Unbalanced Work-Life-Balance in the EU
There is progress in the area of work-life-integration, says a current study of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), but the distribution of an effective balance between work and private life remains unequal across the two genders. The pan-European research reveals that women continue to be the main stakeholders for raising children in most EU members states. They face hence more challenges than men to integrate their roles in the families with their job responsibilities. Overall, European women of working ages spend three times as much time on childcare as men. Also, one third of the women report that they had to interrupt their employment due to a lack of supply in childcare place. “If men assumed half of the total child care responsibility, this factor would equally affect all working parents and hence create equally fair opportunities for working fathers and mothers,” comments Diversity expert Michael Stuber who continues to criticise the women-only focus of most childcare or even work/life balance discussions.
According to the EIGE, this means that women who work fulltime and take care of children have to work significantly more than me and have thus less free time for hobbies. And it leads to more women working part-time, which might be one way to obtain a better balance of work and private life. Working part-time, however, still comes at the cost of fewer career options, compared with full-time employment. “The notion of availability is another indicator for prevailing male-bonding systems”, adds Michael Stuber who is working mainly with male managers to discuss such phenomena in order to be able to then change them. For the time being, the EIGE study shows that most women in the EU will still have to choose between a career and taking care of their families – just as men do when they work more following the birth of a child or when they only take over a small percentage of family responsibilities.
