Flexible work arrangements and sustainable careers: a study of Swedish women managers in a male-dominated environment.

Abstract

Women’s career advancement rate to senior management positions continues to lag behind men’s. One frequently cited obstacle within the work-family and career literature is women’s compromised career decisions in trying to balance career, self and others as they still, unfairly, bear the brunt of caregiving and home responsibilities. Organizational flexible work arrangements (FWAs) have been advocated as one potential avenue to facilitate women’s career advancement. These are intended, for both women and men, to alleviate conflicting demands arising from their career and home roles. In practice, however, FWAs are a predominantly female phenomenon due to the gendered division of labour. Despite the explosion of research on FWAs, the results have been far from unequivocal. Various types of FWAs, organizational culture and supervisor attitudes have been found to impact on utilization and work-family interface and career consequences differentially. This study draws on the lived career experiences of 43 women managers with FWAs, across all levels of a Swedish organization. Examining how the women engaged with FWAs retrospectively and over time revealed that, by using tailored FWAs and having schedule control, the women were better able to cope with the demands from their work-family interface as those changed with career and family stage. However, the key determinant of women’s career sustainability was Sweden’s policy of long and shared parental leave between the women and their husbands, which shaped gender egalitarian home roles, and family-supportive supervisor attitudes. Furthermore, utilization of FWAs disadvantaged the women by triggering work intensification. In exchange for having flexibility and autonomy to manage their career and home demands, the women worked additional hours at night and on weekends, which was particularly pronounced in the experience of those at senior levels. Supervisor sponsorship and partnership with husbands were additional factors contributing to the career advancement of the women who reached senior levels and the fact that they never worked part-time. This study makes three key contributions. It is the first study to provide empirical evidence on the role of FWAs in women managers’ career experiences across all levels of an organization, facilitating comparisons of different points of career and family stage. Secondly, the study extends Tomlinson et al.’s (2018) flexible and sustainable career determinants’ model by demonstrating the salience of the parental context as an additional determinant. Sharing parental leave sets up routines for life whereby each parent can flex their career to help one another. Thirdly, this study furthers understanding of how work intensification is perceived and experienced. While the women described having “balance” in their lives, they also talked about working additional hours at home to reciprocate for using FWAs. The paradox of work intensification and “balance” poses a threat to well-being and career sustainability and contests the positive portrayal of “balance” in the sustainable careers’ literature. This study has a number of implications for policy and practice. Improving women’s career sustainability and advancement requires a synergy between society, organization and family. Public policies directed towards working mothers and fathers have the potential to accelerate change towards gender equality at work and home. Organizations, by offering FWAs and safeguarding against work intensification, may contribute to employee career sustainability and well-being.