to juggle multiple priorities outside of their typical jobs after the pandemic. This isn’t to say working fathers weren’t doing this before, but it appears to be much more pronounced now. Working parents are still trying to figure out how to manage it all while also challenging pre-conceived gendered norms about who works in the workplace vs. who takes time off to care for their children etc. The discussion amongst working parents around work life balance is something that appears to be very specific to Westerner countries, specifically Canada and the United States. It is also not lost on me that this issue is not a global one and this research question comes from a place of deep privilege.

Research Question Evolution

My research has evolved over the past several months leading to changes in the research question being poised. The question changed from Can working parents find work life balance despite pre-determined gendered norms being placed on them by corporate work cultures to The Study of Work-Life Balance: What is it, do we want it and how working parents fight gendered norms found in western corporate work cultures. However, as I continue to work through the research, the question continues to refine itself leading me to land at The Study of Work-Life Balance: How working parents fight gendered norms found in Western Corporate Work Cultures.

Data Collection

I plan to utilize data collected from interviews with working parents and archival and documentary research from several decades ago for comparison purposes. Policies and procedures from both public and private sectors prevalent today will be used to compare with those found during the archival and documentary research phase. This will help inform my research because it will offer a snapshot in time of what was actually going on; similar to when much of the DEI initiatives were being championed across organizations (in part due to George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement), researchers can look back at that time to see what was happening to better understand some of the policies organizations created or adopted. My sample will include working parents (men and women) with children ages 0-18 years old. I think it’s important to engage with working parents from the public sector and incorporate their perceptions even though my research predominantly focuses on western corporate workplaces (the private sector). I was encouraged during the feedback process to draw from archival information in workforce statistics, human resources policies and labour reports. This is something I hadn’t thought of, but this type of archival research can help to illuminate and identify shifts in the work landscape not only as it relates to men and women in the workforce, but the changes seen in the last several decades. The public sector has adopted many policies and practices that are “family-friendly”, and I wonder if working parents in the public sector feel similarly to those working in the private sector. In speaking with some public sector employees working for the Government of Alberta (GoA), vacation days, personal days, sick days and sick days for sick children are general entitlements offered to GoA employees; this is unheard of in most western corporate work cultures and the private sector. Employees in the private sector typically need to use their vacation days for any time off needed and can be fairly limited to the amounts offered; this means that most employees resort to taking vacation days when their children are sick. Practices as simple as giving working parents sick days for their children goes a long way in supporting working parents and providing a level of work life balance many are so desperate for.

The methodological learning throughout the course has broadened my perspective on research overall; it’s difficult to point to one methodology being better than another because they all have their merit. The use of archival sources may be difficult because work-life balance is a relatively new concept; however, I still want to include them to highlight how the roles men and women play in the workforce have changed over the years. The use of archival sources needs to consider the validity and reliability of the sources themselves since much of the research may be from a specific viewpoint (working men from a specific era). In this example, using the social constructionist methodological approach would be helpful as it considers how the social reality of the time is created in the documents themselves. Throughout the discussion process, many parallels were drawn between archives and social media - something I hadn’t considered. Social media acts as a living archive and the ‘truth’ can be difficult to come by; platforms such as Facebook provide memories of past posts and comments– a snapshot taken in time. It can be difficult to look back on these as we’re often looking back with more information and a clearer picture of reality than we had at the time.

The IPA or interpretive phenomenological analysis discussed by Griffin et. al., (2018) is particularly interesting when applying it to my research question. This methodology would help move the discussion forward specifically when discussing gendered work norms in western work cultures and men and women’s differing perspectives on work life balance. I appreciated the philosophical hermeneutics methodology because of the focus on understanding vs. measuring. In this approach, the researchers’ viewpoints, culture, and values help to shape the research because of the relationship between understanding and interpreting. As Agrey (2014) states, philosophical hermeneutics is the ordinary work of trying to make sense of things we don’t understand; we do this every day, simply by living our lives. As it relates to my own research question, understanding work-life balance and what it means to men and women in western corporate work cultures will vary especially when roles are reversed; this methodological approach is useful because it also considers my own experiences, values and perspective leading to additional depth.

The methodologies presented in the Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods (2018) were very different from the methodologies presented earlier on in the course. Section 3: Engaging and Distributing of the Routledge Handbook (2018) offers several methods that may transform the research, specifically affective analysis which offers a deeper and more complex understanding of people through inference rather than focusing on what is being said; this approach may be useful when interviewing and observing working parents. Laura Mark’s (2018) “Affective Analysis” also has a lens of criticality and impartiality I think is needed especially as it relates to my research question. From my own perspective as a working mother in a male-dominated industry, bias can creep in therefore, I’ll need to be mindful of this as the researcher. Jussi Parikka’s (2018) “Digging” can also be applied quite easily to my research; digging allows the researcher to unearth the history and past but doesn’t stop there – it calls for reengagement and redefinition, moving towards change and fundamental change. The methodology of “Digging” (Routledge, 2018) will be helpful to identify the different ways governments and organizations in both the public and private sectors support working parents; to focus on what they need rather than what they needed in the past. It will be difficult to find historical/documentary research devoted to all voices therefore, I plan to use additional methodologies such as the interpretive phenomenological approach (IPA) and philosophical hermeneutics, both of which will provide a good foundation for my research question. The methodologies found in the Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research (2018) will frame the discussion around what is no longer working, what needs to change and how to get there. I will utilize various methodological approaches to answer the research question, The Study of Work-Life Balance: How working parents fight gendered norms found in western corporate work cultures.

Data Analysis

As the researcher, and to properly assess and interpret the data, I need to ensure I am engaged as an active listener to meet participants where they are in their current search for work life balance. I need to remain open and flexible during the interview process to gain their trust; this in turn will provide a richer context and further discussion of work life balance. There are many layers to the research question, from a working parent perspective of what work life balance means individually to each person but also the comparison between public and private sectors and how working parents fight gendered norms in both the private and public sectors as it relates to child-rearing. It will be interesting to determine if working parents of children aged 10 years and up struggle as much as those with younger children. I also want to ensure I have an appropriate sample size focusing not just on heterosexual relationships but relationships with two working mothers and fathers; I’m curious to know if both mothers in a same-sex relationship feel similarly as working mothers in heterosexual relationships. The nuance and complexity of the research isn’t seen on the surface yet peeling back the layers allows for further discussion and analysis. I am still determining how to lay everything out so nothing is missed and allows each part to move seamlessly into the next, furthering the discussion. I am struck by the realization that the notion of work-life balance may be a Westerner construct and perhaps not relevant or important in other parts of the world, including other developed nations. It’s important to note too that the discussion around work-life balance is a privileged one and can be tone deaf; this is something I’ll have to be aware of as I work through my research.

References

Agrey, L. G. (2014). Philosophical hermeneutics: A tradition with promise. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 2(2), 188–192. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2014.020211 

Gidley, B. (2018). Chapter 16: Doing historical and documentary research. In C. Seale (Ed.), Researching society and culture (4th ed.; pp. 285–303). SAGE.

Griffin, A., & May, V. (2018). Narrative analysis and interpretive phenomenological analysis. In C. Seale (Ed.), Researching society and culture (4th ed., pp. 511–531).

Marks, L. (2018). Affective analysis. In Lury, C., Fensham, R., Heller-Nicholas, A., Lammes, S., Last, A., Michael, M., & Uprichard, E. (2018). Routledge handbook of interdisciplinary research methods  (pp. 128-134). Routledge.

Parikka, J. (2018). Digging. In Lury, C., Fensham, R., Heller-Nicholas, A., Lammes, S., Last, A., Michael, M., & Uprichard, E. (2018). Routledge handbook of interdisciplinary research methods  (pp. 128-134). Routledge.