Feminism and Workplace Flexibility Symposium: Redefining Work: Implications of the Four-Day Work Week - Redefining Work: Possibilities and Perils

Recently Professors Schultz and Hoffman argued that, in order to achieve gender equality at work and at home, scholars and policy makers should consider adopting measures to bring the weekly working hours for both employees who work very long hours at one full-time job and employees who work fewer than full-time hours at one or more jobs into closer convergence toward a more reasonable, family-friendly mean. Today, changed economic conditions have made the idea of a reduced, or reorganized, work week a rational, pragmatic solution to a pressing problem, rather than the politically impractical idea it seemed to be just a few years ago. Yet, few feminists have embraced the idea; most seem committed to a campaign for workplace flexibility that opts for enhancing individual choice for employees, mainly women, as opposed to instantiating a new set of universal norms that could benefit everyone. In this Article, Professor Schultz considers the key differences between the recent flexibility agenda and a broader program to restructure working time. She concludes that the flexibility agenda is not inevitably at odds with the larger goal of achieving gender equality but, absent vigilance, flexibility has the potential to undermine equality in both the short and the long run

Taking Sex Discrimination Seriously

The fiftieth anniversary of Title VII\u27s ban on sex discrimination provides an occasion to reflect on its successes and failures in achieving workplace sex equality. Although considerable progress has occurred, advances have been both uneven and unsteady. This Article shows that a primary limit on legal reform has been attitudinal. Before and after Title VII\u27s enactment, private and public officials have defended sex discrimination and inequality by appealing to naturalized conceptions of sex difference. Persistent stereotypes portray women as more devoted to family roles than work roles and, consequently, less committed to their jobs than men. Similar stereotypes portray women as primarily interested in female-typed jobs said to reward feminine traits and values. Viewed through the lens of such assumptions, sex-based disparities in employment are not inequalities: They are the inevitable expression of innate and cultural sex differences