Beyond ‘Juggling’ and ‘Flexibility’: Classed and Gendered Experiences of Combining Employment and Motherhood

This paper proposes that there is a need to push beyond the popular discourses of‘flexibility’ and ‘work-life balance’. Developing a feminist-Bourdieuianapproach and drawing on three illustrative case studies from my interviewresearch with 27 mothers in the UK, I show the importance of maintaining a focuson class and gender inequalities. In the first part of the paper the concepts ofcapitals, dependencies and habitus which shaped, and were shaped by, thisinterview research are discussed. An analysis of three women's accounts of theirexperiences across work and family life is then used to illustrate that althoughthese women all used terms such as ‘flexibility’ and ‘juggling’ in describingtheir work, the experience of that work was crucially influenced by theirhistories and current positioning. Tracing each of these women's trajectoriesfrom school, attention is focused on the influence of differential access tocapitals and relations of dependency in the emergence of their dispositionstoward work. Overall, the paper points to the significance of examining theclassed and gendered dimensions of women's experiences of employment andmotherhood.