A new study by Dr Cara Booker, MiSoC Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at ISER, with Professor Heejung Chung at the University of Kent, has been nominated for a major international award – the Rosabeth Moss Kanter International Award for Research Excellence in Work and Family.
Their paper, Flexible working and the divison of housework and childcare: Examining the divisions across arrangement and occupational lines, was published in 2023 in the journal Work, Employment and Society. The study used Understanding Society data to explore how how flexible working is associated with the division of housework and childcare among dual-earner heterosexual couples with young children.
They found that arrangements that allow more boundary blurring, such as homeworking, are associated with more traditional divisions of childcare but not necessarily of housework. Flexitime, especially for the lower-skilled/paid occupations, enables a more egalitarian division of labour, possibly because it is used to maximise households’ working hours and income.
The Kanter prize is the joint project of the Center for Families at Purdue University and the Boston College Center for Work & Family, the international award raises the awareness of high quality work-family research among the scholar, practitioner, and consultant communities. Applications are not accepted. A very rigorous process involving nomination and review by a committee of over 70 leading scholars determined this year’s finalists from over 2500 articles published in over 70 leading English-language journals from around the world. As the standards of quality for work-family research continue to rise, we aim to make actionable findings from the best studies more commonplace in business communities to inform policies, programs, and practices.
The Kanter Award is given with the generous sponsorship of the Corporate Partners of the Boston College Center for
Work & Family, a network of work-life and human resources practitioners from leading organizations. The Kanter
Award is one mechanism that the Centre for Families implements to bridge academic research with corporate practice.
Citation for this paper:
Chung, H., & Booker, C. (2023). Flexible working and the division of housework and childcare: Examining
divisions across arrangement and occupational lines. Work, Employment and Society, 37(1), 236-256.
https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170221096586