Back to the Future: Introducing Constructive Feminism for the Twenty-First Century — A New Paradigm for the Family and Medical Leave Act

29 Pages Posted: 31 Jul 2017

Date Written: January 27, 2012

Abstract

Work-family imbalance has grown as more dual-earner families and single-parent families become the majority of families in the United States.

As will be shown, most family work (caretaking) is still done by women. It is not surprising, then, that while women are graduating from the best schools, some ten or fifteen years later, we find that many are still far behind their male counterparts in job promotion and salaries, and far behind where they had wished to be professionally. A major reason is the lack of societal support for reconciling work with family. Scholars have argued for some time now that workplace structures perpetuate the economic inequality of caregivers, that the workplace must be changed to solve the work-family conflict, and that law must be a component in restructuring the relationship between work and family. Current scholarship on work and family reconciliation usually focuses on changing current (mostly lack of) policies, and on specific reform measures used in other countries that ought to be adopted by the United States. These include suggestions for extending parental leaves, providing pay for such leaves, and subsidizing childcare. Justifications given for such measures are usually based on gender equality (antidiscrimination) and, to a lesser extent, on communitarian approaches or dignity.

This Article adds a history and a theory through which to analyze existing measures aimed to reconcile the work-family conflict and from which to design future public policy. I would like us to recover a lost chapter in feminist legal history, and to extrapolate from this history legal principles that have important relevance for today’s law of work and family. The history related henceforth carries significant implications for contemporary legal and political debates, and provides guidelines for the future of workfamily regulation design and interpretation.

Suggested Citation

Renan Barzilay, Arianne, Back to the Future: Introducing Constructive Feminism for the Twenty-First Century — A New Paradigm for the Family and Medical Leave Act (January 27, 2012). Harvard Law & Policy Review, Vol. 6, 2012, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3009942 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3009942

Arianne Renan Barzilay (Contact Author)

University of Haifa - Faculty of Law ( email )

Mount Carmel
Haifa, 31905
Israel

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
27
Abstract Views
290
PlumX Metrics