Blog 34 Unbending Gender and Gender on Trial

Joan Williams’ book title “unbending gender” relates two different trends, the first is that as a nation we have experienced a lot less progress toward gender equality than we had hoped for, and second is that the changes that have been made have not been based on androgyny but on preserving the differences between males and females. Based on this material, there are several parallels to the work/life balances described in Gender on Trial including refusal to work for a firm that is not family orientated and the conflicts that arise with notions of an “ideal worker” and a “part-timer” and the experiences of men.

Williams talks about how women leave the workplace as a form of resistance to a work culture that makes it difficult to raise children. Women lawyers are faced with this issue every day, especially women who are perceived as “suspect mothers” (2003: 230) who have to constantly worried about whether their choice to stay in a firm was the right one. They have to asses if it is worth the hassle of staying with a company that makes it difficult to raise children; shouldn’t they work for an employer who has their best interests at heart? They can choose to opt out like the women who went and started their own firm and rejected the work culture that made it difficult for them to achieve their goals.

Many women don’t see their goal as becoming as “ideal” worker. The term “ideal worker” is used in Williams’ book and is defined as someone who is able to work for 40 years straight and takes no time off for child bearing. This obviously suits men and not women because men can’t have children and don’t need time off unless they fall ill or chose to be stay at home dads which is rare. This is described in the “Real Workers don’t work Part-time” chapter of the Holly English study. Women who are given part time work are considered less competent and less committed that the full timers. Part timers feel underappreciated and guilty for feeling like they don’t contribute enough. The desire to be the ideal worker, as Williams describes it, but the responsibilities of the home are just too great to balance full time in both realms.

Finally, both authors describe how men also feel the strains in trying to balance a work/life balance. In both works, men describe how they feel the pressure of trying to be the breadwinner but also the pressures of trying to be a good father. Many men, according to Williams, think that he sheer time value and other work requirements that an “ideal worker” needs to posses are just too demanding and they would trade off this working time for more time with their family any day.



Britton, D. M. (2003). At Waork in the Iron Cage: The Prison as Gendered
Organization . New York and London: The New York University Press.

Williams, Joan. (2000)Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It. Oxford University Press.