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We examine chairs’ beliefs about the role of gender and gender inequality in their departments. Because work-family concerns have been central to explanations of gender inequality in the academy, we pay special attention to these issues.

We analyze interview data collected from 52 department chairs at one research-intensive, public university.

Although the chairs we interviewed were sympathetic and aware in many respects, their views on gender, work, and family were filtered through the lens of personal responsibility and choice, an outmoded view of work as separate and distinct from family life, and a notion of gender as a personal characteristic rather than an entrenched feature of academic work and careers.

Our focus on departmental leaders fills an important gap in the literature, which has focused more on the perspectives of faculty and less on those with the power to frame gender issues.

This qualitative study explores college students’ gender schemas. Sandra Bem’s pioneering work on sex roles and gender schemata are highlighted.

Over 600 college students at a diverse southeastern university were asked to describe the advantages and disadvantages to men’s and women’s gender. Although the question was framed broadly, students devoted significant attention to issues surrounding work and family, highlighting the importance of these roles to their understanding of gender. Over 6,800 responses were coded in The Ethnograph software.

The results showed a gendered schema among these students, with gendered views of work and family, in which men are associated with work and women largely with family. Some racial patterns are also discussed.

This chapter ends with a discussion on how the gender schemas expressed support and maintained a separation of work and family.

Few studies have investigated the relationship between work-family human resource practices and firm-level outcomes. Several organizational studies have addressed the antecedents to firm adoption of work-family initiatives; however, the majority of work-family research investigates the relationship between work-family practices and individual-level outcomes. The current paper begins by providing a critical analysis and synthesis of the extant work-family literature. In addition, we integrate the organizational learning research on firm commitment to work-family policies and the human resource model. We suggest that the level of firm commitment moderates the relationship between work-family policies, the human resource model, and firm performance. Several propositions for future work-family research are presented.

Academia remains a male-dominated occupational realm, even though women have made great gains as actors in higher education. The interconnections of work-related and family-related discrimination experiences and work-related and family-related support are analyzed, drawing on over 100 semi-structured interviews with and written accounts of academic women in 11 Finnish universities from all major disciplinary fields. Finland provides an interesting research context, characterized by relatively high gender equality in both academia and society more generally. Exploring academic women in this setting reveals several paradoxes, namely those of: feminization of academia; family-friendly policies; academic motherhood; and academic endogamy.

The goal of this chapter is to present new ways of conceptualizing family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB), and to present a multilevel model reviewing variables that are linked to this construct. We begin the chapter with an overview of the U.S. labor market's rising work–family demands, followed by our multilevel conceptual model of the pathways between FSSB and health, safety, work, and family outcomes for employees. A detailed discussion of the critical role of FSSB is then provided, followed by a discussion of the outcome relationships for employees. We then present our work on the conceptual development of FSSB, drawing from the literature and from focus group data. We end the chapter with a discussion of the practical implications related to our model and conceptual development of FSSB, as well as a discussion of implications for future research.

Discrimination against workers because of their family responsibilities can violate federal law, yet scholars know little about the context surrounding perceived family responsibilities discrimination (FRD). This chapter investigates both the types of caregiving responsibilities that put workers at risk of FRD and the organizational contexts that give rise to perceived FRD.

We identify features of FRD which make detecting it particularly difficult and theorize the mechanisms by which caregiving responsibilities and organizational contexts lead to perceived FRD. We draw on data from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce for our empirical analysis.

Caregivers who provide both child and eldercare are more likely to perceive FRD than caregivers who provide one type of care, as are people who experience high levels of family-to-work interference and who spend more daily time on childcare. Certain family-friendly and meritocratic organizational contexts are associated with lower perceived FRD.

We measure perceptions, not actual discrimination on the basis of family care responsibilities. Our research cannot pinpoint the factors which intensify or lessen actual discrimination, just perceptions of it.

By pinpointing the characteristics of organizations in which perceived FRD occurs, this chapter shows how organizations can create workplaces in which perceived FRD is less likely.

Purpose – Utilizing the intersectionality framework, this study examines how a racially diverse group of adults aim to balance work–family life.Methodology/approach – This chapter uses qualitative data from the Intersections of Family, Work, and Health Study consisting of 132 black, white, and Mexican-American adults.Findings – We find that socioeconomic status and marriage provide social and economic capital to more easily fulfill role obligations. Individuals with more capital have more choices and are offered a chess board and a variety of pieces to facilitate the goal of creating work–family harmony. Individuals with less capital end up with less job flexibility and play checkers through rigid concrete roles because work decisions are in the hands of their employers instead of their own.Social implications – This chapter sheds light on the influence of high social status and the ability some individuals have to maximize both job flexibility and autonomy in managing work–family life. As we show here, married middle-class whites are able to manage work–family life better than professional black single mothers and working class Mexican Americans by having the ability to choose to play checkers or chess.Originality/value of chapter – We argue that the concept of “balancing” does little to express the ways individuals negotiate the constraints of work and family. By using an intersectionality perspective, we show that conceptualizing work–family life as “checkers or chess” games allow for the cognitive process of decision making (in terms of, for example, time pressures and perceived role demands) to be assessed more efficiently across work–family domains.

We expand the concept of time in the workplace by examining the different ways that time is discussed and the different meanings attached to time. Drawing upon observation, informal discussions, and focus groups, we examine worker discourse about clock time, work time, and family time, and argue that the meaning attached to each is related to workers’ ability to exercise some control over time. Using survey data collected from shift workers, we illustrate the connection between time and control by examining the predictors of job satisfaction and work–family conflict.