IDEAL AND REALITY, BALANCE AND CONFLICT- A STUDY ON WORKING PARENTS' EXPERIENCE OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN FUJIAN, CHINA - DIVA
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IDEAL AND REALITY,
BALANCE AND CONFLICT
– A STUDY ON WORKING PARENTS’
EXPERIENCE OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
IN FUJIAN, CHINA
Magisteruppsats
Arbetsvetenskap
CHEN LIN
A-M2021:6Program: Magisterutbildning med inriktning arbetsvetenskap Svensk titel: Ideal och realitet, balans och konflikt - En studie om arbetande föräldrars upplevelse av balans mellan arbete och privatliv i Fujian, Kina Engelsk titel: Ideal and reality, balance and conflict - A study of working parents’ experiences of work-life balance in Fujian, China Utgivningsår: 2021 Författare: Chen Lin Handledare: Erik Ljungar Examinator: Tora Nord Nyckelord: Arbetande föräldrars, upplevelse, work-life balance, work-life conflict, flexibla arbetsarrangemang, könsskillnad, roll, politik och åtgärder. _________________________________________________________________ Sammanfattning The study is based on empirical research. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with working parents having children under the age of eight (including eight years old). All informants were between 31-35 years old, from Fujian Province of China. The purpose of the research is to investigate how working parents experience work-life balance in their real lives. The research focuses on two aspects of working parents: work and personal life. The research theory mainly includes three aspects, namely, role balance and work-life balance, work-life conflict and inter-role conflict, and a gender perspective. These serve as explanatory tools for the subjective experience of working parents’ work-life balance. The study has answered and discussed the research questions from three aspects: (1) gender differences and flexible working arrangements. It is found that the incompatibility between fixed working hours and the family schedule requirements of working parents leads to work-life conflicts. Men and women adopt flexibility in different ways. (2) role and work-life conflict. The results show that blurring the blurred work-life boundaries has an adverse effect on both family roles and work roles. Furthermore, it is found that with the support and help of the elderly, the time conflict between family care and work for working parents can be reduced. However, if the concept of parenting between the two generations differs significantly, working parents’ sense of work-life conflict may still exist. (3) policies and measures for work-life balance. This part discusses how to better reconcile the work-life balance of working parents. It is divided into two sections, namely, the national policies and the measures of the organisations. Meanwhile, specific suggestions are given.
Acknowledgements I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all informants that participated in the interviews. They provided valuable information and materials for this research. Acknowledgements to my supervisor, Erik Ljungar, who provided timely help and valuable suggestions and comments throughout the whole process of the thesis. Meanwhile, I am very grateful to the examiner, Tora Nord, for the valuable comments and constructive suggestions to improve my thesis. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support and understanding of my Magister study life this year. They support me as always and give me selfless love and care, so that I can continue to move forward with gratitude!
1 Introduction..................................................................................................................... 4
1.1 Research purpose and questions......................................................................................6
1.2 Delimitations ........................................................................................................................6
1.3 Disposition ...........................................................................................................................6
2 Theory .............................................................................................................................. 7
2.1 Role balance and work-life balance ..................................................................................7
2.2 Work-life conflict and inter-role conflict ...........................................................................8
2.3 A gender perspective ..........................................................................................................9
3 Literature review............................................................................................................. 9
3.1 Work-life balance and conflict ...........................................................................................9
3.2 Gender differences in inter-role conflict ......................................................................... 11
3.3 Flexible working arrangement ......................................................................................... 12
3.4 Boundary management..................................................................................................... 13
3.5 Policies and measures of work-life balance................................................................... 13
3.6 Organisational culture ...................................................................................................... 15
4 Research methodology ............................................................................................... 16
4.1 Selection of method and perspective ............................................................................. 16
4.2 Selection of informants ..................................................................................................... 18
4.3 Reliability and validity ....................................................................................................... 18
4.4 Ethical considerations ...................................................................................................... 19
4.5 Implementation of the investigation ................................................................................ 19
5 Results ........................................................................................................................... 20
5.1 Presentation of the informants ........................................................................................ 20
5.2 Experiences of flexible working arrangements ............................................................. 21
5.3 Experiences of the family benefit policies and measures ............................................ 25
5.4 Experiences of personal life ............................................................................................. 27
5.5 Ideal and reality, balance and conflict ............................................................................ 31
6 Discussion .................................................................................................................... 34
6.1 Gender differences and flexible working arrangements .............................................. 34
6.2 Role and work-life conflict ................................................................................................ 35
6.3 Policies and measures for work-life balance ................................................................. 36
6.3.1 The national policies .......................................................................................................... 36
6.3.2 The measures of the organisations ................................................................................ 39
7 Conclusion and recommendations for future research.......................................... 42
Reference ......................................................................................................................... 45
Appendix A - Interview guide ........................................................................................ 49
31 Introduction
In the current complex and rapidly changing business environment in China, modern enterprises
need to face many problems such as job burnout, interpersonal conflicts, frequent job-hopping.
Many traditional human resource management methods are gradually losing their effectiveness.
How to adopt effective management methods to stimulate the internal work initiative and
motivation of employees is a difficult problem faced by many organisations. People are changing
their work values. Most employees nowadays parallel work and personal lives, and people begin
to care about the quality of their lives. For modern employees, the value and significance of
work are no longer as simple as achieving the goal of “supporting a family” by selling labour to
obtain wages in traditional employment relationships. Employees also hope to get happiness
from work and personal lives (Song, 2017).
Work life and personal life are two essential parts of life. People seek the realization of ideals
and self-worth at work, relax and rest in the family, and find motivation to move on. In theory,
the combination of the two seems to be a perfect state that complements each other. However, in
real life, people often lament that it is difficult to achieve work-life balance (Feng & Wu, 2014).
For many employees, they devote the most time and energy to work and family. Maintaining
work-life balance is the goal pursued by most employees. However, employees have gradually
discovered that it is difficult to maintain a work-life balance throughout their careers. Major
reasons for this situation are the intensification of global competition, the focus on customer
service, and the development of technology. Today’s organisations are undergoing tremendous
changes. With the development of digital technology, employees can work anytime and
anywhere. On the one hand, it brings convenience to employees’ work, but on the other hand, it
also blurs the boundary between employees’ work and personal lives. For example, employees
use their off-duty time to check and respond to work emails or work call etc. These have brought
pressures to the organisations and employees (Song, 2017).
In recent years, topics related to work-life balance between men and women have aroused great
interest and debate. With the declining fertility rate and the aging of the population, and the
decreases in labour market participation and the increases in work intensity (Zhang & Zhang,
2018), the reconciliation of work-life balance has now become a core issue for policymakers and
policy interventions (Tunlid, 2014; Zhang & Zhang, 2018). Affected by globalization, today’s
business market is highly competitive, and traditional gender roles have changed, which makes
people reconsider traditional work and personal life patterns. This change has caused men and
women to increasingly desire to combine work and personal life. Therefore, the proportion of
women and dual-income households in the workforce is gradually increasing (Feng & Wu, 2014;
Tunlid, 2014). The traditional view of gender roles in China believes that there are differences
between men and women in social roles and responsibilities. “Men’s work centers around
outside, women’s work centers around the home” is a portrayal of the social responsibilities
undertaken by both sexes in China. This can be interpreted as that men are mainly responsible
for earning money to financially support the family and socializing outside, while women are
mainly responsible for internal family matters, such as childcare and household chores.
Therefore, in the early years, women may give up work to take care of their families in China.
However, as the structure of the labour market changes, the number of female employment and
dual-income households continue to increase and the gender role positioning is also changing.
4More and more women are no longer confined to family life and are actively engaged in work.
Men also start to actively participate in family life. The statistical monitoring report of the
National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2017 showed that the scale of women’s employment
continued to expand. The proportion of female employed persons in the whole society was 43.5
percent. There were 65.45 million female employed persons in urban units, indicating an
increase of 16.84 million over 2010 and accounting for 37.1 percent of employed persons in
urban units. The traditional Chinese family structure has undergone significant changes in the
past few decades. This change has deepened the work-life conflicts faced by employees. Now,
with the increase in the proportion of women participating in labour, employees’ work values are
also changing. Therefore, whether they are men or women, the needs of employees for work-life
balance are becoming more and more obvious (Song, 2017). Meanwhile, Zhang and Zhang
(2018) mentioned that in China, the issue of work-life conflicts has received widespread
attention. The increase in social labour mobility has promoted the miniaturization of family size
(Zhang & Zhang, 2018) and the impact of the aging population has reduced the availability of
mutual support among traditional large families (for example, grandparents cannot help take care
of the children). The family responsibilities of working parents are increasing, and work-life
conflicts become more prominent (Liu, 2015; Zhang & Zhang, 2018).
The increasing demands for competition among personnel in the field of work and for family
inevitably lead to work-life conflicts. When the demands of work and personal life are not
compatible, it will lead to conflicts between work and personal life (Tunlid, 2014). Many studies
have shown that work and personal life influence each other. If people can maintain a work-life
balance, then two different aspects can have positive impacts on each other (Feng and Wu, 2014;
Tunlid, 2014; Zhang and Zhang, 2018). In contrast, work-life conflicts can lead to negative
health consequences, such as depression, anxiety, emotional tension and low life satisfaction,
reduce work well-being and decrease productivity (Tunlid, 2014). In China, the development of
work-life balance programs is not optimistic, and the problems caused by work-life conflicts are
becoming increasingly prominent. The work demands faced by Chinese employees, the daily
workload and weekly working hours are far greater than in many other countries in the world,
especially in industries with high work intensities and fast paces (Li, 2018). The “996” working
hour system1 is prevalent, and neither the organisation managers nor the employees have
sufficient awareness of the importance of work-life balance. Employees frequently suffer
physical and mental health problems (Li, 2018). Faced with the various situations mentioned
above, now organisation managers began to adopt family-supporting policies and measures, and
actively sought ways to relieve work pressure and adverse pressure reactions. With the
continuous development of economy, technology, medical and health, and social policies, work-
life balance should be the ultimate goal. The organisation and the country will also benefit from
finding ways to work-life balance and regularly assessing employees’ well-being.
At present, research on the concept, influencing factors and mechanism of the work-life balance
of employees has been carried out in academia, and related theories are developing rapidly. But
meanwhile, the existing research still has some shortcomings: First, most research focuses on
factors at the work level, while ignoring the impact of factors at the personal life level. Second,
1
996 working hour system is a work schedule that is commonly practiced by many companies in China.
The name is derived from the employees’ requirement of working from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM for 6 days in
a week, which is almost 72 hours per week (996 working hour system, 2021).
5although the role played by managers has been examined, there is still a lack of specific and
targeted policies and measures in the organisation. In China, employees generally lack work-life
balance (Feng & Wu, 2014; Song, 2017; Li, 2018; Zhang & Zhang, 2018). On the one hand, with
the changes in the organisational environment and labour market structure, the problems of work
pressure and work-life conflicts have become increasingly prominent. On the other hand, with
the change of work values, people start to pay more and more attentions to the quality of life.
The contradiction between the work and personal life demands of employees is a fact that every
organisation manager must face. So, what are the reasons for employees’ work-life conflicts?
How do various factors affect employees’ work-life balance? What measures can be taken to
improve employees’ work-life balance? This series of issues are worth pondering. Therefore, this
study will take working parents as the research object, and try to explore their experience of
work-life balance, and how to reconcile the work-life balance of working parents from the
perspective of the state and the employer.
1.1 Research purpose and questions
The purpose of this study is to gain insights into Chinese working parents’ experience of
balancing work and personal lives and to study what factors affect work-life balance. An
additional purpose is to investigate how to reconcile work-life balance for working parents from
different perspectives. The specific research questions are described as follows:
• How do working parents experience work-life balance?
• What policies and measures should the state and organisations adopt to better reconcile
the work-life balance of working parents?
1.2 Delimitations
The delimitations in this study are focused on the informants’ experience of work-life balance.
The delimitations of informants are that they are all from Fujian Province of China and they are
all working parents with children who are under eight years old (including eight years old). They
are between 31-35 years old and all have university background (have a bachelor degree). This
research investigates experiences of five groups of families regarding work-life balance, and also
examines gender differences in the experience of work-life balance, but it does not generalize it
to all other parents in China. The main reason for choosing these working parents as the research
object is that they have one or more children under eight years old (including eight years old)
and it is challenging for them to achieve work-life balance. These parents need to spend much
time and energy in taking care of their young children, and have to work harder to achieve a
work-life balance.
1.3 Disposition
This research will focus on several chapters. In the first chapter, the background, problems, and
research purpose and questions of this field are introduced.
6In the second chapter, the theoretical models related to this research are described. These models
and theories will be used to check the empirical data collected.
The third chapter summarizes the existing research and literature in the field of work-life
balance.
The fourth chapter introduces the research methods and how to collect and process experience
materials in the working process. Afterwards, the informants are briefly introduced and the
ethical considerations and principles are highlighted.
Subsequently, the results of the empirical materials collected in the interview are described in the
fifth chapter.
In the sixth chapter, the results of the collected empirical material are analysed and discussed
based on the theoretical framework.
In the last chapter, the work conducted in this study is summarized and the recommendations for
national policy, organisation or company that reconcile work-life balance for working parents
and also for further research are provided.
2 Theory
The theoretical framework is described in this chapter. The theory will serve as an explanatory
tool for the working parents’ subjective experiences of work-life balance. First, the role balance
and work-life balance are theoretically described. Thereafter, it explains in more depth the work-
life conflicts and inter-role conflicts. It also introduces the two directions of inter-role conflicts
and three different forms of conflicts.
2.1 Role balance and work-life balance
Life is not only concerned with family issues, but also with the overall life qualities. Since the
general criticism of work life research is concentrated on groups such as parents, studying work-
life balance can provide a broader and encompassing approach for understanding the interface
between an employee’s work and their other roles (Haar, 2013).
According to Harr (2013), “work-life balance is defined as the extent to which an individual is
able to adequately manage the multiple roles in their life, including work, family and other major
responsibilities”. He took role balance as another unique theoretical perspective to understand
the work-life interface. Haar (2013) believed that the role balance theory is the best theoretical
mechanism for understanding work-life balance, which shows that perceived balance can enable
employees to obtain benefits from successfully managing work and family roles. The theoretical
approach to work role shows that if employees perceive more harmony among multiple roles,
positive outcomes can be achieved, especially to obtain and retain more psychological resources.
In theory, how employees perceive their role management is important, rather than the number of
roles that the employees participate in. When multiple roles are involved, it is important to be
7flexible and extend their identities. He pointed out that cultivating such flexibility in attitude will
be beneficial. By organizing the relationship between these roles in an orderly manner, a balance
of self-perception can be achieved. Or by flexibly managing these roles, employees can get more
benefits from their roles (Haar, 2013). In addition, Haar (2013) emphasized that balance is not
understood as equality in time, but how people evaluate their own success to achieve the balance
of multiple roles. Work-life balance aims to achieve harmony between multiple roles, not to
assume actual roles.
2.2 Work-life conflict and inter-role conflict
Conflict theory assumes that personal time and energy are limited. Therefore, increased roles can
lead to overload and stress, which may negatively affect health in the long run (Grant-Vallone &
Donaldson, 2001; Allvin et al. 2006:107). Role conflict is a concept defined as a conflict in the
relationship between one or more roles that an individual has (Bates, 1962:79). A role conflict
can result in consequences for the individual. This can manifest itself in a psychological
consequence where the role conflict gives an emotional response in the form of anxiety,
frustration or guilt. The consequence can also be disturbances in the social system, for example
family and workplace, in which the role conflict has arisen. This means that if behaviours that
the norms demand within the social system are not met, the system as a function will be
damaged. When different social systems are interdependent, a disturbance in one system can
develop into a disturbance in another system (Bates, 1962:79-81).
It is difficult to strike a balance between work and family, and it often leads to role conflicts,
failing to meet the requirements of work roles and family roles simultaneously. As Greenhaus
and Beutell (1985) mentioned, work-family conflict is a form of inter-role conflict, which is the
conflict between the energy, time or behavioural demands of the work role and the family role.
Work-life conflict is an extension of work-family conflict. Work roles may have a negative
impact on the personal’s other life roles and interests, for example, it may affect the time to
socialize with friends, exercise, education, spend some time alone and recovery, etc. Kossek and
Lee (2017) mentioned that scholars often methodologically and theoretically confound all forms
of non-work conflict in the work-family measure, which is a challenge for current research.
Therefore, the term “work-life conflict” is used by some researchers to reflect many other non-
work needs in personal lives, not just those involved in the family. In this study, unless otherwise
stated, the terms “work-life conflict”, “work-family conflict” and “work-life conflict” will be
used interchangeably.
O’Driscoll et al. (2006) proposed three different hypotheses of work and family conflicts,
namely, time-based, effort-based, and behaviuor-based conflicts (O’Driscoll et al., 2006:118).
Time-based conflict considers that time is a limited resource. Spending more time at work will
inevitably leads to less time spent on family life. Effort-based conflict refers to that, when a work
role requires too much attention and energy, an individual has difficulty behaving as expected in
his or her life role. Behavioural conflicts refer to conflicts of behaviours in different roles that are
inconsistent with each other. At work, individuals may need to be driven, task-oriented,
competitive-oriented and put themselves first. However, at home, the expectations are to be
nurturing, loving and supportive. Thereby, tensions and difficulties may occur when it should be
switched between the roles (O’Driscoll et al., 2006:118-119).
82.3 A gender perspective
A half century ago, men were the breadwinners of their families, while most women took care of
their families and children. Work life and family life were usually considered “separate spheres”.
At the end of the 20th century, as the number of women participating in paid labor increased,
gender boundaries gradually became blurred. “Work and family” emerged as a unique research
field. The image of work-family conflict had gradually but inevitably replaced the long-standing
stereotype of “separate spheres” for men and women. Gerson (2004) pointed out that many
studies on work and family life either ignored gender or did not take gender into account. As
gender changes are reshaping work and family life, the connection and transition between work
and family life can be understood from the perspective of gender. The gender perspective urges
researchers to transcend gender stereotypes, thus enriching the research on work and family life
issues. Gender should be seen as a dimension of changing and diversified social life, rather than
a binary and unchanging category. As the social system changes, “gender” has also been
restructured and defined. The concept of gender differences and gender-appropriate behaviours
has also been redefined. Gerson (2004) emphasized that researchers should put aside stereotypes
and average gender differences, to understand and analyse the diversity between men and women
and the potential convergence between them.
Gerson (2004) argued that, even though work-family conflicts are usually experienced in
personal ways, they have institutional origins. The work-family dilemma should not be regarded
as individual problems, especially as women’s problems. Individual women may bear most of
the responsibility for “solving” socially constructed problems, if there is no framework that
recognizes the gendered nature of these dilemmas. Meanwhile, Gerson (2004) stressed that a
focus on individuals, especially individual women, is to draw attention to public sources of
private troubles. With regard to work-family issues, individualistic views make women
responsible for social conditions beyond their control, such as childcare issues. Conversely,
men’s ambitions for work are not regarded as a problem of work-family conflict. It also conceals
the unequal choice and distribution of opportunities. Gender inequality is not only a personal and
social issue, but also permeates all aspects of work and family. Ignoring gender issues is not
conducive to resolving work-family conflicts. The gender perspective reflects the unequal social
structure. It also provides a way to solve individual work and family problems in a social and
cultural context (Gerson, 2004).
3 Literature review
In this chapter, the existing research and literature in the field of work-life balance are
introduced, which provides a background for research. It includes work-life balance and conflict,
the intersection between gender and class, flexible working arrangement, policies and measures
of work-life balance, and boundary management.
3.1 Work-life balance and conflict
Past studies on work-life balance and work-family balance have described the same
9phenomenon. Compared with work and family, work-life balance is more comprehensive. It
defines more personal roles (friend, mentor, neighbour, etc.) than just the family role (Sui Pheng
and Chua, 2019). Today, there is still a lack of consensus and consistency in defining, measuring,
and researching work-life balance. According to previous research, there are several definitions
of work-life balance: (1) Marks and Macdermid (1996: 421) believe that work-family balance
should be understood as role balance, which is defined as “the tendency to become fully engaged
in the performance of every role in one’s total role system, to approach every typical role and
role partner with an attitude of attentiveness and care”. (2) Clark (2000: 751) has defined work-
family balance as “satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home with a minimum of
role conflict”. (3) Greenhaus, Collins, and Shaw (2003: 513) revised the definition of work
family balance by Marks and MacDermid (1996). They defined work-family balance as “the
extent to which an individual is equally engaged in and equally satisfied with his or her work
role and family role”. (4) Frone (2003) defines work-family balance as a state of individual’s
work and family life. It has experienced a little conflict while also enjoying substantial
facilitation. However, work-life balance is still an important area worthy of attention. It has
become part of our daily language and has meaning to everyone (Sui Pheng & Chua, 2019).
The integration of work and personal life has been conceptualized by different interpretations,
such as work-life balance, work-family conflict, overflow, enrichment, etc. (Greenhaus &
Beutell,1985; O’Driscoll et al., 2006). Most explanations about the interaction between work and
family are based on the theory of role accumulation by Sieber (1974). This theory supposes that,
as the time and energy of an individual is limited, accumulating (increasing) the multiplicity of
individuals’ social roles results in overload, conflict and strain (Greenhaus & Beutell,1985;
Grant-Vallone & Donaldson, 2001; Allvin et al. 2006; O’Driscoll et al., 2006). However, in the
past few years, the terminology has changed from work-family to work-life balance. People
realize the importance of other areas in life except for the family. People play various roles and
pursue different goals.
The perspective of role conflict is used by most of the relevant studies to understand the
relationship between work and family (Feng & Wu, 2014; Tunlid, 2014; Song, 2017). As Feng
and Wu (2014) mentioned, in the group of working parents with children, husband and wife
relationships, job characteristics, work values, and different parenting concepts all have a
significant impact on work-life conflicts. Specifically, those groups whose working hours are
relatively fixed and who regard work as a way of self-realization have a higher degree of work-
life conflict. However, recent research has taken a more positive view of the relationship
between different areas of life. Actively participating in the areas of life can gain positive
experience and benefit individual development. Meanwhile, the positive experience generated in
one role can play a role in buffering the negative experience, which is generated by the pressure
of another role (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). However, there are some different views. Rapoport
et al. (2002) believed the use of work-life integration rather than balance to cover different parts
of life. Their integration depends on a person’s priorities, and these priorities do not necessarily
consume the same amount of personal resources, such as time and energy.
However, a large number of studies have shown that work-life balance is conducive to
improving organisational performance and job satisfaction, as well as enhancing organisational
commitment (Haar et al., 2014; Sirgy & Lee, 2018). In addition, work-life balance is crucial in
10individuals’ well-being, such as health satisfaction, family satisfaction, and overall life
satisfaction (Sirgy & Lee, 2018).
3.2 Gender differences in inter-role conflict
Affected by globalization, today’s business market is highly competitive, and traditional gender
roles have also changed, which makes people reconsider traditional work-life patterns. These
changes highlight the issue of how people balance their work lives with their personal lives.
Many studies show that both genders bear family responsibilities and flexible working hours can
improve work-life conflicts and balance work and family life (Hofäcker et al., 2013, Galea et al.,
2014; Peters et al., 2009). However, men and women have made different choices in terms of
working hours’ autonomy. Women face daily practical problems in caring for their children.
They often achieve better work-life balance by controlling working hours. But men tend to use
these arrangements to increase their workloads, leading to increased work-life conflicts. The
adoption of such gender-specific flexible working hours still reflects traditional gender roles and
the structure of the labour market divided by gender. The more time an individual spends at
work, the more limited the time resources in the family. If an individual wants to meet the needs
of work and family simultaneously, it is likely to cause conflict. However, studies showed that
working hours are not the main cause of work conflicts, but the irregularity and unpredictability
of working conditions. The form of flexible work affects the degree of work-life conflict
differently for employed men and women. In particular, women may also encounter work-life
conflicts when their partners adopt non-standard working hours (Hofäcker et al., 2013).
Feng and Wu (2014) studied the work-family conflict of working youth and its influencing
factors and they found that, from a gender perspective, both women and men participate in the
sharing of work and family responsibilities. However, men are not involved in housework in the
same proportion. Feng and Wu (2014) pointed out that changes between the sexes are common
occurrences, but the degree of change is different. As Chung and van de Lippe (2018)
mentioned, women put more effort and energy to try to achieve work-life balance. It is generally
believed that women choose flexible work for the purpose of combining work and family life,
not for pay. Women in the lower working class have fewer financial resources but cope with
unpredictable and unreliable working hours. Chung and van de Lippe (2018) stressed that the
intersection between gender and class is very important in understanding how to promote gender
equality in flexible work in the labour market. They pointed out that high-income earners and
managers have more opportunities to choose work flexibility, and men have more opportunities
for flexible work than women, and the reason for men’s greater work flexibility is usually that
men are in senior positions. The adoption of flexibility can also be gendered. In this case, women
use flexibility to balance work and family life, while men use it to improve performance, which
leads to gender wage differences that are detrimental to women (Chung & van de Lippe, 2018).
Magnusson (2019) investigated the relationship between gender, working conditions,
occupational gender composition and wages. Its purpose was to test the support for the mother-
friendly work hypothesis in the family-friendly welfare state of Sweden. According to the
research, there are most opportunities for flexible working conditions in high-paying and high-
skilled occupations. However, there are few opportunities for flexible working conditions in
female-dominated occupations, such as secretaries and administrative assistants. In addition,
11regardless of the characteristics of women’s work, they are paid less. Flexible work
arrangements are associated with high wages, instead of low. But the economic compensation for
flexibility is gendered. Compared with men, women get less economic reward. Magnusson
(2019) also emphasized that women’s preference or resistance to certain job characteristics
cannot be a reason why their wages are lower. If we want to address the problem of gender
inequality in the labour market, we need to focus on researching these factors that may cause
inequality.
3.3 Flexible working arrangement
In the modern economy, flexible working arrangements are becoming increasingly common and
have been recognized as an important means of balancing work and personal life (Chung & van
de Lippe, 2018). Both employers and employees are aware of the potential benefits of flexible
working arrangements. For employers, how the organisation provides the right work and
balances the lives of employees to achieve productivity has become critical. Driven by the
uncertainty of future market development, employers are increasingly inclined to adopt more
flexible forms of employment for employees to enhance their ability to adapt to rapid economic
changes. It includes, for example, fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work, part-time work,
or work with flexible working hours (Chung & van de Lippe, 2018). Similarly, employees have
gradually increased their awareness of balancing family and work roles. Today, time-spatial, or
employee-friendly flexibility is requested by many employees. This means that they have more
say in workload, working hours and working location. Arrangements that meet flexibility include
voluntary part-time work, flexible working hours, and tele-homeworking. As times change, the
connotation of the concept of (time-spatial) flexibility has become much more positive, and it is
closely related to the concept of “work-life balance” (Chung & van de Lippe, 2018).
According to Chung and van de Lippe (2018), work-life balance refers to how individuals
manage and negotiate the domain and time control between work and personal life, which
involves the issues of conflict between work and personal life. Therefore, a good work-life
balance refers to that employees are satisfied and function well at work and at home, while
minimizing role conflicts. Many previous studies have shown that flexible working arrangements
bring few negative behaviours. The positive benefits of flexible working hours far outweigh the
costs. For example, flexible working arrangements (autonomous working hours) have a positive
impact on the work efficiency of employees. Meanwhile, it increases the loyalty of employees to
the company. Additionally, employees who have children can take advantage of flexible working
hours to take care of sick children. Flexible working arrangements are considered a way to
reduce work-life conflicts because employees have discretion in controlling working hours (Lott,
2018; Chung & van de Lippe, 2018). The employee’s control over the time, place, and how to
work may be one of the main predictors of work-life conflict. However, the impact of flexible
work schedules on several work-related standards are overly complex. Another argument
suggests that a flexible schedule may actually hinder work-life balance. It will even increase the
work-life balance. In some special circumstances, the policy of flexible working hours does not
mean that employees can adjust working hours according to their personal needs, but the
emploees follow the needs of the organisation to adjust working hours (Chung & van de Lippe,
2018). Such time-spatial flexibility makes it easier for employees to work overtime and may
12hinder employees’ functions in private domains and weaken the boundary between work and
home domains (Lott, 2018).
3.4 Boundary management
Working conditions have become more free and flexible. Today, individuals must constantly
adapt themselves to this change. Work has been personalized, and individuals have many
personal responsibilities at work. Work is no longer a collective benefit, but a personal
development or survival project. More and more people have the opportunity to adapt their
working hours, perform their work at irregular hours and work from home. When an individual
has different degrees of freedom in his/her action space, that means his/her work has a certain
degree of flexibility. These freedoms include the ability of individuals to decide their own
working hours to some extent, such as flexible working hours. Or employees have complete
control over the planning of certain tasks and working hours. However, this may also cause the
boundary between work and personal life to become more blurred.
The boundary of each domain is a key factor in understanding how multiplicity of individuals’
social roles can lead to conflict or enrichment (Sui Pheng & Chua, 2019). The border theory is
defined by Clark (2000: 750) as “how individuals manage and negotiate the work and family
spheres and the borders between them to attain balance”, while the boundary theory is defined as
“the way in which individuals create and maintain boundaries as a means of simplifying and
ordering the environment”. Sui Pheng and Chua (2019) mentioned that boundaries work in two
ways, namely, the boundary for the individual transitioning from the work domain to the life
domain, and vice versa. Organisational policies and culture are seen as the key factors that
control the transition and the boundary between the two domains of work and personal life. In
order to make the boundary clear, organisations can block the transition by formulating a policy
or rule that restricts employees from communicating with their families at work. However,
individuals are able to control their personal lives, which blurs the boundaries, as they can transit
personal life to work domain whenever they want (Sui Pheng & Chua, 2019).
Leduc et al. (2016) studied “the work-life balance in terms of the good and the bad of boundary
management” and they found that more subdivisions or more integration of different life areas
does not mean better balance. Leduc et al. (2016) believed that people who like to separate work
and personal life will deprive themselves from work-family enrichment, which is actually helpful
to promote the integration of different roles and spheres of life. Although both of these methods
are beneficial for enriching from one domain to another, they can also lead to the risk of conflict.
Therefore, work-life balance is still an important issue in modern society. Most employees are
affected and they have to juggle with the demanding professional and personal lives.
3.5 Policies and measures of work-life balance
If the opportunities and responsibilities of work-life balance can be shared more equally between
working parents, it is beneficial to the well-being of the family and its individual members.
Before parenthood, many couples are able to share relatively equally, whether it is paid or unpaid
work. However, when they have children, couples have to resume their traditional roles. Even if
the children have grown up, the mother may still not be able to fully return to the labour market.
13As a result, men are engaged in more paid work and women are engaged in more unpaid work,
and individuals’ aspirations cannot be realized (Adema et al., 2017).
China has introduced some specific welfare policy and protection measures for female
employees. According to Article 7 of the National Maternity Leave Regulations of the “Special
Provisions on Labour Protection for Female Employees”, female employees are entitled to 98
days of maternity leave. Within it, 15 days can be taken before the planned birth. For dystocia,
15 days of maternity leave are added, and for multiple births 15 days of maternity leave are
added for each additional child. Paternity leave is also available if the couple have registered
their marriage in accordance with the law, i.e., the man has the right to take care of the woman
and the children during the maternity leave. Although the labour law and related regulations do
not make clear provisions on paternity leave, in general man can take 15 days of paternity leave,
and wages and other benefits are paid as usual. Meanwhile, Article 5 stipulates that employers
shall not lower the wages, dismiss, terminate labour or employment contracts of female
employees during their pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding periods. The employer of the
female employee shall pay for her maternity insurance. The so-called maternity insurance refers
to that the state and society provide medical services, maternity allowances and maternity leave
for female employees who temporarily interrupt their work during pregnancy and childbirth. It is
a social insurance system that provides necessary economic compensation and medical care for
female employees who give birth (The State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2012).
By contrast, the paid vacation systems in many European countries appear to be more developed.
Not only is the vacation time longer and the compensation rate higher, but both couples can take
vacations and the vacations are not transferable (He, 2018). Here three high-welfare European
countries are taken as examples: Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Since the mid-2000s,
Germany has introduced policies to promote a more gender-equal sharing of time for childcare
and work. The 2015 Parental Leave Reform (ElterngeldPlus) encourages fathers to take leave
and provides financial incentives for couples in order to make the division of paid and unpaid
work more balanced (Adema et al., 2017). In addition, free or low-cost childcare services can
effectively reduce the burden of family care. German law stipulates that the government is
obliged to provide care services for infants and young children from 8 months to 6 years old
(SPLASH-db.eu, 2014). It is regarded as an important measure to support women’s entry into the
labour market. Meanwhile, German law clearly stipulates that parents have the right to request
the government to provide childcare services. If the government is unable to fulfill this
obligation, it should pay the family the cost of hiring someone to look after the child or the
parent’s lost wage income due to child care. To this end, the state governments have invested
heavily in the construction of kindergarten infrastructure (He, 2018).
Similarly, in order to reconcile the work-life balance of working parents, Denmark has also
introduced a series of welfare policies. Parents in Denmark have a total of 52 weeks of paid
parental leave. The mother has the right to take four weeks of leave directly before the planned
birth, and then take a further 14 weeks of leave after birth. In the 14 weeks after birth, the father
can take two weeks of paternity leave. Since 1987, the family allowance has provided support to
families with children under 18 years of age in Denmark (SPLASH-db.eu, 2014). The
government stipulates that local childcare institutions should provide childcare services for
children between 24 weeks and 6 years old. Regardless of whether each family chooses public
14or private services, 75 percent of the cost of child care services should be borne by the
government’s public expenditures. Personal payments accounted for only 25 percent (He, 2018).
In 1974, many benefits related to maternity leave and family leave were combined to form a
“parental insurance” system, and Sweden became the first country in the world to extend leave
rights to fathers as well as to mothers (SFS 1974:473). The parental leave entitlement was given
to all parents for at least 180 days before the birth of their child and was given jointly to the
mother and father of the newborn child. It is worth mentioning that in Sweden, more and more
family policies have encouraged fathers to use parental leave in recent decades. Fathers have
become more involved in childcare and housework. Family allowances in Sweden are related to
family policy and the social insurance system. They include different types of benefits to support
the family economy: parental benefits, child allowance, study assistance, etc. (SPLASH-db.eu,
2014). The various forms of family allowance contribute to creating good economic living
conditions and reconciling the work-life balance of parents. With the exception of study
assistance, all benefits are managed by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency
(Försäkringskassan). Parental benefits are paid out for 480 days (approximately 16 months) for
one child. For 390 days, the compensation is based on the income (at the sickness benefit level),
and for the other 90 days, the compensation is 180 SEK per day (at the minimum level). Single
parents or parents with sole custody of the child are entitled to all 480 days. Parents can use the
parental benefits until the child is eight years old or completes its first year at school. Childcare
provision is the responsibility of each municipality (SFS 1976:381). Public childcare services are
guaranteed to all parents and operates on a whole-day basis. Preschool (förskola), also known as
day care (dagis) is provided for children between 1 and 5 years old. It is free of charge for
children aged 3 to 6 for up to 15 hours per week. Otherwise a fee is charged. The fee for one
child is proportional to parental income (yet capped at a maximum rate of about SEK 1,510 per
month) and inversely related to the number of children in a family (SFS 2001:160).
3.6 Organisational culture
Maintaining a work-life balance is important to prevent unhealthy lifestyles. Organisations
should create a good working environment and healthy working conditions for employees
(Winroth, 2018:57). As Ljungblad (2015) mentioned, a healthy working environment should
embrace physical and mental conditions. Employers should focus on the tasks of working
environment management. Improving the working environment of the organisation is conducive
to promoting active participation and encouraging personal development. Meanwhile, it can also
improve the health of employees (Ljungblad, 2015:10). The social working environment is
related to the working climate. More specifically, it is about social interaction, cooperation and
social support from organisations and employees. Collaboration also involves different roles and
the connections between these roles (Ljungblad, 2015:93). Winroth (2018) stressed that an
important health factor that affects the group is to make members feel belonging and recognized
by the organisation. Employees can gain feedback and encouragement, and establish a good
interaction with the organisation (Winroth, 2018:94). Work is a group activity. The material
conditions in the workplace are not the most important for work ethic and productivity. People’s
needs for recognition and security as well as the feeling of belonging in a group are more
important (Abrahamsson, 2009:141).
15The culture of an organisation is important for everyone involved. A good and harmonious
working environment enables employees to perceive and experience their work meaningfully,
and to see their contributions on a larger scale. A sustainable and healthy working life requires a
common cultural cognition within the organisation. Once a common cultural cognition is
established, this trend towards stability may be rooted in the organisational culture. The basic
values of employers and employees are shared and respected, and it is also conducive to creating
a good working atmosphere. Abrahamsson emphasized that it’s full of humanity to meet people’s
expectations for work and working environment, because working with happiness can give
people a sense of satisfaction and dignity (Abrahamsson, 2005:33).
It is important to create a health environment with a good work-life balance. Some organisations
require employees to work overtime, which may lead to their work-life conflicts. Even after
working overtime, employees may still not be able to achieve their desired results and goals.
Perhaps working overtime generates additional income, but greater happiness cannot be directly
reflected (Rife & Hall, 2015). On the other hand, the work-life balance of employees is
beneficial to the organisation. The overall health of the organisation and employees will be
stronger, as well as the work-life balance (Kaplan et al., 2017). Organisations should support the
work-life balance of employees and encourage them to return home at the end of a long day
instead of requiring them to work on weekends and evenings. Organisations can support
employees’ work-life balance in various ways, e.g., through flexible working hours, providing
child care, paid maternity leave and paternity leave, sick leave/personal leave, skill and ability
development, and flexibility with telecommuting and work sharing, etc. (Rife & Hall, 2015).
These measures not only need to be available to employees, but at the same time, they must feel
comfortable and at ease to use these measures available.
In addition, in organisations, gender neutrality is the prevailing attitude. Men and women are
essentially equal. But their different conditions in the organisation force or construct them to act
as if they were different. Particularly women are usually stratified away from technical work in
that it is mainly men who have received technical training and the accompanying higher wages
and better jobs (Abrahamsson, 2009:203). However, new competence requirements, forms of
collaboration and professional roles in the organisation, and increased demands for gender
equality, challenge the prevailing masculinity ideals and organisational gender patterns
(Abrahamsson, 2009:213).
4 Research methodology
This chapter outlines the methods that will be used in this study. Later in this chapter,
participants, data collection, data analysis and ethical aspects, as well as validity and reliability
of the thesis, will be described in detail.
4.1 Selection of method and perspective
A qualitative method of semi-structured interviews was selected as the methodology of this
study. Each interview was estimated to take 30-45 minutes, but some of them took longer time,
up to 60 minutes. This study was conducted in Sweden. Due to the geographical location, it was
16impossible to conduct face-to-face interviews with Chinese informants, and WeChat was used
instead. It is a free application that provides instant messaging services including voice and video
meetings. In China, it is a very popular and common social media application and easy to
operate, and it is used by all informants. All interviews were conducted within a week. Eight of
them were conducted via WeChat video calls, and two of them were conducted via WeChat
voice calls.
The qualitative method is adopted. One advantage of this research methodology is that
informants can freely talk about their own experiences and feelings based on the questions.
Interviewers have the opportunity to ask follow-up questions related to a particular informant’s
story and dig deeper into the answers. This is not possible with quantitative methods that use
forms containing standardized questions and display the results in statistical data (Backman,
2014:33). However, the difficulty with this method is that researchers will have to process a
large amount of collected information, which makes it difficult to organize the most relevant
information.
Some questions were prepared based on the study’s theories. However, new questions also
emerged depending on the answer of the informant. In order to ensure that the study’s theories
were covered in the question, an interview guide was formulated before starting to collect data
(see Appendix A - Interview guide English version). In this study, an interview was divided into
four aspects: (1) introductory questions about the personal background information of informant
and the situation of family members, (2) work aspects, mainly to understand the situation and
experience of work, and whether organisations or companies provide family benefit policies to
their employees, in order to reconcile their work-life balance, (3) aspects of personal life, mainly
to understand the situation of personal life and see whether the personal experiences support or
help from family or friends, which contributes to work-life balance, and (4) concluding questions
regarding whether the personnel understand the relevant policies of the national family benefits,
and what suggestions and opinions they have. These questions were designed to be open-ended,
with the purpose of collecting informants’ experiences and feelings about their work-life balance
under the framework theory.
The interviews were carried out in Chinese, since the informants are all from China and
Mandarin is their mother tongue, but the interview guide was translated into Chinese (see
Appendix A - Interview guide Chinese version) in order to make the informants understand the
meaning more clearly. Due to language differences, there may be deviations in understanding,
but Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary and Oxford Chinese-English Dictionary are used to find
words or sentences that are as close to the original meaning as possible. Before the interview,
researchers should carefully reflect on and consider alternative versions of the question, because
better formulations of questions may emerge according to Willig (2013:25). Therefore, before
the interview, an interview test was conducted with two Chinese friends in order to avoid the
ambiguous assumption and ensure that informants can better understand the questions. Taking
notes during the interview not only distracts the interviewee and interviewer, but also interferes
with eye contact and non-verbal communication. In order to be able to conduct a comprehensive
analysis of the data, it is therefore necessary to make audio recordings and transcribe interview
records (Willig, 2013:26). Before using the recording device, the informant has been clearly
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