Rhona Rapoport was director of the Institute of Family and Environmental Research from 1977 until its closure at the beginning of 2005. She has advised governments and worked with employers and policy makers in Britain, the USA and Japan, undertaking consultancy and research on work-life issues. She is also a founding editor of the international journal Community, Work and Family, published by Taylor & Francis. She has published extensively including The Work Family Challenge, edited with her son, Jeremy Lewis (1996) and Work–Life Integration: Case Studies of Organisational Change, with C. She has led many national and international research projects on these topics and is currently directing a European Union funded eight-country study on gender, parenthood and well-being in changing European workplaces. Her research focuses on workplace practice, culture and change in different social policy contexts. She has a degree in Psychology and a PhD in Organisational Psychology. Suzan Lewis is Professor of Organisational and Work–Life Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, a director of the multi-site Work–Life Research Centre and was formerly Visiting Professor at the School of Management, UMIST. She has a degree in Social Policy and a masters degree in Gender and Social Policy, both from the London School of Economics. As well as being an Associate of the Work–Life Research Centre, she has been involved with the Institute of Family and Environmental Research as a Research Associate and has worked at the Open University as an Associate Lecturer. Richenda Gambles is currently working as a Lecturer in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Oxford, UK. As well as exploring contemporary problems, this book attempts to seed hope and new ways of thinking about one of the key challenges of our time. There is a myth that ‘work-life balance’ can be achieved through quick fixes rather than challenging the place of paid work in people’s lives and the way work actually gets done. Profits and short term efficiency gains are often placed before social issues of care or human dignity.īut what about the impact this has on men and women’s well being, or the long-term sustainability of people, families, society or even the economy? Drawing from interviews and group meetings in seven diverse countries – India, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, the UK and USA – this book explores the multiple difficulties in combining paid work with other parts of life and the frustrations people experience in diverse settings. In the business world and among many Governments around the world, the importance of paid work and the primacy of economic competitiveness, whatever the personal costs, is almost accepted wisdom. Some feel that worrying about a lack of time or energy for family relationships or friendships is a luxury or secondary issue when compared with economic growth or development.
Many regard the ways in which paid work can be combined or ‘balanced’ with other parts of life as an individual concern and a small, rather self-indulgent problem in today’s world.
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