The Feminist Integrative Process:

Combining Work & Family

created by:

Sue-Ann Chen, Nanki Marwah, Rebecca Nounou

Well you are not alone. Did you know that the majority of US employees (67%) say they don't spend enough time with their children. The majority of employees (63%) say they don't spend enough time with their spouses. [1]

It is understandable. 75% of women in the labor force work full-time, averaging 30 hours or more per week. They average 76 hours in total weekly work, including 33 hours dedicated to household tasks. Women spend more time doing work for their families than they do in paid jobs.[2]

This page on the Feminist Integrative process is here to tell you, "YOU ARE NOT ALONE." Every day parents around the world struggle with the challenge of balancing paid and unpaid work in their daily lives.

In a 1997 survey of US parents, 90% of mothers and 95% of fathers wished that they could spend more time at home with their families. In contrast, parents in The Netherlands, 52% and 78% of mothers and fathers, respectively, wished to have more time at home. Clearly, the US needs to refocus its policies concerning working parents and their families. [3]

We hope you will use this site as a tool to understand how you can go about balancing your career and personal life, because both can be equally rewarding.

Background:

Historically, a woman’s economic survival depended on a man. She was expected to get married and provide care and nurture for her offspring. Most married women were not active participants in the paid labor market and lacked economic independence from their male partners. Men and women had two distinct jobs; a man was typically responsible for being the breadwinner while a woman was accountable for un-paid work, which amounted to care-giving and doing household chores.

As women begun the Questioning and Envisioning Process, they started to challenge traditional gender roles and the idea that women were naturally inferior to men. Married women entered the paid work force in greater numbers. This allowed women to steer away from subordinate unpaid positions.

As more women entered the paid labor market, feminism began to focus on the Equal Opportunity and Equal Rights Movement to achieve traditional masculine marker of success, money. Women were engaged in “competitive careerism” which meant that they were trying to get high status and higher paid jobs, most of which were traditionally men’s jobs. Women often adopted typically masculine behaviors and values such as:

• Being aggressive and assertive
• Being less emotional in the work place
• Working long hours
• Neglecting family

Often, this measure of success and the struggle to achieve it caused women to give up getting married or having children.Other working women who chose to have children hired caretakers to tend to their children and their household domestic chores.

Some women who entered the workforce under these masculine terms missed marriage and mothering. This led to a process called Valuing the Devalued. In this process, many women affirmed that they wanted to be active mothers, and argued that parenting was important and valuable to society. As a result, some women chose to opt-out of the work force and resume their traditional roles as primary caregivers. Opting-out meant that women in the workforce would quit the workplace voluntary to pursue a care-giving position at home.

The Integrative Process:

Women who have become involved in the Integrative process have learned from the Equal Opportunity movement and Valuing the Devalued process as well as through their own or their mother's experiences. The Equal Opportunity Process taught women the importance of labor force success and made it acceptable for them to do traditionally masculine jobs.

It created a reaction, the Valuing the Devalued process, through which women reaffirmed the importance of women’s traditional caring labor; however, these two processes saw paid labor and unpaid family work as mutual exclusive.

The millions of women (and some men) now involved in the Integrative process value BOTH paid work and family. This process is about their struggles to find ways to combine and balance participation in the traditionally masculine sphere of paid work with active participation in the traditionally feminine sphere of the family, homemaking, and parenting.

Still, the concept of masculinity and femininity as mutually exclusive continues. The Integrative process emphasizes the importance of men and women having both masculine and feminine traits. This includes active participation in both work and family creating a new kind of integrated person who is both masculine and feminine in all aspects of life.

The Integrative process is not only about straight married women integrating their work and family life. Single or lesbian moms should integrated. Men must also integrate their paid work and family life. It is only when every parent integrates that the notion of caring as women-only work will be broken down.

It not only takes the individual to make efforts to integrate, but also the government and corporations must help in this process too. The Integrative process looks to find ways to align government policies and corporate responsibilities towards helping parents achieve a gratifying "work-life balance".

Working Mother's Magazine each year compiles a list of the top 100 "Family-Friendly" corporations in the US. Here is the link to the Top 100 "Family-Friendly" Companies .