Live To Work' or Work To Live' A Qualitative Study of Gender and Work-Life Balance Among Men and Women in Mid-Life

Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 16 No.
1 January 2009
‘Live to Work’ or ‘Work to Live’? A

Qualitative Study of Gender and
Work–life Balance among Men and
Women in Mid-life
Carol Emslie* and Kate Hunt
Many contemporary studies of ‘work–life balance’ either ignore gender

or take it for granted. We conducted semi-structured interviews with men
and women in mid-life (aged 50 to 52 years) in order to compare their
experiences of work–life balance. Our data suggest that gender remains
embedded in the ways that respondents negotiate home and work life. The
women discussed their current problems juggling a variety of roles
(despite having no young children at home), while men confined their
discussion of such conflicts to the past, when their children were young.
However, diversity among men (some of whom ‘worked to live’ while
others ‘lived to work’) and women (some of whom constructed themselves
in relation to their families, while others positioned themselves as ‘inde-
pendent women’) was apparent, as were some commonalities between
men and women (both men and women constructed themselves as ‘prag-
matic workers’). We suggest ways in which gender-neutral theories of
work–life balance may be extended.
Keywords: gender, work–life balance, lifecourse, qualitative analysis
Introduction
T his article explores the ways in which men and women in mid-life nego-
tiate the intersections between paid work and other areas of life. As
Gregory and Milner (2009) outline in the editorial of this special issue,
research in this field has focused on ‘role conflict’, ‘role strain’, ‘work–home
conflict’, ‘work–family conflict’ and, most recently, ‘work–life balance’
Address for correspondence: *Carol Emslie, Medical Research Council Social and Public Health
Sciences Unit, 4 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8RZ, UK, e-mail: C.Emslie@sphsu.mrc.ac.uk
© 2009 The Author(s)

Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
152 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
(defined as ‘satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home, with a

minimum of role conflict’ by Clark 2000 p. 751). Rather than ‘work’ and
‘home’ being conceptualized as separate domains that have no bearing on
each other, it is now recognized that domestic identities and responsibilities
sometimes spill over into the workplace and that organizational identities
and responsibilities often cross into home life (Halford et al., 1997; Kanter,
1977).
Many contemporary studies of work and home life either ignore gender
or take it for granted (Gerson, 2004). One example is Clark’s (2000) work–
family border theory that aims to explain how people ‘manage and negotiate
the work and family spheres and the borders between them in order
to attain balance’ (p. 750). She compares the domains of work and family to
different countries with contrasting cultures, and describes people as
border-crossers who move between these worlds. Borders are an appropri-
ate metaphor for this process, given that they vary in permeability (the
extent to which elements from other domains may enter: this includes psy-
chological permeations such as worrying about work when at home, as well
as physical permeations such as a partner or child entering one’s home
office) and flexibility (the extent to which borders may expand or contract:
this may apply to the flexibility of hours or to the location in which work
takes place). Borders may also operate more strongly in one direction than
another. For example, some employees are expected to work extra hours at
short notice, whatever the consequences for their domestic life, while others
may have flexibility in their working hours but not in the time they must
collect their children from school. This is a useful theory for conceptualizing
work–life balance. However, it is largely gender-blind. One of the aims of
this article is to start to integrate gender into Clark’s work–family border
theory.
Here, gender is conceptualized as a dynamic set of socially constructed
relationships, rather than as a fixed and binary category. Following West and
Zimmerman (1987), gender is best understood as a verb (‘an ongoing activity
embedded in everyday interaction’ p. 130), rather than as a property of
individuals, and is continually constructed over the life course. Conceptual-
izing gender in this way disrupts the notion that masculine and feminine
identities are the stable characteristics of individuals. Instead, gender identi-
ties are constantly renegotiated. Paechter (2003) integrates Butler’s (1990)
theories about the performative nature of gender with Wenger’s (1998) ideas
of communities of practice to try to discern which masculinities and femi-
ninities we perform, when we perform them and how this comes about. She
suggests that: ‘the learning of what it means to be male or female ... results in
shared practices in pursuit of the common goal of sustaining particular local-
ized masculine and feminine identities’ (p. 71).
Paechter suggests that masculine and feminine identities are related to
the communities of practice of masculinity and femininity in five key ways:
Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

GENDER AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN MID-LIFE 153
identity as the negotiated experience of self (the ways that we ‘do’ mascu-
linity or femininity contribute to how we understand who we are), identity
as community membership (competent and convincing performances of
masculinity or femininity that conform to group norms are central to iden-
tity), identity as a learning trajectory (identity is always work in progress, as
meanings of masculinities and femininities constantly change over time,
place and institution), identity as a nexus of multi-membership (identity
has to be constructed to encompass the intersections of participation in
many different communities), and identity as an intersection between the
local and the global (local masculinities and femininities are influenced by
the mass media, popular culture, the law and so on). Here, we explore links
between different gendered practices (that is, different ways of doing work–
life balance) and constructions of masculine and feminine identities.
Gender is integral to any discussion about intersections between paid
work and family life. The spatial separation of home and work brought
about by industrialization in the 19th century was closely bound up with the
ideology of separate spheres — public life for men and domesticity for
middle-class women (Connell, 2005; Smith and Winchester, 1998) — and
gender roles continue to be constructed around these masculine/public and
feminine/private dualities. By the mid 1990s the ‘traditional family’ (with
one full-time male breadwinner) ceased to be the most common family type
in Britain, and dual earner families became the norm (Brannen et al., 1997).
While there appear to be signs of ‘growing gender convergence, but not
equity, in parents’ contribution to childcare time’ (O’Brien, 2005, p. 4),
women are still mainly responsible for domestic labour and childcare (Tang
and Cousins, 2005), and also perform most of the emotional work in families
(for example, listening to and comforting children, giving emotional support
to partners, doing things to improve or maintain relationships) (Strazdins
and Broom, 2004).
Given these responsibilities, most research has focused on how women
(particularly women in high status jobs or in dual career families) have rec-
onciled the worlds of family and employment (Guest, 2002). A small body of
research has investigated how men perceive the connections between work
and home life. Much of this work has taken place in the last decade (for
example, Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Halford, 2006; Hatten et al., 2002; Smith
and Winchester, 1998; Speakman and Marchington, 2004), although research
began earlier in the USA (for example, Cohen, 1988; Pleck, 1985; Weiss, 1987).
Recently, UK government policy documents also seem to be including men
by noting that parents (not just mothers) need more choice about how to
balance work and family life (HM Treasury, 2004). However, in practice, the
large disparity in maternity and paternity leave entrenches traditional gender
roles, and the assumption remains that flexible working and work–life
balance are predominately issues for the working mothers of young children
(Smithson and Stokoe, 2005).
© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Research on gender and ‘work–life balance’

Research on work–life balance is complicated by the gendered structure of
the labour market. In many countries, women work shorter hours and
occupy lower status jobs than men. Quantitative studies have attempted to
control for this difference by comparing men and women working in similar
occupations. The results are mixed: some studies have found that women
report more conflict between work and home life than men (Frankenhaeuser
et al., 1989; Lundberg et al., 1994); others have found that men and women
report similar levels of conflict (Eagle et al., 1997; Emslie et al., 2004a; Hughes
and Galinsky, 1994; Swanson et al., 1998; Triplett et al., 1999; Winslow, 2005),
while one study (Chandola et al., 2004) found different results for different
countries. This evidence is hard to interpret and does not tell us anything
about how men and women understand and negotiate the intersections
between work and home life. In order to do this it is necessary to take a
qualitative approach.
Relatively few qualitative studies have set out to compare how men and
women perceive the intersection of work and home life. Backett’s (1982)
study of parental negotiation is unusual in sampling middle-class couples in
the UK at a particular stage in the life course (early family formation), rather
than employees across a range of ages. Her findings underline the importance
of gender. Mothers who were not in paid employment found it difficult
to reconcile the demands of domestic work and childcare, while fathers
managed to leave domestic problems behind them physically and mentally as
they travelled to work each day. Parents used coping mechanisms to help
maintain a belief in the fairness of division of labour in the household, despite
evidence that fathers remained peripheral to family life: for example, a belief
that fathers were willing, and available, to help at home sustained most
families.
Organizational studies have also found gender differences. Loscocco’s
(1997) study of small business owners in the USA found that men saw the
flexibility of their working hours as a symbol of the control they had through
being their own boss, but tended to use it only occasionally, while women
used flexibility as a key resource in trying to achieve a work–life balance. She
concluded that women fulfil gender norms when they accommodate work to
family life, while men fulfil them when they put their business first. Halford
et al. (1997) also noted the gendered dimensions of home and work in their
study of UK local government employees. They found a disjuncture between
the emphasis employees placed on a shared commitment to work and home
life in partnerships, and their descriptions of daily life in which women
continued to bear the brunt of domestic work. This made the separation of
home and work life particularly difficult for women. Similarly, Connell’s
(2005) study of public sector workers in Australia found that women
were accountable both for running the household and for managing the

relationship between the home and the workplace. Connell suggested that
work–life problems for men and women may be quite different:
Dropping dead from career-driven stress, or shrivelling emotionally from
never seeing one’s children, is a different issue from exhaustion because of
the double shift, or not getting promotion because of career interruptions.
(Connell, 2005, p. 378)
In contrast, Hochschild (1997) found in her well-known study of an American
corporation that there were increasing similarities in the way in which men
and women regarded work and home life. She suggested that, in the past, the
home was seen as a haven from which (male) workers could escape from the
unpleasant world of paid work to relax and be appreciated. Now, both men
and women regard home as an additional place of work, while the workplace
is often seen as a haven (indicated by her subtitle ‘when work becomes home
and home becomes work’):
Nowadays, men and women both may leave unwashed dishes, unresolved
quarrels, crying tots, testy teenagers, and unresponsive mates behind to
arrive at work early and call out, ‘hi, fellas, I’m here!’ (1997, p. 39)
Aims
Our study aims to make a contribution to the field by taking gender as a
central theme. Gerson (2004) argues that we should understand work and
family through a gender lens. Rather than assuming homogeneity within
gender groups and gender differences between them, she suggests we should
analyse diversity among women and among men, and look for convergences
(rather than assuming divergences) between men and women. Therefore,
in this qualitative study we compare the experiences of work–life balance
among men and women in mid-life (aged between 50 and 52 years) in order
to explore whether there were gender differences or similarities among the
respondents. We also explored whether different gendered practices (that is,
different ways of doing work–life balance) were linked to different gender
identities, and thus to diversity among men and women. Through this
empirical work, we hope to begin to integrate gender into Clark’s work–
family border theory.
We chose to take a life course approach as it helps us to appreciate the
‘larger social contexts in which personal choices and strategies are crafted’
(Gerson, 2004, p. 164). We focused on respondents in mid-life partly because
most studies concentrate on younger respondents (usually the mothers of
young children) and partly because of the rapid changes in gender relations
over the lifetime of this cohort. The respondents were born in the early 1950s
and so entered adolescence and adult life in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
when widespread challenges to social and sexual mores, precipitated by

second wave feminism and other political movements, were changing gender
relations (Walby, 1997). They also entered their working and reproductive
lives as significant pieces of legislation were enacted in the UK (for example,
the Abortion Act of 1967, the Equal Pay Act of 1970 and the Sexual Discrimi-
nation Act of 1975), making them one of the first generations to have more
control over their fertility throughout their reproductive lives (Hunt, 1990).
However, the fact that a large gender pay gap (Perfect and Hurrell, 2003)
remains over three decades after such legislative changes took place is one
illustration of the power and persistence of gender divisions.
Methodology
This article is based on semi-structured interviews with 11 men and 12

women born in the early 1950s (and so aged between 50 and 52 at the time of
interview in 2002–2004) who were sampled from the middle cohort of the
West of Scotland Twenty-07 study (Macintyre et al., 1989). This longitudinal
survey of the social patterning of health has collected quantitative data from
three age cohorts in the west of Scotland, aged 15, 35 and 55 when first
contacted in 1987–1988. The main focus of the Twenty-07 study is on health,
but it also has a large number of questions relating to gender and work, and
so provides an excellent sampling frame for this qualitative study.
The relationship between gender, work (both paid and unpaid) and health
has been a major area of interest since the inception of the Twenty-07 study
(Hunt, 2002). At a time when few studies systematically compared role con-
flict in women and men, a quantitative analysis of data from the middle cohort
found that reports of work conflict were associated with higher levels of
psychological malaise in both men and women (Hunt and Annandale, 1993).
The Twenty-07 study also includes a measure of gender role orientation (the
Bem Sex Role Inventory; Bem, 1981), which asks respondents to rate their
personality according to qualities which have been judged to be stereotypi-
cally masculine (for example, dominant, defend my own beliefs, willing to
take risks) or feminine (for example, affectionate, sympathetic) (Annandale
and Hunt, 1990; Hunt, 2002; Hunt et al., 2004). While these instruments may
be a fairly crude way of representing how people perceive themselves, they
are useful in selecting respondents with a range of gender role orientations
(see also Emslie et al., 2004b).
The aim of this study was to explore experiences of work–life balance
among men and women in mid-life, and also to explore the ways in which
respondents with different ways of ‘doing’ gender perceived and experienced
work–life balance. We therefore wished to include in the sample some
respondents who had conventional biographies and gender role orientations
for their generation, and others who had less conventional biographies
and gender role orientations. We used self-rated health as another way of

sampling respondents, given that there is evidence that poor health can pose
a challenge to identity and cause people to reflect on taken for granted
gendered beliefs and behaviour (Charmaz, 1995; O’Brien et al., 2007). This
method of purposive sampling is used when the aim is to select people who
possess specific characteristics in order to illuminate the phenomena being
studied, rather than to select a representative sample drawn from a popula-
tion (Mays and Pope, 1995).
From the quantitative data in the Twenty-07 study, we knew that the
typical pattern for this age-group was to get married and have children in
their twenties. We therefore randomly selected 12 ‘conventional’ interview
respondents who married and had children before the age of 30 (see Table 1).
They also had average masculinity scores (according to the Bem Sex Role
Inventory) for their sex and perceived themselves to be in reasonable health
(that is, their self-assessed health was excellent, good or fair). In addition, 11
respondents were identified who had biographies which were less conven-
tional (for example, never married, never had children, perceived their health
to be poor, or had extremely high or low Bem Sex Role Inventory masculinity
scores). Extreme masculinity scores were defined as those in the top or
bottom 10 per cent of the sample, calculated separately for men and women
using the quantitative data from the Twenty-07 survey. Although our main
focus was on gender rather than on social class, we wanted to include men
and women from a range of socioeconomic positions. We therefore included
both working-class respondents (defined as those working in manual occu-
pations) and middle-class respondents (those in non-manual occupations).
All of our respondents, with one exception, were from the ethnic majority
(white) population, which reflected the relatively homogeneous ethnic com-
position of this age group in this area. Ethical permission for the qualitative
study was granted by the University of Glasgow.
After an explanation of the study and assurances about confidentiality,
all respondents were asked to give their informed consent and were asked
whether their accounts could be tape-recorded. The object was to access the
relationships and assumptions that made up the respondents’ world-view so
the interview began with a request for respondents to give a brief overview
of their life. Using this overview as a guide, the interviewer (CE) then con-
centrated on particular stages in their biography: childhood; becoming a
young adult; and work and domestic life as an adult. The respondents were
also asked how they combined work with other aspects of their life and if
there had been any occasions when this had been problematic. Therefore,
respondents were free to decide what aspects, if any, of their work–life
balance had been problematic (for example, combining childcare and paid-
work, or elder-care and other responsibilities) and the period in their life
when this had been most difficult.
The interviews were transcribed, and the accuracy of the transcripts
was checked by listening to the tapes. Preliminary analysis began during

Table 1: Selected characteristics of interview respondents
158
Current or most Current marital Current household composition

Name* (age) recent job status (in addition to respondent) Reason for sampling
‘Conventional’ early adult biographies for their age and gender Married and had children
Rona (52) Nurse Married Husband (children left home) before they were 30 years
Maureen (51) Teacher Divorced Partner and young son old, average masculinity
Heather (51) Secretary Divorced Teenager scores and in reasonable
Michelle (51) Auxiliary nurse Married Husband and teenagers health
Diane (51) Information technology Married Husband and teenager
May (51) Technician Married Husband (children left home)
Alec (51) Architect Married Wife (children left home)
Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Trevor (51) Engineer Married Wife and teenager
Malcolm (52) Electrician Married Wife and teenager
Steve (51) Postman Married (2nd time) Wife and teenager
Gary (51) Engineer Married Wife and teenager
Will (51) Own business (joiner) Married Wife (children left home)
Less ‘conventional’ early adult biographies for their age and gender
Penny (51) Secretary Married Husband No children, very low
masculinity score
Jackie (51) Social work Divorced Lives alone (children left home) Poor health
Marilyn (52) Social work Single Lives alone Never married, no children,
very low masculinity score
Gloria (52) Media (freelance) Divorced Lives alone (children left home) Very high masculinity score
Shona (52) Social care Single Partner Never married, no children
Ruth (51) Hospice support work Married Husband (children left home) Poor health
Ronald (51) Shift manager Married Wife (children left home) Poor health, very low
masculinity score
Douglas (50) Surveyor Single Brother Never married, no children,
poor health
nd
George (52) Housing manager Married (2 ) Wife and stepdaughter No children, very high
masculinity score
Jimmy (51) Council cleansing Divorced Son (21) Very low masculinity score
Kenny (52) Own business (training) Divorced Partner No children, very high
masculinity score
GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
© 2009 The Author(s)

Note: *All names are pseudonyms.
fieldwork, with interviews being conducted in batches and then discussed by

both researchers before further interviews were set up. Some questions were
modified in the light of these discussions. The software package QSR Nvivo
was used to facilitate the analysis of interviews and field notes. Following
McCracken (1988), the analysis moved from the particular (a detailed analysis
of language in each transcript) to the general (a comparison of patterns and
themes across all the transcripts). Hypotheses were formulated, tested
against the transcripts and, where necessary, reformulated in a cyclical
process.
Findings
Looking back over their lives, the respondents who were parents described
how they had occupied traditional gender roles when their children were
young. The men had been the main breadwinners while the women had
taken time out of the labour market or arranged their paid work around their
family life. Apart from brief periods of unemployment, all but one of the men
had been in continuous full-time employment. In contrast, only two women
(neither of whom had children) had been in continuous full-time employ-
ment. At the time of interview all of the men were in paid work (with one
working part-time), and 11 of the 12 women were in paid work (with three
working part-time). Only one woman still had a young child at home; the
other respondents’ children were either teenagers or young adults, many of
whom had left home. More men than women still had children living at
home, while more women than men lived alone (see Table 1).
Experiences of work–life balance: revealing gender differences

Almost all the women had experienced difficulties in co-ordinating different
areas of their lives and most of their accounts of these difficulties related to
the present or the very recent past. Penny was an exception. She explained
that she did not experience problems because she had few commitments, no
children and worked traditional office hours. The other women found it
difficult to combine roles such as employee, partner, mother, friend and
daughter, and spontaneously used metaphors of juggling and balance to
express these difficulties (for example, ‘can’t keep all the balls in the air’,
‘juggling match’, need ‘more of a balance’). Many discussed caring for grand-
children or assisting elderly parents with household tasks. Maureen and
Heather spoke about making difficult choices between spending time with
ageing parents or with their children:
Maureen (51 years): When my father was in hospital ... I [used to] come
home from work, stay with my son for a couple of hours ... and then go

straight to the hospital and stay there overnight.... Well that was interfering
with my family life ... but it was just what you had to do.
Heather (51 years): After my dad died, I maybe spent too much time with my
mother when I should have been spending time with the children.... you sit
back and you think ‘Oh, maybe I should have done it differently’. But it’s
too late you know?
Many accounts centred on the impact of paid work on women’s lives. Women
described how they worried about work tasks while at home (for example,
waking up at night to worry about phone calls they had not made and
dreaming about work situations) and how their work sometimes left them
too exhausted for other activities. Some women felt that these stressful situ-
ations at work had negatively influenced their health. Indeed, two women
had recently been signed off sick and prescribed anti-depressants due to
work stresses. However, paid work was also described in positive terms.
Some women suggested that their workplaces had been a place of refuge
when they had difficulties in their personal life. Comments that work was
‘therapeutic’ or prevented them from sinking into depression suggest that
paid work can help to buffer stresses from other spheres of life.
Socioeconomic circumstances influenced the accounts women gave of how
they managed different roles in their lives. Middle-class women readily
described their busy lives and then reflected upon their desire to have more
‘time for themselves’ at this point in the life course. This idea was expressed
by women both with and without children. Heather gave an eloquent account
of this problem, including a description of the emotional work she still does
for her teenage son:
Heather (51 years): I’m doing a course at the moment which takes up two
nights a week, I go to my mother’s one night a week.... My son still stays
with me.... I have to spend a lot of time listening to him ... I thought by this
time I would have more time for me, to do really what I wanted.
In contrast, working-class women played down the difficulty of reconciling
different roles and emphasized that they were coping or managing. Their
suggestions that ‘you just got on with it’ served to normalize competing
demands. For example, May said that even when she had to combine caring
for her sick parents with her paid work ‘that didn’t stop me doing anything’:
May (51 years): I never, ever found it difficult ... anything I have wanted to
do I have planned ahead and got it sorted but I could do what I wanted to
do really.... There was a wee while when my mum and dad were both ill....
I was running up and down there, but again that didn’t stop me doing
anything.
Men’s accounts differed from the women’s in two important ways. First, most
of the men focused on the way in which paid work dominated their lives,

while the women had discussed the difficulties of balancing a range of roles
at home, as well as balancing home and work life. Secondly, most men
thought they currently had a good balance between paid work and other
activities, although those who continued to work shifts reported that this
made it difficult to organize their social lives. While women discussed recent
or current problems, men’s accounts of problems tended to be located firmly
in the past. Many men described working longer hours in the past than they
did now. For example, Kenny was a senior manager and felt he had more
control over his career now than he had in the past:
Kenny (52 years): I’ve got quite a healthy balance. When I worked for the
Council ... I was going home and working at weekends, working at night
... and no, I don’t do that (now).
Many of the men who were fathers identified the time when their children
were young as the period when they had experienced most conflict between
work and home life: working long hours, weekends, overtime and working
away from home were all problematic. Their accounts suggested they per-
ceived this conflict as an individual problem for their family to solve. Alec was
the only respondent (male or female) who gave a structural analysis of the
situation, emphasizing that there has ‘got to be better ways of organizing
family life’.
Middle-class men often described the need to work long hours in order to
establish themselves in their profession, or to finish studying for professional
qualifications. Alec, an architect, commented that in order to find time for the
aspects of his job that he found interesting (design work), he had previously
worked extended hours. Working-class men reported that they had often
needed to work extra shifts or overtime to bring enough money into the
household. Ronald commented that the timing of his shifts had restricted
his ability to participate in his children’s activities (see Speakman and
Marchington, 2004 for similar findings):
Alec (51 years): Any kind of design work ... would have to be done in the
evenings and at weekends. Latterly, I kind of regret that, because in the
early days when my children were growing up, I hardly saw them out of
their pyjamas because I was leaving early in the morning and coming home
late at night.
Ronald (51 years): The wages weren’t brilliant then and to get the extra
money you were doing extra shifts ... your shifts restrict you for certain
things, likes of the kids are in school plays, in pantos and you’re working,
you don’t see a lot of these things.
These accounts suggest that men regretted missing important parts of their
children’s early years (see also Hochschild [1997]). However, middle-class
men, in particular, balanced this regret with the recognition that the financial

gain had been important. Some of the fathers’ accounts suggested that time
spent at work fulfilling their role as breadwinners conflicted with time their
wives expected them to spend at home as fathers. Trevor and Malcolm
alluded to past tensions over their working hours:
Trevor (51 years): At that time, the kids were young, so she [his wife] had to
look after them all herself at night. I was working till 10 or 11 o’clock at
night. She’d obviously had a problem doing it. I didn’t realize the full
extent at the time.
Malcolm (52 years): My wife and I were falling out, especially when he [his
son] was younger, because I was never here, I was working.
A few men did not follow this general trend. Steve was the only man who had
not had any problems co-ordinating different areas of his life. He worked for
the Royal Mail, and so started and finished work by lunch time. He felt this
arrangement had given him lots of free time to see his family and enjoy a
social life. In addition, two men discussed current or recent problems they
were having. Will was unusual as he described how he managed to spend
time at home with his children when they were young. He also discussed
currently trying to juggle work and family life. Jimmy was the only man who
currently lived with his (adult) child but without a partner. Like some of the
women, he described trying to juggle a number of tasks (running the house-
hold, looking after his 21-year old son and working):
Jimmy (51 years): It’s only me and my son stay in the house.... I feel as if I’m
coming in here now, and all I’m doing is ironing and tidying up, trying to
decorate, oh it’s hellish so it is! [laughs].... And you’ve never got enough
time.
Work–life balance and the construction of gender identities

After analysis of the interviews, we grouped respondents into the new cat-
egories that emerged from the rich qualitative data. (Interestingly, these new
categories did not correspond to our sampling categories: for example,
respondents who expressed less traditional attitudes in the qualitative inter-
views did not all come from the less conventional group sampled from the
Twenty-07 study, using previously collected quantitative data). Some respon-
dents constructed fairly traditional gender identities. These men noted the
centrality of paid work in their lives (‘living to work’) while these women
emphasized their caring responsibilities (‘female carers’). Others constructed
less traditional gender identities (‘independent women’ and men who
‘worked to live’, who underscored the importance of their lives outside paid
employment). A final, mixed-sex group of respondents who had similar class

backgrounds and perceived their jobs as a means to an end (bringing in

income), were categorized as ‘pragmatic workers’. We describe each in turn.
Constructing traditional gender identities: ‘female carers’ and men who ‘live to
work’. Ruth, Rona and Michelle (female carers) remarked on their caring
responsibilities in both their home and work lives. All three had caring jobs
which they enjoyed in hospital environments. Indeed, Ruth (a hospice
support worker) stated that she would continue to do voluntary work in the
hospice after she retired. All intended to continue working full-time until
around the age of 60.
All had been married to their original partner for at least 30 years and had
children. They positioned themselves as women whose identities were
closely bound up with their families. This was despite the fact that their
domestic situation was not always particularly traditional. Both Rona and
Michelle were currently working full-time while their husbands had been
made redundant. The following quotations illustrate the way this group of
women describe the importance of their families to them:
Rona (52 years): We’ve always been an old-fashioned couple and we still are.
My husband had his career and I had a job, which actually suited me very
well. I have this lovely boss at work who’s 30, and she is just climbing the
ladder. All of a sudden she’ll say when she’s 36 or something, ‘Oh, I wanted
a family!’ — you know, you can’t have it all.
Ruth (51 years): You could say that I just live for my family.
The accounts of two men (Trevor and Douglas) suggested that paid work had
been crucial throughout their lives and that they ‘lived to work’. They
enjoyed their work and did not intend to retire until at least the age of 65.
Their largely unquestioning dedication to work made them more likely to
accept that employment conflicted with other areas of life. Trevor stressed
that he was ‘old fashioned’ because he accepted that paid work conflicted
with family life. Douglas attributed his ability to work exceedingly long hours
to his marital status (single), but admitted he no longer had a social life:
Trevor (51 years): Work did interfere (with family life) but I’m old fashioned:
I tend to accept that as part of the job. I wouldn’t say that the job comes first,
but ... you’ve got to give your best to your employer.
Douglas (50 years): I don’t have a social life anymore.... Basically the invites
become less and less because you’re too busy working and the like.... But
as I say I’m single ... so I can get away with it.
Both of these men had a traditional division of labour at home, despite their
different situations. Trevor was married with children and felt that it was a
‘mother’s place to be at home and look after the children’. Douglas had lived

with his parents until recently and his mother had done all the domestic
work. After her death, he paid his niece to take over these chores.
Constructing less traditional gender identities: ‘independent women’ and men who
‘work to live’. Unlike the female carers described above, the independent
women did not position themselves as being dedicated to their families.
Almost all these independent women (Marilyn, Maureen, Gloria, Jackie,
Heather and Shona) had reduced, or were seeking to reduce, the hours they
spent in paid work in order to have more time for themselves or to develop
their own businesses. They had all worked in non-manual jobs and had
sufficient resources to reduce their hours, either through reasonably well-
paid jobs or redundancy money from previous work. Tiredness and worries
about health had also acted as triggers prompting these women to reconsider
the balance in their lives. For example, Marilyn, a social worker, decided to
work part-time as she wanted more time and energy for other projects and to
safeguard her health:
Marilyn (52 years): I was fed up finding that when I came home on a Friday
night I was absolutely exhausted.... I’m diabetic and it’s diet-controlled and
I have high blood pressure.... so I kind of weighed up the pros and cons
and decided that I wanted to go part-time and it’s great: I love it!
Gloria was self-employed and made it clear that she had a large amount of
control over which projects she worked on. Like Marilyn, health issues (in this
case, mental health) influenced her decisions about work. In addition, she
linked her independence at work with her independence in relationships:
Gloria (52 years): We were brought up to be very independent ... and in order
for you to keep being independent, you have to choose properly, so we just
choose properly, and if you make a mistake then you just walk away from it
and that’s it. Same in relationships. If you make a mistake you just walk away
from it ... ’cos at the end of the day, you need to keep your mental health.
Gloria’s extract illustrates the importance that all the women in this group
placed upon their independence. All were divorced or had never married.
Those with current partners underscored their independence from these
men and saw their future plans as an opportunity to fulfil their individual
potential and to do what they wanted, rather than what others wanted.
Extracts from Maureen and Jackie’s interviews illustrate this emphasis
on independence:-
Maureen (51 years): We’re two independent people who have children who
live together.
Jackie (51 years): I’m not just a mother or the job I do. First and foremost I’m
a woman.... I’ve got a partner. We don’t live together — that’s something
we decided. I like living on my own.

The group of men who constructed less traditional gender identities (Will,
Malcolm, Alec, George and Kenny) were generally in high status professional
jobs or ran their own businesses. Most wanted to retire in their mid-fifties, but
this depended upon their finances. All of the men in this group either used
the phrase ‘work to live’ or emphasized that they thought there was more to
life than work. Some, like Will, attributed this to the influence of their father,
while others, like Alec, referred to the context in which they grew up:
Will (51 years): My dad worked and worked and worked all his life....
There’s no way I live to work. We work to live and we live well.
Alec (51 years): I don’t consider work as an end in itself. I’m always one for
life.... Growing up in the sixties ... I suppose you are carried along by social
movements and that does have an influence on you.
All these men had partners, and most stressed the egalitarian nature of their
relationship. Men with children in this group discussed how they had sought
to keep time free at weekends to spend with their families. For example, both
Will and Malcolm worked long hours during the week, but had a caravan and
a boat, respectively, where they spent time with their families at weekends.
This also allowed them to get away — physically and mentally — from the
demands of work.
Pragmatic workers. These respondents (Diane, Penny, May, Gary, Ronald,

Jimmy and Steve) had either always been pragmatic about their work (seeing
it as a means to an end), or felt that it played a less central role in their lives
now they were older. Male pragmatic workers differed from the men who
lived to work because they had fewer resources to draw upon, and so their
income was of greater importance for their families. While paid work did not
take precedence over everything else in their lives, male pragmatic workers
were aware that unemployment was infinitely worse than the everyday prob-
lems of paid work. The women noted the practical benefits of their jobs. For
example, Penny remarked on the proximity of her work to her home and her
holiday entitlement:
Penny (51 years): I’ve no bus fares, I’m 20 minutes from the house, I’ve got
lots of holidays through longer service et cetera, so I would have to think
seriously to move [jobs].
The pragmatic workers were all looking forward to retirement, although the
men expressed some concern about being stuck at home and described plans
to join clubs, or to continue working a few days a week to ensure they did not
go ‘stir crazy’. This concern has been interpreted by others as an escape from
the female-dominated space of the home (Wight, 1993).
These respondents occupied similar class positions: almost all the men
were manual workers and all had physically demanding jobs, while the

women were all married to men in physical, manual jobs. Their future plans
for retirement were influenced by financial resources and anxieties about
health. Penny commented that her husband would like to retire immediately
because his job was so physically tiring, while Diane and May had health
concerns of their own. Similarly, the men in this group either had concerns
about their own health or indicated that they were aware of the possibility of
early death amongst working [class] men:
Jimmy (51 years): If I reach 65 and I’m due my retiral [retirement], I’ll look
forward to it.... ’Cos I’ve seen I think four or five guys all retired in there
and they’ve lasted a year, they’re dying.
Ron (51 years): My theory [is] that in six or seven years time I’m off, I am out
of there, and that’s it.... Hopefully: if I live that long! If I live that long!
Conclusions
Most research on work–life balance concentrates on the experiences of the

mothers of young children. However, lack of work–life balance is a problem
for men as well as women, and for the parents of older, as well as preschool,
children (Chandola et al., 2004; Emslie et al., 2004a). Our research contributes
to the literature in exploring the experiences of men as well as women in
mid-life, most of whom had teenage (or older) children. Despite the similari-
ties in the current work and family circumstances of these men and women,
our data suggest that gender remains interwoven in the business of negoti-
ating home and work life. Our methodology meant that respondents were
free to choose the situations and times in their lives when they felt it had been
most difficult to reconcile paid work and other areas of life. It was notable that
the female respondents discussed their current and varied concerns about
juggling paid work, adult children and ageing parents, while the men tended
to locate problems of work–life balance in the past; often when paid work
conflicted with the demands of raising young children. Thus, while the pres-
ence of children in the household was associated with a lack of work–life
balance for both men and women, these difficulties lasted longer, and took
more complicated forms, for women. Our data suggest that, across the life
course, women are seen as being responsible for maintaining smooth, or
preferably imperceptible, transitions between the worlds of home and work
life (see also Connell, 2005). As Loscocco (1997) argues, ‘changes in gender
consciousness are the “final frontier” in the quest for greater gender equality
in work–family linkages’ (p. 223).
Our research also contributes to the body of work which notes the variety
of ways in which men and women do gender (Connell, 1985; Paechter, 2003).
Exploring the boundary between the ‘male’ domain of work and the ‘female’
domain of home life is a fruitful way to explore how gender identities are

continually (re)constructed (Smithson and Stokoe, 2005). The range of mas-

culinities constructed by our sample is illustrated by the contrast, on the one
hand, between men who said that they ‘worked to live’, noting the impor-
tance of life outside paid work, and on the other, the few men who ‘lived to
work’, demonstrating a more traditional version of masculinity (also see
Emslie, et al., 2004b for similar findings for an older cohort of men). Some
men discussed how they had moved from a ‘live to work’ to a ‘work to live’
mentality over time, illustrating the way in which gender identities are con-
tinually reassessed and reconfigured (Paechter, 2003). Similarly, women con-
structed a range of femininities through their narratives; some emphasized
their close family ties, while others underscored their independence from
partners.
Our research also points to the importance of socioeconomic position
when considering issues of work–life balance. Most research on work–life
balance concentrates on non-manual (usually professional) employees
(although see Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Speakman and Marchington, 2004).
Through the analysis of our qualitative interviews, we identified a group
of pragmatic workers (either male manual workers, or women married to
manual workers) who discussed the practical and economic benefits of work.
While health concerns often pushed them to consider early retirement, lack of
resources prevented them from doing this. Our study suggests that, for some
groups of employees, securing sufficient income may be a more pressing
concern than balancing work and home life. However, our main focus in this
study was on gender rather than social class. Future work should take a more
nuanced approach to social class, rather than merely distinguishing, as we
did, between manual and non-manual employees.
In the introduction, we referred to Clark’s (2000) theory of border-crossing
as a useful way to conceptualize work–life balance. Our empirical data
provide some support for this theory and also suggest some ways to extend
it. First, Clark’s exclusive focus on the border between the worlds of work and
family may have more resonance for men than for women: for women the
family may comprise many worlds with conflicting demands (for example,
children and elderly parents) and so women may cross more borders (more
often) than men. Secondly, the temporal borders between work and family
may vary for men and women. For some men in this sample, their role as a
father was associated with attending key family events such as school plays
or associated with spending time with their children outside the working
week as ‘weekend dads’ (Hatten et al., 2002). The women did not discuss
motherhood in this way. Finally, the ways that people position themselves in
relation to social structures such as gender has consequences for the ways
they shape the worlds of work and family (and vice versa). For example,
female carers had relatively weak boundaries between home and work life as
they integrated these worlds through the identification of similar (caring)
aspects in each. In contrast, pragmatic workers — who were manual workers,

or married to manual workers — had stronger boundaries between work and

home life. Collinson and Hearn (1996) refer to the way that working-class
men seek to ‘maintain an impenetrable psychological wall between “public”
and “private” life’ as an attempt to distance themselves from organizational
cultures that treat them as second-class citizens (p. 69). Respondents with
greater resources were more able to renegotiate the boundaries between work
and home life, through cutting down their hours in paid work (independent
women) or by physically removing themselves to a place where they could
not be contacted out of working hours (men who worked to live going to their
boat or caravan for the weekend).
This project raises two methodological issues. Firstly, it is interesting that
our findings cannot be explained simply by our sampling strategy. The
respondents who expressed less traditional attitudes to work and gender
roles in the semi-structured interviews (men who worked to live and the
independent women) were not all from the less conventional group of
respondents (for example, those who never married or never had children,
or had very high or very low masculinity scores). Thus changes in marital
status, socioeconomic status and resources, and parenting experiences seem
as important, if not more important, in influencing gender identities than
similarities or differences between people in the same age cohort.
Secondly, our study raises some issues about trying to access respon-
dents’ accounts of work–life balance. Integrating work and family life is
intimately tied to constructions of identities and therefore questions about
this topic may be experienced as threatening. Given that it is women who
are expected to balance work and family life (Moen and Yu, 2000), we might
expect women to find these questions more threatening than men. Our data
provide some evidence that the working-class women respondents experi-
enced these questions in this way. Their narratives suggest that they initially
tried to minimize problems with work–life balance, instead noting that they
‘coped’ and ‘just got on with it’. Pill and Stott’s (1982) study of perceptions
of illness amongst working-class mothers came to similar conclusions. They
found that their respondents defined a good mother as ‘one who “keeps
going” and copes with the multifarious demands that her family make of
her’ (p. 50).
In conclusion, while we have reported respondents’ own accounts of
work–life balance it is important to bear in mind that their individual
choices were constrained by their socioeconomic resources and cultural
norms about family, work and gender (Moen and Yu, 2000). For example,
while the middle-class independent women had the freedom to reduce
their working hours in order to enhance their work–life balance, this option
was not open to those with more limited resources. In addition, it is striking
that work–life balance was perceived as a personal issue to be dealt with
using individual strategies and not as a structural problem caused by a
lack of flexibility in the workplace and a lack of affordable childcare and

elder-care in the UK. Indeed, Caproni (2004) suggests that balance may be
an unachievable goal because it is built on an individualistic, achievement-
orientated model that assumes that people have choice and control over
their lives.
To the extent that the work/life discourse remains focused on the indi-
vidual, power relations will remain beyond the scope of the discourse ...
who gets to define what work/life balance is? Who has access to available
benefits, and who does not? (2004, p. 215).
Future research should concentrate on work–life balance among men and
women in less privileged class positions in order to further illuminate the
relationship between individual choice and structural constraints.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the respondents who participated in this study. We
would also like to thank Sally Macintyre, the editors and the anonymous
referees for helpful comments on the manuscript. The authors are funded by
the UK Medical Research Council (WBS U.1300.00.004).
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Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 16 No.

‘Live to Work’ or ‘Work to Live’? A

Many contemporary studies of ‘work–life balance’ either ignore gender

Keywords: gender, work–life balance, lifecourse, qualitative analysis

© 2009 The Author(s)

(deﬁned as ‘satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home, with a

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Research on gender and ‘work–life balance’

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

This article is based on semi-structured interviews with 11 men and 12

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Current or most Current marital Current household composition

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

© 2009 The Author(s)

ﬁeldwork, with interviews being conducted in batches and then discussed by

Experiences of work–life balance: revealing gender differences

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Work–life balance and the construction of gender identities

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

backgrounds and perceived their jobs as a means to an end (bringing in

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

Pragmatic workers. These respondents (Diane, Penny, May, Gary, Ronald,

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Most research on work–life balance concentrates on the experiences of the

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

continually (re)constructed (Smithson and Stokoe, 2005). The range of mas-

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

or married to manual workers — had stronger boundaries between work and

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

Annandale, E. and Hunt, K. (1990) Masculinity, femininity and sex: an exploration of

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

© 2009 The Author(s) Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009

Volume 16 Number 1 January 2009 © 2009 The Author(s)

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