Gendered flexibility paradox

This chapter aims examines the gendered manifestations of the flexibility paradox. The chapter draws from Foucault and feminist theories of parenting such as Hays and Wall. This is done to explain why for women the patterns of the flexibility paradox may not necessarily be evident through the expansion of working hours, but through the expansion of hours spent in childcare and housework. Flexible working thus enables mothers to enact intensive parenting which is another way of perpetuating and reproducing the neo-liberal notions of self. It also presents empirical evidence of these patterns that show women expand their childcare and housework when working flexibly, while men do not. In combination with the evidence found in Chapter 6, I argue that flexible working can in fact enable heterosexual dual-earning couples to ‘do gender’, namely perform activities to adhere to their assigned gender roles engrained in our social norms. In fact, it enables a more contemporary enactment of traditional gender roles in that flexible working enables women to carry out both paid-work and domestic work without disrupting the norm around who is responsible for housework/childcare nor the ideal worker norm.