Untying the Knot in Work-Family Balance: Inequalities and Capabilities in Portugal and Spain

This dissertation is concerned with the study of work-family balance in Portugal and Spain between the early nineties and 2012. This topic has been at the centre of political and academic debate in recent decades as the share of families with two working adults and small children have significantly increased in Western societies. As a result, traditional strategies for the articulation of the work and the family spheres have been put in question and claims for more gender balanced options have become widespread.
In contrast with most west European countries, the Iberian democracies experienced the main transformations in the work and family spheres after a long period of right-wing authoritarian rule. This entails that changes occurred in opposition to the authoritarian legacy and alongside with the consolidation of similar civil, political, social and economic rights. Nonetheless, both countries do in fact present distinct patterns in work-family arrangements and this variation makes them a particularly relevant object of comparative research, still widely unexplored.
This study conceptualizes strategies for work-family balance and the gendered variation they entail within a capabilities-based approach, thus seeking to understand the extent to which real, unconstrained choice is equally available for women and men. In the study of work-family balance this translates as the freedom to choose between labour market participation and care, which are defined as equally valuable options. Empirically, this involves the analysis of factors that operate at the individual, institutional and cultural
levels and which shape capabilities for balancing work and care. This dissertation argues that women’s and men’s choices are bound up with the real opportunities they have to choose and therefore gender inequalities in capabilities may correspond to similar inequalities in the division of labour.
Key findings show that globally the modernization of work-family arrangements
between the early nineties and 2012 does correspond to a pattern of enhanced
capabilities in the articulation of work and family in both countries. Notwithstanding, Spain displays greater imbalances in the division of work and care than the neighbouring country which reflect weaker institutional resources, namely at the policy level. In the case of Portugal, more motherhood-centred cultural values do not seem to constrain the participation of both women and men in the labour market as it coexists with a high value attributed to paid work. This study further emphasizes that gender inequalities in both facets of the work-family nexus are still visible in Portugal as in Spain. Indeed, capabilities for balancing work and care are not similar for women and for men and this imbalance has become especially evident in the institutional factors
that support it.