Doubts over 'supermums'
More than half of adults in the UK think that family life will suffer if a woman goes to work, suggesting that support for gender equality is diminishing, new research claims.
The study, by a Cambridge University sociology professor, compared the results of social attitude surveys from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s from the UK, the US and Germany. It found that only 46 per cent of women and 42 per cent of men currently believe that family life would not suffer if women went to work, compared to 50 per cent of women and 51 per cent of men in the 1990s.
The study, published in a new book, Women and Employment; Changing lives and new challenges (Edward Elgar Publishing), said the change had been more extreme in the US, where the percentage of people who believe families do not suffer if women work has fallen from 51 per cent in 1994 to 38 per cent in 2002.
It concluded that there needs to be more research on whether the attitude shift is occurring because caring for the family is still seen as women's work, or because people feel there is no practical alternative to maternal care.
Professor Jacqueline Scott, who led the study, said, 'It is conceivable opinions are shifting as the shine of the "supermum" wears off, and the idea of women juggling high-powered careers while also reading bedtime stories is increasingly seen to be unrealisable by ordinary mortals.
'If we are to make progress in devising policies that encourage equal working opportunities for women, we need to know more about what gender roles people view as practical, possible and fair,' she added.
Professor Scott said that each country appeared to be in a different stage in a 'cycle of sympathy' for gender equality. In Germany, where up until the 1990s a large majority of people still believed that men should be the family breadwinners while women stayed at home, support for the idea of working mothers appears to be increasing. In the UK and the US, where support for equal opportunities is longer-standing, concern appears to be growing that the welfare of families is compromised as women find themselves juggling the double burden of employment and family care.
Jonathan Swan, policy officer at Working Families, said, 'We would like to see real change in the workplace which will help women, and men, fulfil their working and caring responsibilities on a more equitable basis. We know men want to become more involved with their children, and many women want to carry on working when they have children. But the way work is organised and rewarded means it is very difficult for families to escape old gender roles and assumptions.'
