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This study aims to explore whether the working parents' perception about the necessity of childcare centres for their work efficiency is associated with their anxieties and concerns related to their dual responsibilities, i.e. providing proper parental childcare and maintaining work efficiency.

A sample of 100 employed parents, from the Jashore region of Bangladesh, was surveyed, and descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data.

It was revealed that there is a strong association between the perceived negative impact on job performance, childcare, child development, work efficiency and perceived need for a childcare centre.

The limitation of this study is that it was confined to Jashore University of Science and Technology. The results may differ from those of the study conducted outside this study area and the methodology used here.

This study has significant practical implications for employers, childcare service providers and policy makers, especially in Bangladesh. The employers will be able to understand the demand for childcare services centres among the employed parents in respective organizations. It will draw attention of employers of knowledge intensive industries and grants commission to the issue of conflict of work and childcare-related responsibilities of employed parents. This will also make employers conscious about the dilemma that is undergone by employed parents motivating them to take actions for minimizing such conflicts to ensure better job performance of working parents.

Based on this study, childcare providers and other policy makers will be able to ascertain the potential size of the childcare market and determine the requirement for investment in childcare-related human resources development. As the work and childcare responsibilities compete for limited time of working parents, either childcare or job performance suffers. This causes concerns, anxieties or remorse, which again hampers the job performance further. Therefore, this study may motivate the university authority around the world, specifically those in Bangladesh, to provide childcare facilities for its faculties, students and other employees.

This study contributes to the literature on growing demand for centre-based childcare services in an emerging economy context. It provides evidence of high demand for on- and off-site childcare centres to enhance work efficiency of working parents.

Family policy is an area where policy transfer has garnered a lot of attention lately. A growing body of research demonstrates policymakers' interest in and willingness to adopt foreign family policies. However, previous studies have tended to neglect the second mechanism of policy transfer: resistance. This manuscript aims to address this research gap by exploring both the willingness and resistance to policy transfer in Czech and Korean childcare and leave policies.

This study employs a qualitative research design, incorporating structured expert interviews instrumental in in-depth thematic analysis.

The analysis shows that policymakers in both countries demonstrated interest and willingness to transfer family policies, albeit employing different strategies and to varying extents. Moreover, the two countries exhibited significant differences in resistance to family policy transfer, with resistance in the Czech Republic being more frequent and effective. Resistance is directed towards both forced and voluntary transfers, although it isn't always against transfers that require a paradigm change. Policy transfer and non-transfer can concurrently be perceived as threats.

The study concludes that integrating both policy transfer and resistance in the analyses helps to shed light on cross-national differences in family policy change and contributes to a more nuanced portrayal of the world of policy transfer in this policy field.

To better understand employees’ preferred extent for working from home (WFH) setting that implies physical distance from clients and co-workers and enhanced physical proximity to others at home, this study, relying on job-demands resources (J-DR) theory, aims to investigate the relationships between this preference with both the perceived increase in emotional job demands and the exposure to childcare demands. Thus, this study aims to investigate the mediating role of perceived job difficulty in the relationship between emotional job demands and the preferred extent for WFH, and the moderating role of gender in the relationship between the number of children and the preferred extent for WFH.

A total of 239 employees who began WFH during the pandemic completed an online survey. Structural equation modelling was conducted to analyse the data and test the hypotheses.

As expected, an increase in emotional job demands had a significant negative indirect association with the preferred extent for WFH, through perceived increase in job difficulty. Furthermore, the number of children was negatively related to the preferred extent for WFH among male but not female employees.

The findings provide insights for promoting employees’ preferred extent for WFH.

The study points to a relationship between emotional job demands and employee attitudes towards WFH in terms of increased job difficulty and the preferred extent for WFH. It also points to the need to investigate the interaction between sex and number of children to understand employees’ preferred extent for WFH.

The qualitative study was conducted to examine work-family (W-F) balance practices in the collectivist culture of Pakistan. Keeping in view the context of Pakistan, three W-F practices, flexibility, childcare arrangement and social support, were studied by applying the theory of W-F balance.

In total, 16 In-depth interviews from the bank operating in three different cities in Sindh, Pakistan.

Data analysis showed that providing economic benefits and short working hours can achieve W-F balance. Nevertheless, the provision of flexibility in terms of short working hours is more important than economic benefits in balancing both domains of life. Secondly, the provision of childcare arrangements helps to balance work and home life. This practice favors females more compared to males. Thirdly, supervisor and co-worker support is most important in creating W-F balance than family support.

It is crucial to understand the W-F balance practices in developing countries; the bank should encourage policies related to flexibility, childcare arrangement and social support in Pakistan. In addition, banks should take the initiative to develop a way that facilitates the employees' social support, which should consequently help to achieve the W-F balance.

It is crucial to understand the W-F balance practices in developing countries; the bank should encourage policies related to flexibility, childcare arrangement and social support in Pakistan. Banks should take an initiative to develop a way that facilitates the employees' social support which should consequently help to achieve the W-F balance.

This research has a tremendous impact on society due to current changes in South Asian countries including Pakistan constitute a socio-cultural transition that directly affects working and family life.

Given the importance of W-F balance in recent times, the authors identified and extended the W-F balance practices in the collectivist culture of Pakistan. This study is novel and contributes to the W-F balance literature by considering most primary W-F balance practices that employees require.

Compared to the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, more workers today seemingly have choice over where, when and how they do their work. However, gender inequalities at work and at home persist, which may impact perceptions of choice. Thus, researchers must investigate the potential impact of gender and domestic responsibilities on perceptions of work-related options, including perceptions of workspace choice.

Using an original dataset with workers in North America, South America, Europe and Asia (N = 3,147), the authors conducted logistic regression analyses to explore whether workers felt they had a choice in where they do their work (workspace choice). In addition to gender, the authors considered the effect of domestic responsibilities (childcare and housework) on worker perceptions of workspace choice.

In the paper's initial regression, the authors found that men (OR: 1.24; 95%CI 1.04–1.48) as well as workers reporting that a partner was responsible for all or most of the housework (OR: 1.80; 95%CI 1.34–2.40) and childcare (OR 1.51; 95%CI 1.09–2.09) reported feeling a greater sense of workspace choice. Simultaneously, follow-up regression analyses found that women and men whose partners had a greater share of domestic responsibility had amplified perceptions of choice. However, surprisingly, men who claimed primary responsibility for domestic work also reported more choice over workspace.

Using an international sample, the authors explore gender inequities in worker perceptions of workspace choice. The authors' findings suggest that domestic responsibilities interact with gender in interesting ways, leading to differences in perceptions of choice in the post-pandemic workplace.

Although the extant literature has already recognised the negative impact of homebound responsibilities on women's entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is yet to know whether and how the family has any other role in women's businesses during this critical period. This research aims to explore the patronising and patriarchal roles of the family regarding women's small businesses in a developing nation during the pandemic.

This feminist study is based on the interviews of women business-owners of a highly patriarchal developing nation, Bangladesh. During the period of the interview, Bangladesh was one of the top ten regions of the world in terms of the identified coronavirus cases.

The research unveils work-family enrichment by illustrating the help of family members in meeting the challenges of the pandemic period regarding women's certain business activities, such as the innovative production process. Besides, the study reveals the assisting and, in some cases, the non-cooperative approaches of family members concerning additional homebound responsibilities that affect work-family conflict during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whereas the existing literature on women's entrepreneurship regarding the family revolves around work-family conflict due to maternal or caregiving responsibilities during the COVID-19 period, this feminist study substantially contributes to the understanding by revealing how family members help women by getting involved in business activities. It further enriches the prevailing knowledge regarding assisting or hindering activities of family members concerning domestic activities that affect women's businesses during the pandemic.

This study aims to investigate whether social investment (SI) policies improve employment among single mothers.

This paper analyzes the potential effects of SI policies on vulnerable individuals and workers at the macro level by using the employment position of single mothers as a dependent variable. Time-series cross-national data from 18 OECD countries between 1998 and 2017 are analyzed. Multilevel model analysis is also used for robustness check.

I find that public spending on education and family support is positively associated with the employment rates of single mothers. In contrast, active labor market policy (ALMP) spending is negatively associated. ALMP’s negative effects stand out particularly with public spending on job training. Of all family support policies, family allowances are positively associated with single mothers’ employment, which runs counter to the conventional argument that family allowances are a disincentive for women’s or mothers’ employment. Paid leave (length and generosity) is also associated with higher employment for single mothers. There is also some tentative evidence that public spending on maternity leave benefits (spending level) may raise the odds of single mothers being employed, when individual-level factors are controlled for in multilevel analysis we implement for robustness check.

This paper does not analyze the effects of the qualitative properties of SI policies. Future research is necessary in this respect.

The effects of SI policies on employment among single mothers have not yet been examined in the literature. This paper seeks to be a first cut at measuring the effects.

COVID-19 has had various effects on women’s labour supply worldwide. This study investigates how women’s labour market outcomes in the MENA region have been affected by the stringency of governments’ COVID-19 responses and school closures. We examine whether women, particularly those with children at young age, reduced their labour supply to take care of their families during the pandemic.

To investigate whether having a family results in an extra penalty to women’s labour market outcomes, we compare single women to married women and mothers. Using the ERF COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Surveys, we analyse the key conditions underlying women’s labour market outcomes: (1) wage earnings and labour market status including remaining formally employed, informally, unpaid or self-employed, unemployed or out of the labour force and (2) becoming permanently terminated, being suspended, seeing a reduction in the hours worked or wages, or seeing a delay in one’s wage payments because of COVID-19. Ordered probit and multinomial logit are employed in the case of categorical outcomes, and linear models for wage earnings.

Women, regardless of whether they have children or not, appear to join the labour market out of necessity to help their families in the times of crisis. Child-caring women who are economically inactive are also more likely to enter the labour market. There is little difference between the negative experiences of women with children and child-free women in regard to their monthly pay reduction or delay, or contract termination, but women with children were more likely to experience reduction in hours worked throughout the pandemic.

These findings may not have causal interpretation facilitating accurate inference. This is because of potential omitted variables such as endogenous motivation of women in different circumstances, latent changes in the division of domestic work between care-giving and other household members, or selective sample attrition.

Our analysis explores the multiple channels in which the pandemic has affected the labour outcomes of MENA-region women. Our findings highlight the challenges that hamper the labour market participation of women, and suggest that public policy should strive to balance the share of unpaid care work between men and women and increase men’s involvement, through measures that support child-bearing age women’s engagement in the private sector during crises, invest in childcare services and support decent job creation for all.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to identify and highlight the challenges faced by the dual-career couples with one or multiple child/children in maintaining their work–family balance based on family systems theory.

The author purposely selected 26 families (52 participants) in Bangladesh where both husbands and wives work on a full-time basis having one or multiple child/children. The author used focus group discussion (FGD) technique to identify the challenges encountered by them.

After summarising the FGD results, the study identified several challenges faced by those dual-career couples, such as inability to differentiate between professional and family lives, lack of quality time for partners/children, challenges to raise children, lack of childcare centres and lack of professionalism of care workers; and tension and anxiety for their child/children while at offices.

The author expects the results of this qualitative study to be conductive as groundwork for upcoming research studies concerning dual-career couples with child/children. The author also hopes that such results will assist the human resource managers in efficiently crafting and executing some policies regarding dual-career couples with one or multiple child/children.

This article tackles the intersection of mothering and labor through the author's own experience as a feminist mother/manager from Istanbul, Turkey. It aims to revisit the first years of motherhood, exploring the struggle to invent a peculiar maternal subjectivity in opposition and negotiation with the patriarchal institution of motherhood, the new definition of maternal labor in a highly digital, neoliberal context and the issue of marital fairness in a dual-income heterosexual marriage.

The article presents an autoethnographic, retrospective and introspective inquiry into the first seven years of the author's mothering experience in order to offer an in-depth exploration of the various aspects of contemporary maternal labor.

The article shows how maternal labor has shifted in nature and expanded in scope in a contemporary non-Western context. It investigates the dissolution of the spatial, temporal and sensorial boundaries between the managerial labor dedicated to the workplace, and to the family. Highlighting the similarities of the two forms of labor, the article manifests the materiality, tangibility and visibility of maternal labor.

Further intersectional studies shall be beneficial to redefine maternal labor in different contexts.

Departing and diverting from the terms “invisible labor” and “mental load”, the article suggests a shift in terminology to stress the multifaceted medley of managerial tasks mothers undertake today.

The article provides an original take on maternal labor through the first-hand experience of a middle-class, professional mother from Istanbul, Turkey.