The Influence of Work Involvement on Intrinsic Motivation and Work-Family Balance Satisfaction

This chapter examines Ivanka Trump’s Women Who Work in conjunction with Megyn Kelly’s memoir Settle for More and Ann-Marie Slaughter’s Unfinished Business. It first demonstrates how Women Who Work should be read as a neoliberal feminist manifesto. Trump’s how-to-succeed guide encourages the conversion of “aspirational” women into generic human capital by reworking motherhood in managerial terms, whereby women are exhorted to carefully manage the time they spend with their children. Yet, the notion of a happy work-family balance continues to serve as the book’s ideal, rendering it part of the neoliberal feminist turn. The chapter then provides a comparative analysis of all three “how-to” books, revealing how an identical market rationality undergirds all three—despite being authored by women who identify with opposing political camps. It thus highlights how neoliberal rationality’s colonization of more domains of our lives has undone conceptual and political boundaries constitutive of liberalism and liberal thought.

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Please, Do Not Interrupt Me: Work–Family Balance and Segmentation Behavior as Mediators of Boundary Violations and Teleworkers’ Burnout and Flourishing

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13137339 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (13) ◽

pp. 7339

Author(s):

Vânia Sofia Carvalho ◽

Alda Santos ◽

Maria Teresa Ribeiro ◽

Maria José Chambel

Keyword(s):

Well Being ◽

Work And Family ◽

Future Research ◽

Boundary Violations ◽

Family Balance ◽

Work Family Balance ◽

Work Family ◽

Using Data ◽

The Relationship

The lockdown, in the COVID-19 pandemic, is considered an external crisis that evokes innumerous changes in individuals lives. One of the changes is the work and family dynamics. Based on boundary theory we examine the mediated role of work and family balance and boundary segmentation behavior in the relationship between boundary violations and teleworkers’ stress and well-being. However, because women and men live their work and family differently, gender may condition the way teleworkers lead with boundary violations and boundary segmentation. Hypotheses were tested through moderated mediation modeling using data collected of 456 teleworkers during lockdown. In line with our expectations, teleworkers who have suffered most boundary violations were those with least boundary segmentation behaviors and with least work-family balance which, in turn was related to higher burnout and lower flourishing. Furthermore, gender was found to moderate the relationship between boundary violations from work-to-family and segmentation behavior in the same direction and this relationship was stronger for females than for males. We discuss implications for future research and for managing teleworkers, creating sustainability, both during a crise and stable days.

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