However, when she goes back to work, she said she plans to request some evening shifts, likely 4 p.m. to midnight. Some parents who can afford childcare choose to work different schedules anyway because they want their children to spend time with them, not day-care providers. Other women make the tradeoff to pursue an attractive career. Chamber of Commerce spokesman Frank Coleman said the recent tight labor markets have prompted more employers to offer flexibility in schedules to keep workers happy. That includes comp-time and flextime proposals unions have opposed because of concerns for workers' rights to overtime pay.
Few statistics are available comparing men's and women's work schedules.
The most recent Labor Department data, from 1997, showed 14 percent of American women and 19 percent of men working shifts other than the most common daytime, weekday hours. But it did not compare shifts of men and women living in the same household. The AFL-CIO survey was conducted by pollsters Lake Snell Perry and Associates Inc. and has a margin of error rate of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. All rights reserved.