So you really want a more flexible workplace?

By Gillian Teo, Published TODAY, 4 Apr 2013

What is the right way to work?

Curiously, in Singapore and elsewhere, the discussion on workplace flexibility and diversity has become entrenched in gendered typecasts. But to achieve real change, in both the workplace and the household, it might be time for us to debunk myths about gender and its perceived roles.

The partitioning of needs and interests along gender lines is most evident in the idea of work-life balance, which is often presented as being of particular concern to women. “Life” is made to correspond to matters of the home.

But such policies can have counter-productive consequences: They perpetuate the idea that household and parenting duties are solely the responsibilities of women, rather than look at how such efforts should be more equally distributed.

Assuming work-life balance to be predominantly the concern of women also loses sight of the fact that goals of equality and diversity are tied to how we all negotiate work and personal life.

As of 2011, 69 per cent of Singapore’s professionals reported that they work after office hours, according to Robert Half Singapore and Japan’s latest workplace survey.

These work conditions affect all employees, yet the debate has mainly treated traditional gender roles as a kind of standard on how to distribute work and household commitments.

For example, it was recently reported that among women here, 25.5 per cent were not working for childcare reasons, compared with 1.5 per cent of men. Policies and suggestions have thus focused on getting women back into the workforce after childbirth, and achieving work-life balance for women has been seen as the solution.

Gender biases and rigid definitions do more than influence behaviour and norms; they also run the risk of pitting women’s and men’s needs and interests against each other, fuelling the idea that these negotiations are a zero-sum game.

The only way to achieve work-life balance is to shake up our ideas of what women’s and men’s responsibilities entail. For example why, if we acknowledge that shared parenting is important, do working men in Singapore only get one week of Government-paid paternity leave, effective May? And while they will soon also be able to share one week out of the 16 weeks of maternity leave, it is only one week.

The biased nature of these policies actually creates a self-fulfilling loop, where women are left with little choice but to shoulder the bulk of child-rearing and household duties. Statistics show that women in Singapore are more likely to drop out of the labour force after marriage and childbirth.

MEN WANT IT TOO

To create a more equitable workplace that is responsive to individual needs, you have to allow for flexibility in choices and expectations.

Achieving the goal is made more difficult through piecemeal efforts, especially those that divide women and men arbitrarily and do not see how their struggles are tied to longer working hours, an increasingly competitive workplace, and the increase in number of dual-income couples that have to care for children and elderly parents.

The root cause of the problem is the unequal division of labour within the family. A forum held in America in 2010 on workplace flexibility reported that just as women have endeavoured to find ways to fit their work, personal and family lives together, so have men.

In 2008, 49 per cent of employed men with families reported experiencing some or a lot of work-family conflict, a significant increase from the case in 1977 (34 per cent). The same study also showed that “a culture of flexibility is as, if not more, important than simply having access to flexible options”.

We need to move away from the belief that there is one right way to balance work and life, or one right way to act or lead in the workplace.

Instead, provide employees with avenues and resources to make their own choices on how to balance the demands of work, time they spend on themselves, and where appropriate their spouses and children.

Flexibility programmes should not consistently hinge on narrow, rigid understandings; we need to be more accepting and supportive of whatever choices people decide are best for them, even if these do not resemble our own. For example, with the rise of dual-earning partners, why shouldn’t fathers be given greater scope to negotiate for more flexible work arrangements?

Enabling, rather than constraining choice through blanket categories will be more productive and in touch with people’s actual needs.

Gillian Teo is a freelance writer interested in culture and social issues.