Workplace changes and its implications for work-family conflict and gender asymmetries in South Africa

Abstract

While there is a plethora of literature on the impact of a changing workplace on the family, minimal attention would appear to have been focused on gender asymmetries, contradictions and ambiguities in the form of employed women versus unemployed male partners, females occupying high status and high income positions relative to their male partners holding lower status and lower income jobs, as well as the impact of such asymmetries and inequitable power relationships on men, particularly in traditionally patriarchal societies. With a particular focus on South Africa, this chapter endeavours to address these issues by interrogating traditional notions of work and its multiple meanings, the changing contemporary workplace, gender roles and gender segregation, and its impact of these on the family.