ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

Work‑Family Conﬂict: Fighting the ʻGood FightʼMary Runte

The experience of work‑family conﬂict, and attendant negative outcomes, forwomen who attempt to balance the often contradictory and competing identities ofmother and employee is ever‑present and indeed escalating. In this article, I adopt
a feminist poststructural lens to focus on the discursive ﬁeld of work‑family interaction, which has historically been dominated by a discourse of work‑family conﬂict,
and more recently by a discourse of work‑family balance or integration. I argue fora return to, and a poststructural turn upon, the discourse of ʻwork‑family conﬂictʼ.
Rather than a focus on how to satisfy priorities of the two domains, I argue that theexperience of work‑family interaction is frequently experienced as negative becauseof an escalation of the ʻoccupationʼ of the family domain by the encroachment of
the work sphere. Women experience conﬂict because they are in a battle to defend
the importance of the family and their identities as mothers. A return to ʻconﬂictʼ,
calling for a focus on the temporal, spatial and aﬀective occupation of the family
domain as a key dimension in the experience of work‑family conflict, highlights
the role of language in the construction of the subjectivity of working mother as
defender. Work‑family conﬂict is herein conceptualized as a state of war and thedomain of the family is the battleground.

Key Words:

Feminist Poststructuralism, Work‑Family Conﬂict, Discourse, Feminism,
Work‑Life Balance

Introduction
The discourse of ʻwork‑family conﬂictʼ has dominated the landscape of management literatureand public dialogue on work‑family interaction for over 40 years (Runte and Mills, 2006) and has
highlighted the negative outcomes for employees, families and organizations (c.f.., Duxbury, et al.,
1994; Grover and Crooker, 1995; Konrad and Mangel, 2000). Also inherent in the research is theassumption that this conﬂict is the result of competition for the limited resource of the employeeʼstime and commitment. Time expended on role performance in one domain necessarily depletes
time available for the demands of the other domain. This perspective is an extension of thehuman capital theory, based on the assumption of a scarcity of resources: individuals have a ﬁnite
amount of energy and when involved in multiple roles, the demands of these roles will deplete
available resources (Becker, 1985). Work‑family conﬂict was linked to womenʼs escalating engage-

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Mary Runte Work-Family Conﬂict: Fighting the ʻGood Fightʼ

ment in market‑work during the Cold War era (Runte and Mills, 2006). Parenting by women(dare I say the word, “mother”hood) is often presented and experienced as contradictory to theidentities of women as employees or market workers (e.g., Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985; Williams, et al., 1991; Warren and Johnson, 1995; Epstein et al, 1999; Voydanoﬀ, 2004; Hill, 2005).
In contrast, fathers typically work longer hours and are viewed as more committed to their workthan men without children (Hundley, 2001; Jacobs and Gerson, 2001); the belief that providing
ﬁnancially for their family satisﬁes their familial responsibility, the traditional male‑breadwinnerperspective, persists (Jacobs and Gerson, 2001; Hill, 2005). Although conflicting results arereported, there is considerable evidence supporting that work‑family conﬂict is experienced more
by women, than by men (Duxbury et al., 2003)
Even as there is recognition of gender differences in work‑family role performance andexperience, work‑family conﬂict literature has increasingly adopted a gender‑neutral stance (e.g.,
Duxbury et al., 2003) an attempt, in part, to recognize the increased engagement of men in family
life and the nonwork roles beyond the scope of parenting, such as eldercare and volunteerism. A
genderless perspective is also championed by a poststructural feminist organizational discourse.
Organizational theory has been criticized for ignoring the diversity amongst women, thereby
essentializing a universal “woman” (Calas and Smircich, 2006). This critique of essentialists
has been taken up by poststructural feminism which points to a notion of the “self” that is ﬂuid,
contradictory, and emerges from oneʼs relationships with others within everyday practice; agendered perspective is presented as essentializing women and thus incompatible with subjectivity
and ﬂuidity of identity.
In this paper, I present work‑family interaction as a gendered discourse and adopt a woman‑centered lens (Calas and Smircich, 2006) as well as through a mother‑centered lens as I draw on
my own experience as a mother and as an academic. The ﬁrst section of this paper focuses on
the place for a woman‑centered perspective in poststructural feminist research on work‑family,
arguing that essentialism as a concern should not limit our ability to critique and deconstruct this
discourse. For many women, one of the most powerful everyday practices that can shape the ʻselfʼ
and consume time, energy and emotion, is the experience of motherhood. A gender‑free analysis
of work‑family conﬂict may distract from this lived experience given womenʼs principle engagement and identiﬁcation with this role (Caproni, 2004). Further, the social structures and processes
that categorize (limit? empower?) women are situated within discursive ﬁelds (Weedon, 1999);
to not examine how language and power relations act to shape and contain womenʼs subjectivity
limits the ability of poststructuralim to otherwise critique patriarchal norms as well as to reﬂect
the lived experience, which for many women embraces motherhood. A poststructual examinationof the implications of masculinist norms has been applied to other dimensions of organizational
theory (e.g. Calas and Smircich, 1991 and Bradshaw, 1996 on leadership; Calas and Smircich,1997 on business ethics; Meyerson, 1998 on stress). Feminist poststructural critiques of work‑
family interaction are all but lacking in organizational research, according to Calas and Smircich

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ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009(2006) (Martin, 1990 and Runte and Mills, 2004, are Calas and Smirchichʼs identiﬁed exceptions).
Reluctance to essentialize women may be the cause of silence by poststructural feminists on thisissue.
This paper thus offers a poststructural feminist analysis of work‑family conflict as agendered discourse. It is organized in two parts. I begin with an overview of essentialism withina poststructural analysis of womenʼs experience of work‑family interaction as a problematic thathas paralyzed work‑family research, and present a case for a feminist poststructual analysis of
womenʼs experience of work‑family interaction. I will then examine, through the metaphor of“conﬂict,” the extant research on work‑family interaction, presenting a poststructural turn on themainstream discourse of conﬂict in the context of contemporary organizational life.
Poststructural Feminism: Speaking the “M(other)-Word”

A critique of essentialism has been characteristic of much poststructural and feminist analysis.
A unitary view of women sharing a common world, shared condition of oppression, or common“womenʼs voice” is rejected in favour of recognition of the diﬀerent situations, subjectivities andexperiences of individual women (Calas and Smircich, 1992). In other words, all women are
individuals, and attempts to make generalizations about “women” or categorize them on the basisof roles, such as mother, are therefore inappropriate. Many postmodern feminists, therefore, refuse
to recognize “woman,” or terms or concepts, such as “mother” that portray woman as a collectionof “essences”. Deleuze (1994), for example, calls for feminists to acknowledge a “postgender”
world and not to focus on “women” as a conceptual entity. Butler (1995) sees identity categories,
which would include “mother” as being “sites of necessary trouble” (p. 372); Lorber (2000) calls
for the elimination of all gender categories in feminist discourse. The problematic of essentializing
women is to limit the subject positions available to them. The role of “mother” is gendered andessentializes women; children, following this logic, are “parented” by “parents” and gender isnʼtrelevant.

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Mary Runte Work-Family Conﬂict: Fighting the ʻGood Fightʼ

This attitude, however, makes it difficult to challenge gender barriers. As Braidotti (1994,
p.117) has noted, “one cannot deconstruct a subjectivity one has never controlled.” Further,
identity categories, even as they are “bound up in the cultural systems and property regimes” ofmasculinist and Western imperialism (Iriguary, 1985, p. 110) are taken up by many women andhave significant implications on their negotiations within and movement between multiple liferoles (Caven, 2006). Is the role of mother universally experienced? Certainly, not. The experienceof parenthood, for all women and all men, is individually experienced and negotiated. Even as therole of “mother” is diﬀerentially experienced, however, it is nonetheless a shared experience thatbrings women together. The identity of “mother,” remains a signiﬁcant element of womenʼs lived
experience (Caven, 2006) which has signiﬁcant implications regarding womenʼs engagement inother life roles, such as employee (Runte and Mills, 2004).
In terms of work‑family interaction, research supports that women experience the interactionof these domains as more problematic than do men (Gutek et al., 1991; Kinnumen and Mauno,
1998; Duxbury et al., 2003). “Despite the construction of the labour market, the welfare state,families, households and local communities as an interconnected gendered system, the distinction
between the labours of production and reproduction continues to have salience... (and) remains
a gendered one in which the activities undertaken in each sphere are diﬀerentially valued andrewarded (McDowell, 2004 pp. 147‑148).” To not discuss gender as an element of work‑family
research out of a fear of essentializing women is to deny the lived experience of women, evenas we can recognize that the “roles” are socially constructed, individually negotiated and sites ofmasculinist power that may (or may not) reﬂect shifting social conditions (Runte and Mills, 2006).
Further, the elimination of gender categories in organizational discourse is illusionary, with evidence that even with gender unspoken, a masculinist agenda is maintained (Calas and Smirchich,
1992; Martin, 2000; Smithston and Stokoe, 2006). We must ﬁrst speak of gender, before we canmove past these “blindspots” (Martin, 2000). So, how then do we reﬂect the lived experience of
women, who engage with the identity of “mother,” without essentializing women?
Rather than supporting, the elimination of such gender categories to counter the risks ofessentialism, Goldenberg (2007), drawing on Frye (1996), challenges the discourse of essentialism itself. To categorize “women” is not to dismiss their uniqueness as individuals. Goldenberg
champions the adoption of a more complex analysis of categories in which sameness anddiﬀerence co‑exist in a relational dance: “each woman and group of women acquires deepened
and more complex and more fully experienced meaning/identity through the webs of likeness andcontrasts built by communities and processes that are varieties of the practice of diﬀerencesʼ (Frye,
1996, p. 1007 cited by Goldenberg, 2007, p. 151). To identify linkages between women is not topreclude the existence and experience of diﬀerences amongst them. “A womanʼs subjectivity is
not stabilized or essentialized by identity categories (e.g., race, class, gender) because her ways ofexisting in the world can shift depending on social relations, historical experiences, and material
conditions. Poststructural theories of subjectivity capture the active process of taking up certain22

ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009subject positions in an ongoing process of becoming̶rather than merely being̶in the world(Jackson, 2004, pp 673‑674).”
Poststructural feminism may therefore engage in the work‑family debate by describing anddeconstructing the complex web of subjectivity, identity and discourse that has drawn together
and drawn distinctions between women as they maneuver between and within the work andfamily milieus. To acknowledge that many women have strong claims to their identities as “mothers” is not to claim that all women experience the role identically, nor that they must necessarily
assume this role. It is important not to dismiss how this role does bring together women, even as
they diﬀerentially negotiate the role as individuals. Concerns over work‑family boundaries would
be less pervasive if work did not hold such a privileged place in conceptions of what constitutes
a meaningful life. This prioritization of work as the site of identity not only pervades work‑family
research within organizational discourse (Runte & Mills, 2006), it dominates family oriented
literature (Graham, 1999; Sotirin et al, 2007). In the next section of this paper, I examine thediscourse of conﬂict, which has been used within the extant research to describe the problems
of multiple roles engagement. I execute a feminist postmodern turn on the conclusions of thisliterature, which have predominantly focused on workplace needs, and reclaim the term “conﬂict”
as a reasonable and appropriate outcome to the temporal, spatial and aﬀective occupation of thefamily domain by the masculinist priorities of work.
Reframing the Discourse of Work-Family Conﬂict

Work‑family conflict is defined, by Greenhaus and Beutell (1985, p. 77) as “a form ofinterrole conﬂict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respect.” The meaning of “conﬂict” in the work‑family literature has shifted
little within the management literature, even as the social context of womenʼs engagement inmarket work has altered signiﬁcantly (Runte and Mills, 2006). Although more recently challenged
by the discourses of work‑family balance and work‑family enrichment, which will be discussed ina later section, a research focus on the incompatibility of work and family roles remains dominant(Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). The research focuses, therefore, on identifying this role conﬂict andmitigating deleterious outcomes, through processes such as role segmentation and outsourcing offamily responsibilities to “ease the burden of family role demands and enable [employed parents]
to devote less time to the family role and more time to work” (Parasaramun et al, 1996, p.
282). The roles, particularly family roles, are presented as “burdens” (Parasuraman et al., 1996,
p. 282) that “impede” (Kinnunen and Mauno, 1998, p. 158) or “intrude” (Parasuraman et. al.,23

Mary Runte Work-Family Conﬂict: Fighting the ʻGood Fightʼ

1992, p. 342) upon function and therefore need to be “accommodated” (Allen, 2001, p. 417).
Organizational remedies, such as onsite daycare, emergency childcare, and ﬂexible work scheduling have been discussed at length as possible strategies to solve this challenge (Hughes andGalinsky, 1988; Kossek and Nichol, 1992; Powell and Mainiero, 1999). Family‑based strategies,
such as outsourcing of time consuming family tasks, such as housecleaning and childminding, arealso proposed remedies (Parasaramun et al, 1996). Personal strategies, such as time management
training and development of better coping strategies are also outlined (Matsui et al., 1995;
Rotondo, et al., 2003). Work‑family conﬂict is clearly presented in management research as anundesirable state which must be ameliorated or eliminated. Conﬂict is a “problem”; eliminationof conﬂict is the goal. I certainly do not want to cast dispersion on the importance of programs
such as onsite daycare and eldercare assistance to help people deal with the incredibly complex
dynamic of family‑life. Although these research and organizational strategies are necessary andoﬀer women assistance to manage the daily challenge of role satisfaction, this research orientation
is incomplete. A focus on ameliorating conﬂict between work and family expectations does notaddress why the challenges themselves are persistent.
Accepting that organizational discourse is gendered (Calas and Smirchich, 1992, Martin,
2000), a feminist challenge to the dominant discourse of work‑family conflict is necessary tounderstand the lived experience of women negotiating between and within work and family roles
and identities. Weedon (1997) calls for a poststructural feminism that attends to meaning as anof language: “The meaning of the signiﬁer ʻwomanʼ varies from ideal to victim to object ofsexual desire, according to its context. Consequently, it is always open to challenge and redeﬁnition with shifts in context” (p. 25). I am contesting the language of “conﬂict.” To challenge thisentrenchment of the discourse of conflict as a “problem”, I ask a simple question: Is conflict
necessarily a bad thing? There is little doubt that many of the women and men who attempt tomove between the sites of work and family ﬁnd the experience challenging, even negative. It isalso reasonable to assume that, given the choice, they would rather not experience the negative
consequences of multi‑role engagement. Few people would choose to feel ʻbadʼ. Managerial
research has focused on the antecedents of work‑family conflict to ameliorate these negative
outcomes. What mainstream management theory, however, has not succeeded at is answering thesimple question̶why? As a mother and academic myself, I ask:

This question gets at the heart of the issue. I believe that work‑family research has not
succeeded in helping women and men with the work‑family interface because the research has
focused on identifying factors that make work‑family interaction more or less problematic (antecedents) without critically assessing the reason for the conﬂict. This is akin to examining soldiersʼ
training and munitions choices as a cause of wartime casualty rates without asking the basic
question: why are we at war in the ﬁrst place? So, I ask the simple question: why do women24

ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

experience conﬂict between the roles of mother and employee?
I look to the discourse of “conflict” to find one, of the many possible answers, to thisquestion. Conﬂict within the work‑family literature has been singularly deﬁned by mainstream
managerialism; how it has been lived by women, however, may open up the discourse to newinterpretations. Conﬂict, as a metaphor for battle, allows us to see work‑family interaction as abattleﬁeld. Work (as a masculinist realm) has occupied the family domain, which has historically
been seen, and continues to be, a site of female identity. To develop this metaphor of conﬂict
as battle, I will discuss the intersection of current organizational trends with the work‑family
battleground.
Flexible and Friendly Worksite: As earlier discussed, work‑family conflict has dominatedmainstream management research for many years and has maintained a focus on the negative
outcomes of role interaction. Work‑family research has recently focused on the implications of
new business structures and technologies as antecedents and outcomes of work‑family concerns.
Research has focused on the implications of technologies that enable employees to be available
to employers outside of traditional working hours. Through computer and wireless technologies,
employees can access and be accessed by work, whether they are at home or at their childʼssoccer game. Further, following workplace rationalization and downsizing in the 1990s, employees
have been required to work longer and longer hours. This expectation that employees will put inlonger working hours (and this can be facilitated through the aforementioned technologies) has
decreased the time available for nonwork activities, such as family. A more recent phenomenon
has shifted organizational behaviour. As the labour market has become more competitive anda dearth of employees looms large (at least in Canada) employers have attempted to create
positive work environments. This has also, arguably, been the result of shifting expectations of thenewest generation of employees who seek to have greater social relationships and satisfaction in
their work. Consequently, there has been a movement towards the creation of fun and friendly
workplaces where employees are actively encouraged to see each other as friends and families. To
summarize, three trends are dominating organizational life in Canada: employees are performing
work functions when not physically at a work site, working longer hours, and working for organizations that are attempting to create a family‑like environment. Research has presented thesethree trends as reﬂective of a movement towards family‑friendly workplaces that seek to improve
ﬂexibility for employees as well as more positive working environments. And, yet, work‑family
conﬂict is escalating in Canada (Duxbury et al., 2003). Holding up a poststructural feminist lensto these organizational structures reveals an alternate interpretation which may account in part forthe continued experience of work‑family conﬂict. Work is an occupying force and the home has
become a site of occupation. These three organizational trends can be reframed as organizational
occupation strategies. Work has invaded: 1) the spatial domain of family through the guise of
ﬂexible work2) the temporal domain of family through ﬂexible work

the aﬀective domain of family byscheduling and; 3)a family‑like façade to garner employees commitment

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Mary Runte Work-Family Conﬂict: Fighting the ʻGood Fightʼ

which represents in reality a “one sided and uneven commitment that is in the narrow interest of
employers” (Osterman, 1985, p. 699).
Spatial Occupation

Tremlay (2002) estimates the percentage of teleworkers in the Canadian workforce (year2001) as approximately 8% of the Canadian employed labour force. Telecommuting or telework
refers to market work conducted from home that is often supported by telecommunications
technology (telephone, Internet access, or computer) (Nilles, 1998). Often portrayed as a family‑
friendly workplace beneﬁt (e.g. Hammer et al., 2005; Kossek et al., 2006), telework oﬀers thepotential for concurrent satisfaction of work and family tasks. Research demonstrates, however,that telework can result in higher work‑family conﬂict, particularly for women. “The more theworkplace is brought into the home via job and organizational design, the more likely it increases‑ ‑, particularly for individuals who like to integrate work and family roles(say watching children while taking a work call) Kossek, et al., 2006).” The deﬁnition of teleworkused in these studies relies on the existence of formalized or semi‑formal organizational policies. A teacher surﬁng the Internet from home on a Saturday is not technically a teleworker. A
professor grading student papers while sitting in the family room as her children play nearby is
not a teleworker. The father, sitting in front of my daughter and I at a family theatre event two
weeks ago, who checked his Blackberry and text messaged throughout the performance, oblivious
to the distraction he presented to those around him, was not a teleworker (although at the time
I thought of many other labels by which to deﬁne him!). This is supplemental work: work completed by an employee, who works fulltime outside of the home, done outside of normal working
hours for the beneﬁt of the employer (Venkatesh and Vitalari, 1992).
Canadian research supports that full time market workers are increasingly doing supplemental
work (Silver and Crompton, 2002; Towers et al., 2006). “The professed aim of the employer inproviding the kind of technology that allows people to work at home is that it helps achieve agood work/life balance by permitting ﬂexibility (i.e. positive spillover) (Towers et al., 2006, p.
598)”. Approximately one in four people ʻcheck inʼ with work during vacations; half do workon their holidays (AMA, 2004). Places previously reserved for family engagement are, at least
temporarily

on an “as needed basis”

occupied for work priorities.

The spatial manipulation of the domains of work and family is reﬂective of the separation26

ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009of work and family spheres following industrialization. Rather than promoting the distinction
between the spheres, the new structuring entails the capturing of the domestic sphere. The
boundary between work and family is blurring, but that is because the employer has set up anoﬃce in your home (or car, or cottage). Brown and OʼHara (2002, p. 1574) observe that “Mobile
work does not just ʻtake placeʼ but rather ʻmakes placeʼ transforming locations as diverse as public
and private transport, cafés, sites of leisure, and oﬃces”. This is a “mass invasion” (Towers etal., 2006) of nonwork space. Gant and Kiesler (2002) claim that this occupation has been madepossible only because of technology. It has also, however, been made possible by a discourseof work‑family conﬂict that has sought to remedy the challenges of multiple role engagementby oﬀerings, such as telework, that give the air of facilitating employeeʼs (womenʼs) desire forcloser connection to family, whilst still prioritizing workplace needs. We take work into the family
sphere with us, in part, because we believe that we must̶there is not enough time to get it
done during the regular working hours, or we believe that proximity to children is a reasonable
compromise to engagement with our children; or we believe (perhaps with full justiﬁcation) that
if we do not respond to that email on Saturday night that there will be punitive consequences.
Work activities have bled over into the family domain. We have thus invited the occupier into
our homes because of the promise that it will ameliorate the ʻproblemʼ of conﬂict. Instead, thehome has been “occupied” by work. One mayfrom home.

Time“Working time constitutes a starting point for understanding the shifting balance between
work and family in American households” (Jacobs and Gerson, 2001, p. 40). Although thispermeability of spatial boundaries creates conditions whereby both family and work needs may besatisﬁed during both work and nonwork hours, it is most often work that spills over into nonwork
time (Hochschild, 1997; White, et al., 2003). The work hours at the physical workplace setting
have not dropped to reﬂect the fact that employees also conduct work at nonwork locations, suchas at the home. The occupation or taking over of the family domain also incorporates a temporalabsorption of family time into the work realm. This absorption may be coercive or made an
attractive alternative, an occupation cloaked in velvet.
The “traditional” family model of employed father and at‑home mother has given away tothe dual earner family, which has been characterized as being composed of one family with three
jobs: two market, one family (Pirotrkowski and Hughes, 1993). Two of those jobs, one market

27

Mary Runte Work-Family Conﬂict: Fighting the ʻGood Fightʼthe other family, are held by women. Work time, sets the upper limit on time available for family.
Runte and Mills (2003, p. 244) outline that the concept of “balance” is misleading when the time
devoted to work and family spheres is already disproportionally weighted in favour of the work
domain: “the elimination of the full time housework role shifts the work‑family ʻbalanceʼ from a
50/50 division within the couple, to 100% of normal working hours now going to market employment.”
Parasuraman, Purohit, Godshalk, and Beutell (1996) reported that workers who spent moretime at work, reported more work overload, reported greater parental demands, reported less family involvement, and spent less time in family activities, reported higher work‑to‑family conﬂict.
This is consistent with the recent work of Valcour (2007) who empirically demonstrated a link
between work‑family conﬂict and hours worked and a negative relation between hours worked
and work‑family balance. Despite an increased presence in the work domain, women continue
to devote less time to market work activities than do men (Pleck, 1985; Dean, 1992; Rodgers,
1992). However, the gender diﬀerence in time devoted to child care and household tasks exceeds
the gender diﬀerence in time devoted to paid employment (Pleck, 1985; Rodgers, 1992). Hence,
womenʼs cumulative time commitment to market and non‑market work exceeds that of men.
Given the total net increase in family hours devoted to market work, the scales are further
unbalanced when one considers the overall escalation of working hours expected of employees
within, at least, the North American workforce. Rationalization of organizational structures in the
1990s resulted in organizations scaling back their workforces. Employees are expected to absorb
the slack, many employees are now fulfilling duties previously satisfied by two or even threeworkers. Consequently, to simply satisfy minimum work demands, many employees have little
choice but to work excess hours. The number of employees working in excess of 50 hours per
week in Canada has increased over the past decade (Duxbury and Higgins, 2001). The increased
globalization of markets in recent years has also escalated the demand that employees be readily
available to satisfy consumer needs in other time zones. Technologies, previously discussed, may
make this expectation of time commitment more palatable as much of the labour expectation canbe satisﬁed at home. You may be working, but at least you get toyour children!

The temporal dimension is clearly a site of occupation. Time previously devoted to familytasks is no longer available given that both parents are engaged in market work. The little
time remaining is increasingly being shifted towards the satisfaction of workplace priorities. An
outcome of this temporal occupation of family time is the unavailability of opportunity to develop
a counterattack. It has been presented elsewhere (Runte and Mills, 2006) that suburbanization
removed women from the location of work and isolated them from opportunities to engage insocial action. Likewise, the temporal occupation of family time has limited womenʼs opportunity
to question the primacy of the work domain in their daily lives. There is no time for collective
response, because simply there is no time!

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ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

Aﬀective

Corporations focus intensely and narrowly on economic interests. The intrusion of workplacepriorities, logics and language into nonwork domains has been subject to considerable debate bysocial theorists (c.f. Bauman, 1991; Deetz, 1992; Warner, 2005). Tasks, functions and emotional
engagement previously linked to the family domain has been outsourced to commercial providers(Folbre, 2001; Hochschild, 2003, Runte & Mills, 2003) and family time has become increasingly
dominated by the language of work (Sotirin et al., 2007). Prepackaged meals, to be heated in yourown kitchen, are the modern equivalent of a “home cooked meal”. A stay‑at‑home mother becomes the “Family CEO”. Playdates for children are scheduled, children carry daytimer agendas,
and family meetings are held to debrief the familyʼs collective and individual year‑end goals. A
discourse of eﬃciency has thus crossed the boundary from work to home (Ciulla, 2000; Warner,
2005; Sotirin et al., 2007). Sotirin et al. (2007, p. 249) warn:“Framing family as a management
enterprise promotes not just more eﬃcient households but conceptions of the “good” family thatcast love intimacy and care as means in the ongoing work of fashioning family members into
successful entrepreneurial subjects.” This orientation also makes possible the temporal and spatial
occupation previously discussed. If work and family are organized around the same structures
which prioritize time eﬃciency and productivity, structuring in work activities is facilitated during
time that previously would have been “wasted”. Work has occupied the family domain by dictating the language spoken and the priorities emphasized.

Paralleling the absorption of workplace logics and language into familial life, the language
and logics of the family domain have been increasingly evident in organizational life. Grugulis,
Dundon, and Wilkinson (2000) discuss the way in which play is used to create a family‑likeorganizational culture. The creation of group‑oriented activities, such as collective social events
within these cultures of fun can be positioned as mechanisms for creating community by focusing
on employee wellness (Costea, et al., 2005). The ultimate goal, however, is to create a family‑
like work environment with positive social interaction and collectivism with the ultimate goal of
maximizing organizational productivity. The discourse of “family” is thus invoked in the businesspress and boardroom to trumpet positive work environments with (in the businessʼ perspective)29

Mary Runte Work-Family Conﬂict: Fighting the ʻGood Fightʼ

positive organizational outcomes: “That [family] sentiment is the Holy Grail for HR managers,
especially today when employee loyalty is so hard to come by” (Grant, 2005, p. 13). Walmart, forexample, utilized the ideals of family when successfully appealing to workers to resist unionization(Schlender, 2005) and to cultivate a culture in which employees are to prioritize their Walmart"family" over their own (Bianco, 2006). Work has capitalized on the discourse of the family, but
to further organizational goals. They have raped the meaning from the words “family” and “community” by exploiting their aﬀect to maximize proﬁt.
Conclusion
Management research highlights the challenge and importance of balancing work and family
priorities. A focus on the incompatibility of role expectations stimulated a wealth of research on
the antecedents and outcomes of work‑family conﬂict. From this literature and from the engagement of employers attempting to ameliorate conflict, family‑friendly organizational initiatives
emerged. Nonetheless, work‑family conﬂict persists. As I argue in this paper, conﬂict between
the domain expectations of work and family persist in part because of the one‑sided and unevenemphasis on the priorities and demands of the work domain. The discourse of conﬂict, which inthe mainstream research has been narrowly deﬁned, has not been open to competing conceptualizations. My conceptual analysis of work‑family conﬂict has developed the metaphor of conﬂictfrom a feminist poststructural perspective. Conﬂict is not a clash of work and family expectations;rather, conﬂict is a battle that is the outcome of workʼs occupation of the family domain. The
family domain has been invaded through the extension of working hours into time previously
reserved for nonwork activities. The intensiﬁcation of worktime is also seen in the movement of
employment related activities into the physical space of family and other nonwork pursuits. Technology has been the enabler of a process that speaks to the priorities of work in our daily lives.
Work has literally taken up residence in our homes. This spatial occupation is also reﬂected in the
exploitation of the emotional connotations of the family. Employers utilize the discourse of family(friendship, community and connectiveness) to strategically foster a one‑sided commitment to theorganization. This capture of the aﬀective discourse of family results in a dilution of the values
associated with family. The absorption of the discourse of work into the family domain makes thisblurring of aﬀective boundaries appear more natural, even as it supports the prioritization of workin all aspects of daily life.
It is not my purpose in this paper to argue for a return to the entrenched borders between
the work and family domain as previously drawn up by industrialization. These borders were ineﬀect political boundaries that kept the inhabitants and their interests isolated from each other.
Men were the workers; women maintained the (albeit lesser important) domain of the family.
Women and men were not issued the requisite passports to move between these territories. Fluid
movement between the domains of work and family would allow for women and men to negoti-30

ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

ate their own identities. The current system, however, is not oﬀering this opportunity because thepriorities of one domain (work) dominate.
In this paper, I have adopted the discourse of war, claiming and redeﬁning the metaphor of
conﬂict. The boundaries between the domains of work and family are being redrawn as work
increasingly occupies the time and space previously reserved for nonwork interests, such as family. Organizations have staked claim to the discourse of family, using the aﬀective positioning offamily life to further business interests. I asked earlier in this paper what I portrayed as a simple
question:
I have oﬀered what may appear to be an equally simple answer:
We experience conﬂict because we are in a state of war. Even if one accepts that the role of“mother” is socially constructed and that the priorities of family have been forced upon women
by a patriarchal society, it is an identity that many women, including myself, take on. Willingly
and joyfully. I love being a mother. I would literally lay down my life for my daughters. (I would
not do likewise for my employer!) I contend that we live in a state of conﬂict because we are
defending our families from an occupying force. Conﬂict is not a desired state. It is, however, astate that must persist until an armistice can be negotiated that does not call for thesurrender of the family.
(Mary Runte, Assistant Professor,
Department of Management, University of Lethbridge)

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