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Leanne Jenkins---Flexibility for working hours, to be able to divide household tasks equally, in surveys about how gender divisions impact who does what and when, shows more than twice as many women choose flexible hours to care for household tasks, indicating gender roles continue to exist despite advances in womens' rights.
Women choose flexibility as a major benefit and at the top of the career agenda. For men choices had more to do with advancement than flexibility. And for women flexibility was more important than just having part-time work. Most women who leave work for childcare responsibilities maintain they returned to work because of financial need due to the recession.
Working women also feel employers tend to discriminate more against working mothers because of the recession. And women still underline the importance of having childcare that is affordable as a driving force for returning to the workforce.
Molly Bennett, a working mother, says, “I guess that's me, as I am on a flexible schedule at work, that I asked for because I need to be home when the children arrive from school. My mother was always there for me, and I think it's important. My husband doesn't even think about a flexible schedule actually, even when it was offered. He is in line for advancement in his sales team, and he told me it's critical to show the boss how committed he is to making the sales objectives. But for me, the kids come first.”
Bennett is a bookkeeper at a household supply firm and holds an Associates degree in Business. She has aspirations to be an accountant when she completes college, which she is now doing by taking online courses.
Research has found that even though women are doing less housework than women did in the past, they still have the brunt of household cleaning, although men these days are more willing to help than their fathers used to be. The extra work at home is said to stress women considerably, something that is made even more difficult when there is salary or gender inequality in the husband – wife relationship.
