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One of the major challenges for managing human resources in the 1990s is to appropriately respond to employees having to manage the dual responsibilities of home and work (Paris, 1989). Balancing work and family has been considered a women's issue, with the question being whether women could handle both the home demands and the responsibilities of a paid job. Yet the entrance of women into the workforce has also required major role adjustments by their husbands. According to the traditional model of work, husbands prioritize work over family with the wife providing the necessary emotional and physical support to keep the husband in “good working order” (Pleck, 1977). In today's society, this model is no longer widely applicable, as men in dual earner families receive less emotional support than their single‐earner counterparts (Burke, & Weir, 1976; Keith, & Schafer, 1980) and tend to assume greater family responsibilities (Holahan, & Gilbert, 1979; Weingarten, 1978).

The interaction of work and household responsibilities in dual‐career families is described. If married, the woman manager almost always faces the traditional demands placed on women by husband and family. The notion of “role overload” is developed but it is stressed that this need not mean that a woman′s productivity on the job suffers. Organisations need to recognise that women′s work patterns differ from men′s and should evaluate quality of work, not necessarily the number of hours on the job. By understanding the demands women face and by providing women the flexibility needed to deal with them, both the quality of working life for women and their contributions to the firm can be enhanced.

The February issue of the National Westminster Bank's Quarterly Review contains an article by Lynne Evans entitled “The ‘Demographic ‐ Dip’: A Golden Opportunity for Women in the Labour Market?”

Recently, more and more North American women have been choosing to pursue careers in management and the professions. The invasion of women into these once exclusively masculine domains has been accompanied by a host of problems, many of which were unanticipated. In the articles presented here we examine the nature of these problems and provide some suggestions about what can be done to help resolve them.