What Do Working Mothers Really Need?

In a recent television appearance, Hillary Clinton said this:

"We know that a lot of women have to work. . . . But let's also recognize that we have put a lot of women who have been in the workforce and women who are about to be in the workforce in the position of not knowing exactly how to fulfill both their parenting and work responsibilities. And let's think about how we can make it possible to be both a good parent and a good worker."

(ABC's Good Morning America, April 25, 1997)

One way the First Lady, or more importantly her husband the president, could make it easier for a working woman "to be both a good parent and a good worker" is to support enactment of S. 4, the Family Friendly Workplace Act, currently before the Senate. Unlike the proposal President Clinton has offered (which is limited to workers who work over 40 hours in a week), S. 4 actually contains flexible work provisions that are specifically tailored to meet the needs of working women. Recent studies demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of overtime workers in America are men. For this reason, any legislation that limits flexible scheduling to overtime hours would be of little benefit to the majority of women in the workplace who do not work overtime, and in many cases are not demanding that their employers give them overtime.

As it stands, however, the White House remains firmly opposed to providing private sector employees the same kind of family-friendly work arrangements that government employees have enjoyed for nearly two decades. While flexible scheduling arrangements have become a fixture of federal employment, the private sector remains bound to the provisions of a law enacted more than half a century ago -- at a time when "day care" wasn't in our vocabulary and 90 percent of women with young children weren't in the workplace. A lot has changed in half a century:

• Fifty years ago, 33 percent of all women in America were participating in the workforce. Today, over 60 percent of women are working and by the year 2000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that 81 percent of American women will be in the workforce.
• Fifty years ago, just 10 percent of married women with children under age six were in the workplace (Department of Labor, Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, No. 46, 1925). By 1995, 67 percent of women with children under the age of 6 were participating in the work force.
• Fifty years ago, day care as we know it did not exist. In just the last 20 years, the number of children in center-based child care has quadrupled. In 1993, according to Census Bureau data, 63 percent of working mothers relied on child care arrangements outside the home for their children under age 5.
• In addition to the added burden of child care arrangements, a 1990 Department of Transportation study entitled, "Journey to Work," reports that working women are one-third more likely than their working husbands to take on additional family-related chores during their commutes to and from work. These chores include the routine and the unexpected, from picking up the dry cleaning or an extra package of diapers to running to the pharmacy for medicine for a sick child.

Despite the dramatic increase in the number of women in the work force, the Clinton Administration has focused its opposition to S. 4 on two provisions that would be of the most benefit to working women. In addition to the compensatory time off option (time-and-a-half off in lieu of time-and-a-half pay -- which benefits mostly men), S. 4 includes a biweekly scheduling and a flexible credit hour program that would benefit workers who customarily do not (or choose not to) work overtime.

Clinton's Narrow Focus on Overtime Overlooks Most Working Women

Nearly three out of four workers reporting overtime pay are men. Overtime is most commonly logged in the manufacturing, mining and construction, and transportation industries. These industries are heavily dominated by men: 73 percent, 95 percent, and 88 percent, respectively. The chart shows the contrast between overtime hours worked between men and women in these industries. For example, of those women who did work in mining and construction in 1996, only 5 percent worked overtime, but 95 percent of the men did.

Source: Employment Policy Foundation tabulations, Current Population Survey data, 1996

In addition, men who report working overtime tend to log far more overtime hours on a weekly basis than women who report having worked overtime. Even when the number of overtime hours is four or less, there is a discrepancy between the sexes, with 44 percent of those hours worked by women, compared to 56 percent by men. The discrepancy is greater as the number of overtime hours grows. Of workers who worked a 61-hour or longer workweek, only 27 percent were women.

Source: Employment Policy Foundation tabulations, Current Population Survey data, 1996

Not only are working women less likely to work overtime, they are far less likely than men to ask for more hours at work. A study conducted by the Employment Policy Foundation reveals that women are far more eager to trade income for leisure. Among workers earning over $750 a week, for example, women are more than twice as likely as men to choose "fewer hours for less pay" in their current job. The study further revealed that: "In fact, at every income level, more prime-age men wanted more hours for more pay than wanted fewer hours for less pay. On the other hand, 76 percent of women age 35 to 44 were either satisfied with current pay or wanted fewer hours for less pay."

A national survey conducted by Penn & Schoen Associates in 1995 further demonstrates the premium placed by private sector workers on "time" in relation to monetary compensation. That survey found that 65 percent of Americans were in favor of changes in labor law (such as those contained in S. 4) that would permit greater flexibility in work schedules. A 1993 poll (cited by the Employment Policy Foundation, Patterns of Overtime Work: The Case for Greater Workplace Flexibility) found that 60 percent of respondents reported that the effect of a job on their personal and family lives was one of their top considerations in choosing a job -- ranking above both wages and benefits.

White House Supports Flex-Time For Workers -- in Government Only

It's clear that President Clinton supports flexibility for federal government employees. During his first term in office, he made it clear that when it came to federal employees, he supported not just the narrow "comp-time" arrangements for overtime workers, but a whole range of flexible options that are available to public employees.

". . . The executive branch must implement flexible work arrangements to create a 'family-friendly' workplace. Broad use of flexible work arrangements to enable Federal employees to better balance their work and family responsibilities can increase employee effectiveness and job satisfaction, while decreasing turnover rates and absenteeism."

(President Clinton, Memorandum on Expanding Family-Friendly Work

Arrangements in the Executive Branch, July 11, 1994, Presidential Document 1468)

To date, however, the White House has been opposed to applying this same standard to hourly workers in the private sector.