Men and Flexible Work: Perceptions of Organisational Leaders and Men Who Use Flexible Work

Abstract

Gendered patterns of employment and care are common in Australia. Men spend more time in paid employment and less time on care and domestic tasks than women. This pattern is associated with workplace gender inequality. In this thesis, I work from a position that men’s use of flexible work could contribute to more equitable distribution of work and care. Therefore, I aim to explore perceptions of men’s flexible work, with the intention of producing research that could aid in increasing men’s access to and use of flexible work. Australian flexible work legislation is limited in application and enforcement. Flexible work more often occurs within organisational policies, or in an informal manner, guided by cultural norms. In a review of relevant literature, I first present relevant statistics about gendered patterns of employment and care. These patterns are contextualised with a brief history of gendered work practices, followed by research regarding the outcomes and associations of flexible work. I approached this topic with an exploratory qualitative research design. I collected data in two interview studies, one with organisational leaders and one with men who use flexible work. The data were analysed using thematic discourse analysis and qualitative content analysis. I found that organisational leaders tended to either avoid talking about men, or they would discuss men and women within traditional gender roles. This pattern of accounts is investigated using the theory of gender-blind sexism and shows how such accounts contribute to gender inequality in the workplace. Flexible work was described by organisational leaders as an exchange between organisations and employees, with a preference for informal practice. Social exchange theory is utilised in the analysis of these descriptions. The exchange was expected to benefit organisations, but also had potential to cause disadvantage to employees. Such disadvantage is unlikely to encourage use by men. Further, informality of flexible work creates a vulnerable work environment for employees who rely on flexible work. Benefits to organisations were expected from flexible work. Indeed, such benefits were described as fundamental components of flexible work. This sits in contrast to relevant literature, which is equivocal about potential benefits flexible work may provide to organisations. Both organisational leaders and men who used flexible work most frequently described flexible work as part-time, remote, or altered timings of work. The data also captured a form of flexible work that is not presented in Australian legislation, which is work without clear limits, but with some opportunity to carve out some non-work time. Unrelated aspects of employment such as sick leave and hot desking were also included as forms of flexible work. Care was the most common reason for flexible work according to all participants. In the case of men who used flexible work, they discussed caring for children, avoiding childcare, and sharing work and care with their partner as the main reasons to engage in flexible work. There are three main contributions of this research. First, the tendency to avoid gender or describe it as an insurmountable obstacle. Second, organisational leaders had unrealistic expectations of benefits of flexible work and deployed flexible work in a way that may cause organisational detriment. The third contribution is that descriptions of flexible work often included unpaid overtime or unrelated aspects of work that were changeable, rather than flexible work. These contributions can assist in optimising flexible work practices, both for encouraging gender equality through sharing employment and care, and for maximising the likelihood that flexible work will contribute positively to organisations.