Appropriately, I started my day with a session on using social media. Nanette Fondas (amongst many other things a blogger at huffingtonpost.com) explained why intellectuals shold blog. The world has changed, with scholars increasingly trying to get their work out to the larger public. For academics blogging means more work. But, for greater dissemination, they have no choice but to participate. CV Harquail (Entrepreneur of insights, blogger at AuthenticOrganizations.com) explained how blogging is much more about influence and opinion than it is about presenting facts in academese language.

Next, a poster session. Admittedly, I found the posters a bit too much focused on text: as if a whole are article was copy-pasted on a big piece of paper. Nevertheless, interesting stuff! Audrey Reichman was interested in the association between maternal feelings towards employment and maternal mental health and well-being. Whereas the results were quite difficult to interpret, we had a nice discussion about interpretations of the findings, and possible improvements of the research. Christina Wolf showed analyses on time use of both men and women, in the United States and Germany. Men clearly spend more time on leisure than women. But, did you know that married men have less leisure time than cohabiting men? I wasn’t really aware of the existence of such differences between cohabitation and marriage, but the found disparities in time use were consistent between countries. In the general discussion, I could even contribute some insights on Dutch part-time labour. Since so many women indeed work part-time in the Netherlands, many women who actually want to work full-time find themselves faced with all kind of normative and practical pressures.

There was a great round-table conversation, about an international perspective on work and ‘families': addressing needs and solutions in diverse societies. The goal was to debate international applications of theoretical frameworks, measures, and interventions relating to the work/nonwork issues. The notes on this session will be posted on the WFRN commons soon, so make sure to check them out. Some of the issues discussed include how job demands – a crucial indicator of work-family balance – are highly job-specific, Gail Kinman argued, and therefore difficult to assess with general measures. Anne Bardoel discussed the difficulties multinationals face when trying to develop HR policies to apply in different countries. Total diversity is not feasible, but a single policy would not be applicable in all countries / cultures. Even within countries, great diversity is present. India, Tripti Desai described, is much more like Europe than a single country. Finally, despite all these forms of diversity in jobs, cultures, countries, and regions, Jospeh Grzywacz argued for the importance of looking for a common ground in our measures to attempt and facilitate comparative research.

So, we have had three fantastic days at the WFRN inaugural meeting in New York. Of course, I haven’t even told about a plenary meeting on Workplace Flexibility in the United States, nor about managing the work-family boundary, nor about supporting fatherhood and paid work. There simply was too much to attend, and to choose between. What a great program it was, and the number of very nice people I met!

In the end, I am delighted to have been part of the start of what seems to be a very interesting organization.

Did you attend this conference as well? Drop a comment with your thoughts on the WFRN inaugural meeting!

In a session on motherhood in the workplace, Jocelyn Elise Crowley provided qualitative accounts of how women experience being discriminated against for being a women. 54 Out of 125 women she interviewed reported having experienced discrimination, taking forms such as discrimination during th hiring process, getting less support on-the-job, and being discriminated against in job evaluations. Highly interesting, Daniela Grunow and Silke Aisenbrey studied the relation between the macro economic condition and mothers’ re-entry into the labour market. Their findings include (if remember correctly) that in Germany the employment gaps for mothers on family leave are longer during economic recessions. In the United States there were found no prolonged employment gaps for mothers on family leave during economic recession. I very much look forward to reading this paper in print.

A great plenary session was on the program. Ariane Hegewisch and Janet Gornick spoke about employment and work-family policy and drew some lessons from Europe. In Europe, EU directives mostly set minimum standards. Despite the common minimum standards, however, huge diversity in country-level policies and work-family infrastructure. One very straightforward core lesson we can learn from this European diversity is that work-family policy is also macroeconomic policy, strongly stimulating women’s employment; policy failure has significant economic consequences. There is some discussion whether very long (parental) leave periods have adverse effects on women’s careers. The united states, however, are so far in the ‘pathetic zone’, that there should be no concerns about the risk that increasing parental leave policies has adverse effects, Janet Gornick argued.

Jody Heymann widened the picture from Europe to the whole world, showing magnificent graphs on policy availability all over the world. Arguing that amongst the 15 most economically competitive countries in the world extensive family policies are highly common, she refuted the claim that on the long run countries ‘cannot afford’ to implement policies to reduce work-family conflicts. Arguing for the public availability of world-wide data on family policies, she presented the impassive website http://www.raisingtheglobalfloor.org. Go have a look!

Did I tell you about the work and family commons? The goal of the Work and Family Researchers’ Network (WFRN) reads:

The WFRN facilitates virtual and face-to-face interaction among work and family researchers from a broad range of fields and engages the next generation of work and family scholars. As a global hub, [the WFRN] provide[s] opportunities for information sharing and networking via [their] website, which includes the only open access work and family subject matter repository, the Work and Family Commons.

This Work and Family Commons really could turn out to something special: a multidisciplinary repository focused on the very relevant issue of work and family studies. If this takes of, this really will be the place to go to for learning what’s going on in the field of work and family research. Also, I signed up for a commission that will continue working on improving the work and family commons.

Next, ‘we’ focused on multilevel comparative work-life research. Laura den Dulk raised – and answered – the question how institutional and economic pressures in national context relate to the adoption of work-life-balance policies in organizations. They found that public sector organizations are more responsive to state support and female unemployment; large organizations are more sensitive to state support and importance of work. Karen Lyness presented how supervisors think that managers score higher on work-life balance, than the managers themselves think they do. Supervisors may underestimate managerial subordinates’ need for support in balancing their work with family.

And that wraps it up. Or not, actually, since there was so much else going on. Including a second plenary session. But this post is long enough as it is. Looking forward to day 3!