Post #35

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a “best practices” document earlier this year with an emphasis on work/family balance, an issue we’ve been dealing with for the entirety of this class. The purpose of this document, according to Joanna Grossman, was not to antidiscrimination laws, but to encourage employers to “adopt policies that go beyond legal minimum requirements.”

As Grossman states, and apparently as the EEOC's document notes, “the care of children and other dependents is disproportionately provided by women, and even more disproportionately by women of color; men's role in parenting and other caregiving has increased, but is still vastly outweighed by women's.” We have seen this argued at length in English’s book.

Grossman bring up that “for many caregivers, inflexible workplace policies and insufficient access to leave present the biggest obstacles to their successful balancing of work and family responsibilities.” We have seen this argued in English’s book with female lawyers. The inflexibility of working hours prevent women from either being employed full-time or being mothers at all. Some women result to putting off having children until they’ve established a practice or found a job that will try to be flexible for them.

Grossman says “to make matters worse, stereotyping about caregivers is prevalent: Women caregivers are often thought to be less committed to their paid work or to be likely to be less competent because of their actual or likely role in caregiving.” This is yet another connection to English’s study. Female lawyers were seen as not being dedicated to work because of their family commitments. If women had to leave work to pick up a child from school, or stay at home to care for a sick child, they were seen as choosing placing family before work, therefore not taking work seriously.

As Grossman says, sadly “no existing law creates a special, protected status for caregivers” although there are laws that ban discrimination on the basis of pregnancy like Title VII and laws that ban discrimination if someone in the family is disabled.

Grossman says that the best practices document suggests many of the same measures that English argues for in her book that will help with the family/work balance. Flexibility in work arrangements with variable starting times for work and ending times is the biggest similarity. Grossman says the best practices document cites research demonstrating “that flexible work policies have a positive impact on employee engagement and organizational productivity and profitability.” This is one of the same arguments that English made in her book.