The Agency Gap: Capabilities for a Work–Life Balance Across Welfare States and Within Work Organizations Brussels, 17 June 2011

Social Politics. International Studies in Gender, State and Society Vol. 18, Issue 2, Summer 2011 Sen’s Capabilities and Agency Framework Applied to Work– Life Balance Across European Welfare States and Within Work Organizations Edited by Barbara Hobson, Sonja Drobnıč and Colette Fagan

Authors: Nevenka Černigoj Sadar Laura den Dulk Sonja Drobnič Colette Fagan Susanne Fahlén Ana M. Guillén Barbara Hobson Aleksandra Kanjuo Mrčela Suzan Lewis Bram Peper Janet Smithson Judit Takács Anneke van Doorne-Huiskes Pierre Walthery

-- Why: Sen’s framework provides the theoretial space to capture the dynamics and tensions within WLB -- How: I will present model adapted from Sen’s formulation of the the capabilities set -- Future: Capabilities and agency framework: implications for new research and policy agendas My Task: Present the general framework

WLB: Normative concept for quality life WLB trade off between and money (utility) Demand resource models ***Within Capabilities Framework: WLB as quality of life and wellbeing An evaluative space: assessing how policies and their implementation enhance or weaken quality of life WLB in a European context

The Agency/Capabilities Gap in WLB: palpable expression of tensions Rising expectations aspirations/ of parents for WLB and their capabilities for achieving it. --ESS Attitudinal survey: reconciliation priority --- Majority of men want to reduce hours, even if it meant a loss of pay (CEE exception). Emergence of rights and policies for WLB and the ability to exercise them Extent of gap: Dependent upon Nat’l policy frameworks, mediated through firms/workplaces and translated into individual lives and households.

Agency Gap: Theoretical space in Capabilities agency Approach --It asks us to consider not just what individuals can do, but their opportunities to be and do” Not what one would choose, but what are the possibilities to choose a life that one values or choose among different ways of living. Agency inequalities: Rising expectations and norms for men and women to become carers and earners and the universe of constraints: the economic, social and normative barriers that they encounter.

Capabilities and Agency Survey Hungary and Sweden Subjective cognitive level: --what individuals could refuse, extra or asocial hours --what are the obtacles that stand in the way? Institutional contexts not only shape alternatives parents might choose, but what they could imagine Hungary: wide agency gap -- gender naturalized roles --precariousness and economic uncertainty Sweden: Strong sense of entitlement for WLB claims ---Insitutionally embedded, over decades

How capabilities: Capabilities Set --set of dimensions for the potential of individuals to achieve a value that is valued (WLB). ---We modify and adapt Sen’s capabilities set to a European Context --Our model reveals interaction and interplay: --nesting individual means and resources within intitutional contextual, and societal normative factors

Capability Set for WLB in a European Context

Challenges: Capabilities and Agency Gap in WLB --What are possibilities for choosing alternative ways of living? Substantive freedoms: institutional factors, cultural normative constraints --Beyond income inequalities/agency inequalities --Beyond outcomes to processes Analytical purchase on WLB research: Fertility decline, Work-life conflict; men’s low take up rates for parental rights

Looking to the Future What are the implications of the widening capabilities and agency gap across European countries: global economic pressures Euro crisis?

WLB Optimal outcome Family well being Productivity/ Efficiency Gender equality