The domestic division of labour between men and women is widely recognised as a major constraint on women’s participation in the labour market (Walby, 1990). However, limited attention has been paid to the personal and domestic lives of male managers – a gap that is addressed in Judy Wajcman’s (1998) study of male and female senior managers, which illustrates the gendered impact of managers’ domestic
circumstances on their careers and highlights the materially different conditions under which male and female managers undertake ostensibly similar work roles. It carefully reveals the way in which “men’s careers are still contingent on the sexual contract of heterosexual marriage” (1998: 138). Wajcman observes wide differences in the domestic circumstances of men and women managers at the same levels in their organisations and concludes that “men and women generally live in different types of households” (1998: 140). Nearly all the men in her sample were married or living with a partner, compared to 73 per cent of women, and two-thirds of men had children living with them, compared to under a third of women. Men’s careers were also supported by
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the domestic labour of their wives, even when their wives had a part-time job. Women senior managers may also be making sacrifices5 in terms of family life, as most in the study do not have children. Nevertheless, she concludes, this is in vain, as childless women managers “face the same prejudices as other women even though they have refused the mantle of mother and wife [….] the point is that all women are affected by this construction of ‘free’ workers as men.” (1998: 143).
However, despite the detailed insights that Wajcman provides into the domestic lives of managers, including their partners’ jobs, the division of labour within the family and the management of paid domestic services, she does not consider the sexual orientation of the manager, nor the sex of their partner. While identifying that the women are more likely to be unmarried or single than the men, she does not discuss whether they could, in fact, be lesbian or have a female partner. There is no evidence from her study to suggest that the female and male managers are not overwhelmingly heterosexual – and we do not know whether they would have been willing to discuss their sexuality if they were not heterosexual. However, I suggest that failing to ask the question about
managers’ sexual orientation may have overlooked a very interesting area for analysis. Other studies have found that women in professions or work organisations dominated by men are less likely to have partners or be married and, if married, less likely to have children than their male colleagues (Bagilhole, 2002) and also less likely to have children than the average among women (McDowell, 1997). There is further evidence from the US, Australia and the UK that the proportions of women in management without children are strikingly high, both in comparison to men in equivalent
management jobs, and to average childbearing rates for women (Wood and Newton, 2006). This suggests that examining the personal and domestic lives of women can reveal more about the interaction between home and work lives and the part that sexual orientation may play.
It has been said that work may hold a greater significance for lesbians than for heterosexual women due to the need for economic independence in the absence of a male partner (Dunne, 1997). It is therefore relevant to consider whether divisions of
5 Wajcman describes it as a sacrifice, although we do not know that the women experience it as such, see
Wood and Newton (2006) for further discussion of “choice” and childlessness in relation to women managers.
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labour in lesbian partnerships differ from those in heterosexual partnerships in the extent to which they facilitate lesbians’ working lives, and Dunne believes that their experiences can offer new insights:
“As divisions of labour in lesbian partnerships are negotiated by actors who occupy the same position in the gender hierarchy, they present a marvellous opportunity to see what is achievable when gender polarization as a major structuring principle of arrangements is minimal.” (Dunne, 2000a: 140)
Furthermore, explorations of the ways that lesbian couples with children negotiate their childcare and working arrangements can offer an alternative perspective on the
gendered and heterosexualised division of labour. There has been talk of a ‘gay baby boom’ in the US, with an estimated 22 per cent of partnered lesbians living with children in the home (Peplau and Fingerhut, 2004), and it is estimated6 that 10 per cent of British lesbians live in households with children (Aspinall, 2009), suggesting that this is an increasingly important area to take account of in research on women’s
participation in work.
Studies have shown that lesbian couples parenting together share domestic work and childcare more equally, and are less likely to specialise long-term into primary carer or wage-earner roles, than heterosexual couples (Dunne, 2000a; Oerton, 1998; Reimann, 1997). Reimann (1997) studied 25 ‘lesbian nuclear families’ in the USA – defined as lesbian couples who had had children in their relationship, rather than jointly bringing up children from prior relationships – with one or more children under the age of six. She found very little conflict over whose work or career should have primacy, and an assumption that both partners’ paid work was equally important, regardless of their level of income. A variety of strategies were used in relation to leave-taking from work, with both parents taking time off together or consecutively after the birth, but with little long-term specialisation into primary carer and wage-earner roles, and most women were working full-time at the time of the study. Where both worked full-time, domestic work and childcare responsibilities were shared fairly equally, and Reimann notes that shared feminist values and a commitment to equality in motherhood contributed to the fair division of labour at home, as well as decisions about paid work, supported by a
6 Aspinall (2009: 116) advises caution in interpreting data derived from purposive samples, such as the
Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Health Survey 2007 from which this figure is derived, as they tend to be biased towards younger populations living in areas with known concentrations of LGB populations and frequently capture only the white population. However no nationally representative samples are available.
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view that both careers were equally important. However Reimann makes it clear that her sample comprised high-earning couples, who could be more flexible in their work arrangements than families with less income, and many also employed paid domestic workers to do housework, thus reducing conflict over cleaning.
A similar absence of specialisation into carer and provider roles was found by Dunne (1998; 2000a) in her UK study of 37 lesbian couples with dependent children. She found that biological motherhood was a poor predictor of differences in employment hours, as more than a third of co-parents (non-birthmothers) had shorter working hours than their partners. Or in other cases, both partners worked part-time and undertook childcare part-time. Furthermore, earning capacity did not necessarily provide the rationale for decisions about who would take greater responsibility for caring or wage- earning, and it was not unusual for higher earners in lesbian couples to reduce their hours of work to care for children. Such decisions were based on a number of factors, including the idea that higher earners often had more power over their careers. Dunne (2000) concludes that sharing the penalties associated with raising children (either by both working part-time or taking it in turns to be the main carer) may make better long- term economic sense than the specialisation typically found among heterosexual couples that results in women’s downwards occupational mobility.
As in Reimann’s (1997) study, Dunne’s couples felt they had a fairly even division of domestic labour, with respondents feeling that the absence of gender scripts contributed to this arrangement. Such a view is supported by comparing the findings from
Wajcman’s (1998) study of senior managers, in which she found that even though the female managers in her sample did the same hours of paid work as the male managers, they did almost twice the amount of housework as their male colleagues. Thus despite having equivalent work roles in terms of seniority and length of working hours, gendered assumptions prevailed in the domestic sphere.
This contrast between heterosexual women’s and lesbians’ domestic experiences leads Dunne to suggest that much of what are seen as “gender constraints in the abstract are likely to relate to the heterosexual context which frames most women’s gendered experience” (Dunne, 2000a: 145). Thus the labour market disadvantages attached to women’s association with parenting may be less of a problem for women parenting together, who appear to have a greater tendency to share the employment penalties.
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There are also indications that lesbian parents may suffer less from negative perceptions of working mothers than heterosexual women. A study of attitudes towards working mothers’ competence and career orientation (Peplau and Fingerhut, 2004) found that heterosexual mothers were rated, by a sample of heterosexual undergraduates, as
significantly lower in competence and career orientation than heterosexual non-mothers, but in contrast, perceptions of lesbians’ competence and work-orientation were not diminished by motherhood. The authors suggest that:
“Like their heterosexual male counterparts, lesbians may be seen as more work oriented and, if they are parents, as having additional financial responsibilities because of being the family provider. Consequently, lesbians, including lesbian moms, may typically be viewed as competent workers.” (ibid: 733)
These findings may support the case for lesbian mothers having some form of ‘advantage’ over heterosexual mothers through being perceived less negatively in relation to work commitment, and in their actual forms of household and parenting arrangements that may impact less negatively on their careers than the traditional division of labour of heterosexual partnerships. However, it is necessary to sound a note of caution. Firstly, Reimann’s (1997) sample was of middle-class and relatively high- income lesbians, mainly living in New York and San Francisco, and therefore not representative of the experiences of working-class, non-metropolitan or lower-income lesbian couples. Dunne’s (1998) sample also occupied a relatively advantaged position in the employment structure, mostly working as professionals, managers, technicians or administrators in the public sector or were self-employed. Furthermore, feminist values were shared among Reimann’s couples, which may not be representative of all lesbians given the classed and ethnicised dimensions of the feminist movement (see 3.2.2). Taylor (2007) is also wary of such accounts, believing that the experiences of working- class lesbians are missing from much theorisation of personal relationships, which tends to gloss over inequalities “by privileging accounts of reciprocity and accountability; commonalities are said to be produced on the basis of sameness, that is shared gender, but there is little attention to the way in which differences of class can effect, enhance, disrupt and fracture relationships” (ibid: 30). A second, related point is that lesbian workers such as Dunne’s (1998), who work in relatively high positions and in the public sector or as self-employed, may benefit from greater flexibility over working
arrangements and provision of parental leave than lower-paid or private sector workers, or those in less secure employment. Thirdly, while some people hold stereotypes of
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lesbian mothers as more committed to their work, there remain others with negative attitudes towards gay people’s suitability for parenting that could affect how
comfortable lesbian parents feel about discussing their home lives at work. Importantly, the extent to which a lesbian parent (particularly a non-biological parent) is open about her sexuality at work can have a significant impact on their ability to benefit from family-friendly or flexible working arrangements (Tuten and August, 2006). Neither Reimann’s (1997) nor Dunne’s (1998, 2000) studies discuss in detail the working arrangements negotiated with employers by respondents, as the focus is on the couple and how they organise paid and domestic work between themselves, rather than on the work organisation. Building on Wajcman (1998), this research aims to contribute to our understanding of how lesbians and heterosexual women negotiate working arrangements in relation to specific work organisations and at home.