Creighton, C. - The Rise and Decline of The 'Male Breadwinner Family' in Britain

Cambridge Journal of Economics 1999, 23, 519–541
The rise and decline of the ‘male

breadwinner family’ in Britain
Colin Creighton*
Downloaded from http://cje.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Connecticut on May 24, 2015

This paper examines changes in the historical ‘compact’ around the male bread-
winner family (MBWF) in Britain. The rise of the MBWF produced a ‘compact’
covering the sexual division of labour, the economic support of family members, the
distribution of time and the regulation of marriage and parenthood. Its decline has
been accompanied by an erosion of each dimension of this compact, which has
reduced gender inequalities but produced other problems. The author argues that a
new compact is required if solutions to these problems are to be combined with an
extension of gender equity. Particular attention is paid to the role of shorter working
hours as a component of different social arrangements over time.
Key words: Male breadwinner. Family wage. Working hours. Gender equity.
Family–work relations.
JEL classifications: J16, J20, N33, N34.
1. Introduction
From the mid-nineteenth century, the male breadwinner family (MBWF) became
increasingly central to the organisation of social and economic life in Britain. Over the last
thirty years it has been in decline and this process has made an important contribution to
increasing freedoms for women and the choices that they are able to make with their
lives.1 However, the erosion of the MBWF is only partial and has been accompanied by a
number of interrelated problems, including increasing polarisation between households,
greater poverty, an uneven distribution of employment opportunities between households
and difficulties in combining paid work with childcare. These problems have undermined
some of the gains secured by the MBWF and hinder further progress towards tran-
scending this family form.
Manuscript received 13 March 1998; final version received 29 April 1999

Address for correspondence: H. C. Creighton, CASS, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX UK. email: H. C.
Creighton @ cas.hull.ac.uk
* University of Hull. This paper was first presented at an ESRC Seminar on The Family and the Economy. I
am grateful for the comments of participants and also of those of two anonymous referees for the Cambridge
Journal of Economics.
1
This process is, of course, common to many Western countries, although the degree and rate of change
varies significantly as do the problems associated with its decline. It is important to recognise, however, that
the decline of the MBWF is neither a universal nor a unilinear process as shown by current signs of its re-
emergence in parts of Eastern Europe (Clason, 1992; Beer and Muller, 1993; Maier, 1993; von Oertzen and
Rietzschel, 1997).
© Cambridge Political Economy Society 1999

520 C. Creighton
In this paper I shall argue that the significance of the MBWF in British life, the prob-
lems associated with its decline and the solutions necessary to resolve these can be
illuminated by an approach which views the MBWF as a multidimensional phenomenon
which involved a ‘compact’1 between workers, employers and the state, and between men
and women, over the sexual division of labour, appropriate forms of mating relationships,
the distribution of time between family and workplace, the distribution of employment
between families and the manner in which non-waged individuals should be supported.
This compact brought gains and losses and the manner of its unravelling has produced a
different pattern of advantage and disadvantage.
I propose to analyse the compact in relation to both the rise and fall of the MBWF.
Discussion hitherto of the MBWF has, for understandable reasons, been dominated by a
concern with its central feature: the patterning of the sexual division of labour in ways

which have ensured the economic and social dependence of women. This, however, has
resulted in some neglect of other dimensions of the compact and of the relationships
between them. It has also inhibited analysis of the problems associated with the decline of
the MBWF and of the solutions necessary to resolve them.
I shall argue that present problems will be overcome only by the creation of a new
compact, which is essential for extending current gains and completing the process of
superseding the MBWF. I shall contend, in particular, that new arrangements over the
social distribution of time are essential to its success, but that their importance has been
insufficiently appreciated. In the first part of the paper I shall analyse the various dimen-
sions of the compact from an historical perspective. In the second, I shall discuss the
unravelling of the compact and the problems that have arisen from this. In the third, I
shall examine selected aspects of a new compact, with particular attention to the role of
shorter hours in a new disposition over working time.
2. The rise of the male breadwinner family

In this section I shall examine the emergence and nature of the social ‘compact’ that
developed around the MBWF and the family wage (FW) and the way in which it struc-
tured other social relations and provided a flawed but workable framework for organising
family life on a daily basis and over the life course. Most discussion of the MBWF has paid
insufficient attention to the wide-ranging nature of this compact and to the interaction of
its elements. In particular, the understandable concentration on the consequences of the
MBWF for gender relations has led other dimensions of the compact to be paid less heed;
most affected by this has been the bargain over time.
A further weakness is the tendency of many accounts to be dominated by attempts to
produce general explanations, organised around a single or limited number of factors,
producing what Horrell and Humphries (1997) have called ‘falsely homogenizing’
accounts which ignored the various paths to the MBWF and underestimated the signifi-
cance of variations between countries. Recent scholarship has done much to rectify the
tendency towards over-generalisation but has made less progress in exploring the other
dimensions of the compact. Moreover, its concentration on the factors which influenced
the development of the MBWF has, paradoxically, drawn attention away from the con-
sequences of the MBWF, which was one of the particular strengths of the earlier debates.
The development of the MBWF and of the wider compact around it was a slow,
1
Cf. ‘gender contract’ (Hirdman, 1998). I have preferred the term ‘compact’ so as to indicate that the
agreement was vague, informal, constantly shifting and based on a range of different understandings.
The rise and decline of the ‘male breadwinner family’ in Britain 521
protracted and piecemeal process. There were significant variations between countries in
both the processes involved and degree to which the MBWF became rooted in the
institutional structure of the society in question. The stage of economic development, the
composition of industry, the strategies of employers and of workers, the nature of the
political system, the social policies of the state and the outcome of struggles between
interest groups have all contributed to this diversity (Lewis, 1992; Pedersen, 1993;
Folbre, 1994; Sainsbury, 1994; Janssens, 1997).
Within countries there was also considerable variation, much of which had its initial
roots in the nature of local labour markets whose requirements for particular mixes of
female and male labour differed enormously (Hudson and Lee, 1990). In Britain, the high
demand for female labour in industries such as cotton textiles in Lancashire, wool textiles
in the West Riding, jute in Dundee, hosiery in the East Midlands and pottery in Stoke-on-

Trent, allowed many women to continue to have steady employment after marriage in
ways that were difficult elsewhere. Gender relations, in consequence, tended to take very
distinctive forms in these areas (Gittins, 1982; Savage, 1987; Bradley, 1989). Diversity
could be pronounced even within a single industry within a given region (Savage, 1988).
This diversity was further reflected in the uneven and fragmented nature of the develop-
ment of the MBWF. As Horrell and Humphries (1997) have argued, there were various
paths to the MBWF. In some communities, the loss of employment opportunities for
women imposed the MBWF on families, irrespective of the wishes of either the women or
the men affected, and in many cases without the compensation of a FW.1 A contrasting
‘beneficent route’ was taken by those groups, most especially the more highly paid
artisans, who used rising real wages to create the MBWF. Some groups, again, fought
hard for wages high enough to allow married women to withdraw from the labour force;
some never achieved the MBWF, despite efforts to do so; while in a few areas the spread of
the MBWF was restricted by the unbroken tradition of women continuing to work after
marriage (Gittins, 1982).
Such research draws attention to the importance of distinguishing between the MBWF
and the FW, for the relationship between them could vary. For some groups the MBWF
was based upon the FW, for others the MBWF came into existence before the FW was
secured. Recognition that the de facto existence of the MBWF, unsupported by a FW, was
common and led to considerable family poverty, most acute when children were young
and in old age, is important for appreciating the widespread support within the working
class, among many women as well as men, for the family wage. Poverty continued to
afflict many families dependent upon the husband’s wage until well into the twentieth
century, as the studies of Booth, Rowntree and other researchers showed (Treble, 1979;
Chinn, 1995). Families developed a diverse range of expedients in order to survive, but
these were often insufficient and families were then forced to turn to the humiliating pro-
cedures of the Poor Law or the vagaries of private charity (Lewis, 1984, pp. 52–65). To
escape from such dependence was one of the motives which gave strength to the cam-
paigns for a living wage which developed in Britain from the last quarter of the nineteenth
century.
Recent scholarship has also encouraged a growing realisation of the complexity of influ-
ences upon the development of the MBWF. Male workers, working-class households,
social reformers, governments, and employers all had a part to play and the importance of
their contribution varied by time and place (Pedersen, 1993; Hanagan, 1997; Janssens,
1
In some areas the MBWF may have emerged in this way even before industrialisation (Nicholas and
Oxley, 1994).
522 C. Creighton
1997). Pressure for a FW came most consistently from the working class and especially,
but not exclusively, from male workers, but other interests also came into play. Bourgeois
reformers concerned with poverty, domestic life and the ordering of gender relations
played an active role and frequently modified the working-class agenda (Lewis, 1984,
pp. 45–52; Harrison and Mockett, 1990; Rose, 1991). The concern of the state with
social harmony and with the health of women and children was significant at certain
junctures (Davin, 1978; Barrett and McIntosh, 1980; Harrison and Mockett, 1990).
Employers in Britain, while generally opposing the higher wages intrinsic to the demand
for a FW, did not develop alternative policies such as the family allowances provided by
groups of employers in France, and often accepted the case for the FW in principle
(Pedersen, 1993). Moreover, they gained from a more disciplined labour force as married
men came to accept the necessity of working regularly and arriving on time (Mark-

Lawson and Witz, 1988; Seccombe, 1993, pp. 80, 92–3).
The attitudes of women were complex and varied. In general, there seems to have been
growing support for the MBWF/FW among working-class women in most areas of Britain
from the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Lewis, 1984, pp. 45–52; Bourke, 1994,
pp. 62–71) owing, among other factors, to their interest in higher male wages to secure
adequate living standards, the desire to have more time for domestic management and
childcare, especially in a period of rising consumption and compulsory schooling, their
willingness to be relieved of a double load and the unattractiveness of most of the ill-paid,
unskilled jobs available to women. However, there were exceptions to this overall trend.
Married women in better-paid, more skilled occupations defended their right to work
(Benenson, 1991), and regions had their own specific cultural patterns (Gittins, 1992).
Women were also divided by marital status since single women and widows often objected
to the competition for jobs that married women provided and to their ability to work for
lower wages. Even married women were not united since, in periods of high unemploy-
ment, those with husbands out of work objected to the employment rights of married
women in dual-earner households (Kessler-Harris, 1990, pp. 64–80).
While the agendas of the various groups which supported the MBWF differed, they
shared a common belief in the importance of the domestic responsibilities of women. This
helped to underpin a growing convergence, from the turn of the century, in support of
measures which served to strengthen the MBWF, increase women’s marginalisation in
the labour force and deepen their domestic role and economic dependence. Pressure for a
FW to underpin the MBWF mounted steadily from the middle of the nineteenth century.
We can distinguish two main phases in its development: the first was market-led, the
second saw the increasing involvement of the state. The first phase of struggle was led by
organised male workers and was conducted mainly through pressure upon employers to
reserve certain jobs for men and to pay adult men a ‘living wage’. These tactics were
supplemented by ideological pressures upon married women to refrain from working
outside the home, and also, intermittently, by demands for measures such as protective
legislation, which would restrict the employment of women, above all of married women
(Walby, 1986; Harrison and Mockett, 1990; Rose, 1991), but otherwise the state played
only a minor role (Creighton, 1996B).
The strategy of supporting the MBWF by pressure for a family wage was, however,
insufficient. Neither the FW nor the wider objectives attached to it could be realised
through the labour market alone. It was impossible to achieve a FW for all workers solely
through collective bargaining. Even if secured, the FW made no allowance for differences
in family size or for the way needs changed over the life course; nor did it provide support
for families where the MBW was absent ill, disabled or too old to work (Land, 1980). The
FW could only become a reality for the majority of the working class with political support
for a living (male) wage and with measures to provide for families in the absence of the
wage. The second phase in its development thus saw a broadening of methods for
securing the FW (although this did not involve any relaxation of industrial pressure), a
wider range of allies for the working class and a more prominent role for the state
(Creighton, 1996B).
There were five main ways in which the state could promote the FW. One was to exert a
direct influence upon the operations of the labour market by embedding the FW more
firmly within collective bargaining procedures, legislating for minimum wage rates in
particular industries, or instigating bars on the employment of married women. A second
was through welfare policies which privileged the MBW family by providing benefits to

working men and their families based upon the labour market record of the male head of
household. A third was through taxation policies which encouraged married women to
remain out of paid employment. A fourth was the provision of subsidies, for example, for
housing, which made it easier to support a family on the wages of the man alone. Finally,
there could be direct payments to families with children to encourage mothers to remain
at home. To these might be added more negative inducements, such as the lack of support
for individuals who fell outside the MBWF (e.g. never-married, divorced, separated or
deserted mothers) or the failure to provide childcare facilities to enable women to com-
bine paid and domestic work (Folbre, 1994). These mechanisms were combined in
varying ways in different countries and even for different groups within the same nation.
Such differences rested on the specific coalitions of interests which were mobilised to
support (or oppose) the FW and the objectives which it was intended to secure (Bock and
Thane, 1991; Pedersen, 1993; Folbre, 1994).
In Britain, elements of all five ways were used. The most significant development,
however, was the slow growth of social policies, from 1906 onwards, which provided
some financial protection against unemployment, sickness, disability and retirement, and
increasingly tied entitlements to the male breadwinner. These policies were systematised
in the post-Second World War welfare state which was explicitly organised on the
assumption that married women would not work and that male wages would be adequate
to support a wife and (at least) one child (Wilson, 1977; Pedersen, 1993).
As economic and social policies secured the MBWF for larger sections of the popu-
lation, the different dimensions of the compact came more clearly into view. We can
outline five of these.
1. A gender dimension. This established a clearly marked division of labour between men
and women. Women took responsibility for the management of the home and family
budget and for the physical (and increasingly the emotional) needs of their husband and
children. Men, as breadwinners, were expected to be reliable, disciplined workers and
good providers and were not expected to do much housework or childcare save in
emergencies. This structure enhanced the power and privileges of men, placed women in
a position of economic dependence in the home, weakened their bargaining power within
marriage and made it difficult, sometimes impossible, for them to leave unsatisfactory
marriages. It also underpinned cultural conceptions of femininity and masculinity as
women became increasingly defined in terms of their domestic responsibilities and men
found new support for their threatened masculinity in the breadwinner role (Rose, 1992).
While the precise mix of motives for this division of labour is still an unresolved issue
(Creighton, 1996A), the resulting interaction between women’s family duties and limited
524 C. Creighton
job opportunities, supported by the prevailing ideology of gender roles, created a frame-
work which narrowed women’s choices and from which few could escape (Barrett, 1980;
Walby, 1990).
2. An anti-poverty dimension. This had four aspects: to secure wage levels which would
enable an adult worker to support a non-working wife and (an average number of)
children; to provide work and therefore wages for all able-bodied adult males; to provide
social insurance against the loss of the MBW; and to provide supplementary income to
protect large families and those on excessively low wages from poverty. By the working
class, the withdrawal of married women from paid work was also seen as an additional
means of raising wages by reducing pressure on the labour market (Humphries, 1977).
3. A time dimension. This dimension of the compact secured an increase in the number
of hours available for family-directed and community-directed activities and produced a

recognised balance between work time and non-work time which helped to raise
standards of social reproduction and provided the basis for the organisation of leisure
(Roberts 1978; Cross, 1989). As E. P. Thompson (1967) has shown, capitalist indus-
trialisation produced new conceptions of time and a prolonged struggle over its use and
regulation. Disputes over the length of the working day punctuated the course of
industrial relations during the nineteenth century. The campaigns of the Ten Hour
Movement from 1830–55, which brought the first effective legislative control of the
working day, exemplified some of the central concerns of the working class in respect of
time: the desire to give working women, men and children time for family life, time for
domestic labour, time for physical recuperation, time for leisure, time for education and
time for ‘self-improvement’ (Creighton, 1992; Gray, 1993). As further struggles estab-
lished shorter hours and a standard working day in industries other than textiles, time was
rescued from the hungry jaws of the labour market to be used as family, leisure and
community time.
The compact over time had a significant effect on gender relations. Shorter hours were
not used in equal ways by women and men. The propaganda of the Ten Hours Movement
explicitly argued that women needed shorter hours so as to have more time to spend on
domestic duties; men, in contrast, looked to ‘self-improvement’. From the outset, there-
fore, women were allowed less leisure than men. Their time became seen less as their own
than as a family resource (Seymour, 1992) and their domestic routines became geared
increasingly to the rhythm of the male working day.1 Gender differences in the use of time
deepened as the proportion of married women working outside the home fell and as new
forms of leisure, such as football, arose, directed specifically at men. They were also
sharpened by the logic of gender differences in wages and work opportunities. With the
establishment of the standard working day, men sought higher payments for overtime and
worked longer hours to increase the family’s income and/or their own spending money,
which in turn further consolidated the MBWF.
4. A mating dimension. The focus on the gendered division of labour in the literature on
the MBWF/FW has led to an underestimation of the importance of social arrangements
for marriage and parenting in the consolidation of the MBWF. The MBWF assumed and
supported stable (heterosexual) marital unions and low rates of childbirth outside
marriage. Its dominance would not have been assured without this underpinning. Low
rates of divorce and, even more importantly, low rates of childbirth outside marriage
minimised the problem of providing economic support for women and children who were
1
As late as 1939, 31% of workers went home for lunch (Mulgan and Wilkinson, 1995, p. 6).
detached from male providers and so facilitated the aim of supporting both workers and
non-workers through a family wage. Equally, the MBWF inhibited divorce and single
motherhood through its role in restricting women’s opportunities for work and thus of
acquiring an independent income. Current family changes, which have revealed the
economic vulnerability of lone parents and their children and the problems of providing
adequately for their maintenance, have made us more aware of the importance of mating
and childbearing arrangements for the construction of the MBWF, yet there has been
little study of the interaction between the two phenomena. Accounts of the rise of the
MBWF have taken the presence of the former for granted rather than exploring how they
were secured.
It is relevant, in this connection, to draw attention to one of the more striking and more
under-researched changes in family life in Britain during the nineteenth century, which

was the sharp fall in the rate of illegitimacy. Under the combined pressure of the New
Poor Law, with its harsh treatment of unmarried mothers, and the growing sanctions
exercised by the working-class community itself, the number of births outside marriage in
England and Wales fell from a peak of 7·0% in 1845 to 3·9% in 1900 and, apart from
war-time fluctuations, did not rise sharply again until the 1960s (Pearce and Farid, 1977;
Laslett, Oosterveen and Smith, 1980, pp. 16–17; Schellekens, 1995). The drop in the
illegitimacy rate can thus be seen as part of the wider processes which established the
MBWF and also as an integral part of its constitution. I do not argue that this
development was inevitable, for there was no ineluctable logic which meant that it had to
occur. The most striking confirmation of this is the fate of black working-class families in
the USA where, under the pressures of poverty, insecurity, discrimination and the lack of
employment for men, partnerships were often short-lived and the economic support of
women and children came through kinship patterns very different from the MBWF
(Stack, 1975). Nor do I argue that the fall in the illegitimacy rate was supported in order
to secure the hegemony of the MBWF. The precise relationship between declining ille-
gitimacy and the spread of the MBWF, at present unclear, is a matter for future historical
research. Here, I wish merely to establish that there was a functional relationship between
low rates of divorce and illegitimacy and the stability of the MBWF. These mating
relationships were thus a part of the compact around the MBWF, just as their unravelling
has been an important factor in the decline of the MBWF.
5. A popular moral economy. The ideological underpinnings of the MBWF were twofold.
On the one hand, it was underpinned by the Victorian belief in separate spheres. On the
other hand, it rested on a popular moral economy which, as Alice Kessler-Harris has
pointed out, embodied a concept of justice which said that ‘jobs belonged to providers’
(1990, p. 71). Its fundamental principle was that work should be available for one
provider from each family before any family was entitled to two providers. This
established a hierarchy of labour market entitlements. The assumptions about gender
embodied in the MBWF meant that married men were at the pinnacle of the hierarchy,
but this did not imply that all men should have preference over all women. Where women
were providers—whether as single women supporting themselves, or as women with
dependants—their claims could rank higher than those of some men, for instance those
with other means of support, such as a farm or retirement pay. Since these standards
constituted a challenge to the principles of the free market by prioritising the criterion of
family need, they can be seen as part of the wider working-class project of moralising the
relations of capitalist production (Kessler-Harris, 1990, pp. 70–80; Reddy, 1984).
This set of arrangements around the MBWF can be said to have constituted a system in
526 C. Creighton
the sense that each element supported the other. As a system, it provided a stable and
coherent basis for the organisation of family and social life. This quality helps to account
for the widespread support that it received and for its durability.
The MBWF and the FW had multifarious and ambivalent consequences. The extent of
the gains is still a matter of dispute. On the one hand, they helped to raise living standards,
reconcile the demands of paid work and reproduction, provide more time for family life
and childcare, shield women from the burdens of the double shift and secure the
autonomy of the family.1 In these ways they constituted ‘real gains for the improvement of
the conditions of the working class’ (Humphries, 1977; Rose, 1981, p. 497). On the other
hand, these gains were achieved at the expense of women since they rested upon their
full-time domestic labour and resulting economic dependence. They also entailed the
stigmatisation of single parents, the divorced and the unmarried and, owing to its hetero-

sexual presumptions, of gays and lesbians. Moreover, the MBWF proved inadequate,
despite the widening provision of welfare benefits, for the support of certain kinds of
household, especially those of lone mother, families on low wages and the long-term
unemployed.
3. Decline of the male breadwinner family

The decline of the MBWF can be analysed in terms of the unravelling and reworking of
the several dimensions of the compact I have outlined. The outcomes of this process are
complex and ambiguous. Women have made important if limited gains and the social
regulation of mating relationships has become less coercive, but the problems of com-
bining productive and reproductive work have intensified, poverty has grown and a
modified sexual division of labour has emerged which threatens to obstruct further
transformation of gender relations. The limitations of efforts to reshape the gender and
mating dimensions of the MBWF illustrate the continuing tensions between capitalist
wage labour and family life. The problems of low wages, lack of work, the vulnerability of
the unwaged and the difficulties of combining social reproduction with paid labour, all of
which the MBWF/FW were intended to solve, have re-emerged today. Consequently, the
potential gains of the decline of the MBWF have been captured more fully by capital than
by working people themselves.
Two central processes underlie the decline of the MBWF. The first is the steady
increase in the proportion of married women engaged in wage labour, from a figure of
26% in 1951 to 71% in 1991 (Walby, 1997, p. 27), and particularly, more recently, of
married women with a pre-school child, from 27% in 1973 to 52% in 1994 (Walby, 1997,
p. 50). Most of this growth in employment, however, has been concentrated in part-time
jobs, which have risen as a proportion of the overall female workforce from 34% in 1971
to 47% in 1995 (Walby, 1997, p. 32) and the proportion of these involving short hours is
one of the highest in the EC (Rubery, 1998). As a consequence of these changes in
married women’s labour market participation, households supported by a single male
earner are now a minority, comprising, in 1991, 34% of all two-adult households below
retirement age. Reflecting the growth in part-time work, the proportion of households
with one full-time and one part-time earner, at 35%, was far higher than the 20% of
households with two full-time earners (Jarvis, 1997, p. 526). Accompanying these shifts,
the contribution of men to overall family income fell from nearly 73% in 1979–81 to 61%
1
The reduction of poverty among families with young children, over the first four decades of the twentieth
century, is an important indication of the benefits of the MBWF/FW (Mingione, 1996, p. 17).
in 1989–91 and that of women rose from 15% to nearly 21%, with the balance coming
from non-labour income (Harkness, Machin and Waldfogel, 1996, pp. 163–64).
The second process involves changes in mating relationships which have increased the
proportion of households without a resident male partner. The divorce rate rose from 2·0
per 1,000 married population in 1960 to 13·6 in 1995, (OPCS, 1990, p. 117; ONS,
1998A, p. 5) and births outside marriage from 5·4% of al live births in 1960 to 37·1% in
1997 (OPCS, 1987, p. 21; ONS,1998B, p. 1). In consequence, the proportion of lone
mother households rose from 7% of all families with dependent children in 1971 to 21%
in 1994 (ONS, 1998C, p. 16).
These developments have brought substantial change to all dimensions of the compact
around the MBWF. The sexual division of labour has been modified substantially by the
involvement of married women in paid employment outside the home and by the success

of feminism in questioning traditional gender roles. The assumptions that marriage
should be lifelong and that childbirth should take place only within marriage have been
challenged by the rise in rates of divorce, cohabitation and childbirth out of wedlock. The
economic arrangements which provided for the support of individuals and families
through the wage of the MBW, supplemented by state benefits, have been undercut by
high levels of male unemployment, by changes in mating patterns and by attempts to
reduce the support mechanisms of the welfare state. The bargain over time has been
modified by two developments: by the large increase in hours spent by married women in
the labour market, which has not been offset by equivalent changes in the contribution of
men in the home; and by the spread of flexible working arrangements and the move away
from the standard working day and working week as employers try to cut costs and to
match the supply of labour more closely to daily and weekly fluctuations in activity
(Roche, 1991). Finally, the popular moral economy enshrined in the MBWF has also
weakened and the right of married women to paid employment is more widely accepted
than in the past, although the older ethos still retains some hold (Siltanen, 1994, pp.
164–82; Scott, Braun and Alwin, 1998).
The decline of the MBWF/FW has brought undoubted gains in terms of wider oppor-
tunities for women, the reworking of gender roles and ideologies, and the extension of
choice in sexual and familial relationships. Yet, while the MBWF has been substantially
weakened, its fall is only a partial one and gender relations consequently retain a high
degree of asymmetry. First, as noted above, one third of couples below retirement age still
conform to the MBWF. Even among women in their forties, 26% were full-time house-
wives in 1989 (Bonney and Reinach, 1993, p. 618). Second, the high proportion of
women in part-time jobs and the large numbers of both part-time and full-time workers
whose wages are not high enough to support even a single-person household (Siltanen,
1994, pp. 99–114) indicate that employed women are still not fully integrated into the
labour market. Third, while full-time women workers with greater human capital and
more continuity of employment are in a stronger position, embedded organisational
assumptions that family commitments should not be allowed to interfere with the claims
of the workplace mean that, as mothers, they remain disadvantaged and frequently end up
in areas of work which provide poor chances of promotion (Halford, Savage and Witz,
1997).
Fourth, the prevalence of part-time work and low wages is reflected in income differ-
entials between spouses, which are sufficiently large to perpetuate women’s economic
dependence. As Ward, Dale and Joshi (1996) discovered, 78% of 33-year-old women in
1991 contributed less than 45% of the joint household income and 46% did not earn
528 C. Creighton
enough to be self-sufficient should the partnership break up. Even among full-time
workers, 49% of married women were dependent (p. 111).1
Fifth, men’s continuing resistance to sharing housework and childcare equally, even
when their partners are working full time, indicates that women are still expected to take
major responsibility for domestic affairs, which continues to handicap them in the labour
market (Morris, 1990; Wajcman, 1996). Finally, the ideology of the MBWF retains a
continuing, if weakened, hold (Siltanen, 1994, pp. 164–82; Kiernan, 1992; Scott, Braun
and Alwin, 1998, pp. 28–34) and women’s earnings are still frequently seen as sup-
plementary, even when they work full time (Brannen, 1992). In these ways, the decline of
the MBWF is still an unfinished project. The reinforcing circle between women’s
domestic responsibilities and their position in the labour market has become looser, but
has not yet been broken.

The erosion of the compact has also been accompanied by serious social problems.
Poverty has risen substantially, particularly among the households of less-skilled,
unemployed men and of lone mothers. Alongside these, a growing proportion of families
dependent upon a single male breadwinner also live near or below the poverty line (Webb,
Kemp and Millar, 1996, p. 263), for as the costs of reproduction of the household have
become spread over two wage-earners, it has become increasingly difficult to support a
family on a single wage, particularly for less-skilled men whose relative wage levels have
fallen (Siltanen, 1994, pp. 110–14). Overall, the increase in poverty is concentrated more
heavily among women than among men and has particularly affected families with
children. Thus Hills has shown that, in 1993, 27% of children were in the bottom quintile
of the income distribution compared with 21% in 1979, while the proportion of all
children supported by benefits other than the universal child benefit rose from 8% in 1979
to 33% in 1995 (Bradshaw, 1996, p. 102).
The growth of poverty has been accompanied by an increase in social polarisation.
Changes in the labour market which have increased opportunities for qualified women and
reduced them for unskilled men and women have altered the distribution of work between
households. The contrast is particularly stark between two extremes within the labour
market. On the one hand, the proportion of households with no work rose from 2·0% in
1975 to 6·3% in 1993, (and the proportion of individuals within them reached ‘an historic
high’ of 14% in the latter year) (Gregg and Wadsworth, 1996, pp. 184, 187). On the other
hand, the advantages which accrue to households with two highly-skilled, full-time earners
contribute to the polarisation of life chances (Bonney, 1988; Macrae, 1997, pp. 399–400).
Further problems flow from changes in the distribution of time between work and non-
work and between households. Households with both partners in full-time employment
now spend more hours each week earning a living than did most households in the recent
past and consequently have less time available for family life, leisure and participation in
community affairs,2 a problem which is intensified by men’s continuing long hours of
work, which are among the longest within the EC (Marsh, 1991, pp. 81–2; Fagan, 1996;
Bell and Hart, 1998). In consequence, parents in two-earner households experience
considerable overload and fatigue, are able to spend far less time with their children than
they would wish and may find their marriages under strain (Brannen and Moss, 1991;
Marsh, 1991, pp. 68–9; Tyrrell, 1995, pp. 23, 25; Wajcman, 1996). The time deficit is
even greater for lone mothers who work (Duncan and Edwards, 1997, p. 273). The
1
See also Arber and Ginn (1995).
2
Boje (1995) has calculated that the annual labour supply of the average family in Denmark rose by
40–50% between the mid-1950s and the mid-1990s, (cited in Rubery, 1998, p. 50).
implications for social reproduction may be far-reaching (Hewitt and Leach, 1993);
indicative is the finding of one recent study that parental time is a significant element, for
at least some social groups, in children’s educational achievement (O’Brien, this issue).
Finally, in stark contrast to households with an ‘excess’ of work are those who lack work,
yet find that they cannot easily use the time available to them to generate income to offset
the poverty they experience (Pahl, 1984).
Changes in working time are more than a matter of hours. The decline of the standard
working day and working week has altered the nature of the relationship between work
and non-work. Unsocial hours of work have also been increasing (Horrell and Rubery,
1991; Marsh, 1991; Fagan, 1996). This erosion of standard working hours, as Hinrichs
(1991, p. 4) has pointed out, represents a further encroachment of the sphere of work on
periods traditionally reserved for leisure and renewal and may, if uncontrolled, be very

disruptive of the coordination of family and community activities (Garhammer, 1995,
pp. 182–93; Gibson-Graham, 1996, pp. 225–36).
Overall, these developments have disrupted the former equilibrium around the
MBWF/FW without producing a viable alternative. As Nancy Folbre has argued, they
have done ‘just enough to destabilise the patriarchal organisation of social reproduction
but not enough to generate a non-patriarchal system that might fairly and efficiently meet
the needs of children and other dependants’ (1994, p. 248).
The unwanted consequences have led some commentators to call for a reversal of the
trend towards the employment of married women with young children outside the home
and/or for a return to more traditional conceptions of marriage and mating relationships
(Morgan, 1995; Dennis, 1997). However, to return to the MBWF would undo the gains
that women have made and create material hardship for the many families who have
become reliant upon two earners.1 Moreover, the problems described above are not an
inevitable result of the decline of the MBWF, nor of the dismantling of the gender
compact which lay at its heart, but are due in part to its unfinished nature and in part to
the broader economic and political circumstances in which the process has taken place.
Recession, economic restructuring and restrictions on social expenditure have prevented
large numbers of women, men and their families from making the gains from the decline
of the MBWF that could otherwise have been expected.
Rather than halting the demise of the MBWF we need to complete it, by creating the
conditions for moving towards fuller equality between men and women, and by making it
easier for people to realise their mating and parenting choices. We must combine these
goals with new solutions to the poverty which the MBWF/FW tried to overcome and to
the re-emergent tensions between the pressures of the capitalist labour market and the
needs of social reproduction. These objectives are interdependent, not only because each
influences the other but because the problems associated with the decline of the MBWF
serve to obstruct its further transformation. To achieve these aims, however, we need a
new compact which is as wide-ranging as the old.
4. Towards a new compact

A new compact which will assist in the transcending of the MBWF must be able to
address a range of problems: the poverty of waged and unwaged families, the polarisation
1
This is not to say that re-establishment of the MBWF is impossible. In several former state socialist
countries in Eastern Europe, where married women had a long history of paid work, their employment
opportunities are diminishing, with varying reactions from the women concerned (see p. 519,n.l).
530 C. Creighton
of work and income between households, continuing gender inequalities, the growing
imbalance between work and family life and obstacles to people’s ability to make free
choices in mating relationships. Policies for any one of these issues will have repercussions
for the others, and for this reason an integrated approach is required which can recognise
and take account of these interactions. While there is growing awareness of these
interdependencies (Crompton, Gallie and Purcell, 1996; Humphries and Rubery, 1995;
Macrae, 1997), much discussion analyses particular issues separately from others and
without situating them within the broader framework of the unravelling of the compact
around the MBWF.
Of the various dimensions of the compact, the social organisation of time has suffered
most in this respect and the tendency to focus on limited solutions to particular issues,
such as the need for family-friendly working practices and more adequate childcare

facilities to ease the pressures on dual-earner families, has led to a neglect of the impor-
tance of a broader settlement over time to a new compact and of the contribution that
other measures, such as shorter working hours, might make to this.
Central to a new compact will be the creation of jobs for all who need them together
with adequate and appropriate benefits for those who cannot work or who have heavy
caring responsibilities. Only if these conditions are met can individuals and families be
adequately supported and women achieve the economic independence necessary for
greater gender equality (Lister, 1997). They can be met, however, in a variety of ways.
Fraser (1994) has contrasted two different feminist models of the post-industrial gender
order that could replace the family wage. One envisages a universalisation of the MBWF
model to encompass women as fully as men; the other seeks to recognise the value of
caring work by providing material recompense for the carer. Each of these has drawbacks.
The first absorbs women into a male model which prioritises labour market commitments
over caring responsibilities. The second recognises these responsibilities but does not
challenge gender differences in caring. Fraser calls for a third way which would be based
upon the reconstruction of gender so as to combine ‘the best of the universal breadwinner
with the best of caregiver parity, while jettisoning the worst features of each’ (ibid.,
p. 611).
Fraser discusses in only very general terms the nature of the extensive institutional
changes which she recognises would be necessary to realise her preferred model but she
indicates that ‘a shorter work week than full-time jobs have now’, for both women and
men, is an essential requirement (p. 612). I shall argue that this is crucial not only for
gender equality, but also for reworking the other dimensions of the compact around the
family.
The importance of new arrangements for the distribution of time is widely recognised
as critical for further progress towards gender equality and for securing a better family–
work balance but the role of shorter hours is a matter of considerable disagreement. Some
regard it as critical (Rubery, Smith and Fagan, 1998) but others have been led by the
political obstacles to its realisation and the lack of strong support from employees
(especially from men) to accord it a marginal role, or to see it as a prospect for the distant
future only. Yet others have criticised it as a ‘mechanistic’ solution, inferior to flexible
working arrangements which would offer more choice to individuals (Mulgan and
Wilkinson, 1995, pp. 7–8).
Agreement about the foundations of a new bargain over time is thus far from being
reached and, lacking this, the arrangements of the preceding era are being reorganised in a
more pragmatic manner through the interaction of the employment strategies of firms
with the attempts of individuals and families to secure the least unacceptable time/money
exchanges for themselves. Firms have responded to increased competition and labour
market deregulation by introducing or extending a range of flexible working practices.
Households have increasingly turned to one or other of two solutions to the problem of
how best to combine waged and domestic labour: to hire domestic help and for married
women to work part-time (Gregson and Lowe, 1994; Hakim, 1996). These developments
and their shortcomings have been extensively analysed and policy suggestions for
improving the bargain over time have taken two main forms: to develop flexible working
practices in family-friendly ways and to upgrade part-time work. I shall examine each of
these before discussing the third possibility of shorter working hours.
4.1 Flexible working arrangements

Flexible working time (FWT) embraces a diversity of arrangements (Hinrichs, Roche and
Sirianni, 1991, pp. 8–9). In this review I shall take a broad interpretation which covers
various types. The advocates of FWT claim that it can ease the combination of work
and non-work commitments, help women to maintain career paths, reduce gender
inequalities, challenge assumptions based on the male model of working, place family
issues on the agenda of the workplace, encourage lifelong education and training, give
employees greater choice, autonomy and control over their lives, respond to the range of
time preferences that individuals have, and cater for their different needs at different
stages of the life course (Sirianni, 1991; Simkin and Hillage, 1992; Hewitt, 1993; Harker,
1995).
Various drawbacks have also been recognised, particularly if the FWT arrangements
are not well-regulated. There is no guarantee that they will meet the needs of individuals
and families, while some types of flexibility can be corrosive of family and community life,
and others may be used to extend managerial control and to transfer certain costs from
employers to employees (Christopherson 1991, p. 183; Dickens, 1995, p. 213; Gibson-
Graham, 1996, pp. 225–36; Garhammer, 1995, pp. 182–94). The claims that FWT will
promote gender equalities may be exaggerated since schemes are often implemented in
different ways for women and men (Horrell and Rubery, 1991) and those which aim
specifically at family/work reconciliation are directed overwhelmingly at women, and
usually with the needs of pre-school children only in mind.1 In organisations with family-
friendly policies, many women are reluctant to take advantage of them, either because
they will be seen as less committed employees or because the measures are dependent
upon management discretion (Corcoran-Nantes and Roberts, 1995; Jones and Causer
1995; Lewis and Taylor, 1996). Where work is organised flexibly over the day and week, it
may simply redistribute heavy workloads rather than reducing them, and so fail to provide
more time for non-working life or to challenge the dominance of the male work model
(Wharton, 1994); nor is it clear that schemes for lifetime flexibility will weaken traditional
gender roles rather than crystallising them (Hinrichs, Roche and Sirianni, 1991, pp. 8–9).
Finally, assumptions about the incompatibility of work and parenting have been shown to
be so deeply embedded in organisational cultures that several writers have concluded that
fundamental organisational change is necessary if such assumptions, and the long hours
culture which they support, are to be overcome (Lewis 1997; Liff and Cameron, 1997;
Rubin, 1997). Only then can family-friendly policies be made meaningful for women, and
extended to men and to organisations where men are the majority of employees.
1
Garhammer (1995) found that the phase when children were at school was the one most associated with
time problems for parents, p. 192).
532 C. Creighton
These drawbacks are not all intrinsic to FWT and some could be offset through
appropriate legislation or collective agreements, although others may be more resistant,
and it must be recognised that FWT cannot easily be extended to certain types of work
(Simkin and Hillage, 1992, p. 27) and that opposition to implementing it at senior levels is
strong (Coyle, 1995, p. 8). However, even if some of the current weaknesses could be
overcome, FWT does far too little to meet the need of parents for more time for family
responsibilities. As Garhammer (1995) has concluded after reviewing experience in
Germany, ‘[n]ew working models are therefore useless unless the actual weekly working
time is drastically reduced’ (italics in original).
Consideration of shorter working hours has not been entirely absent from discussion of
family-friendly flexible working arrangements. However, emphasis has been placed most
commonly upon the desirability of creating a wide choice of working hours so that indi-

viduals can select those which most suit their individual and family circumstances
(Hewitt, 1993, pp. 46–47, 99–100). The drawback of this approach, however, is that it
places the cost of shorter hours largely on employees, which raises issues of equity and is
likely to mean that progress will be very slow.
4.2 Part-time work

There has been extensive debate, too, about the implications of the growth of part-time
work. Its drawbacks for integrating women into the labour market, particularly in the
forms that it presently takes in Britain, have been well documented. Part-time work is
concentrated in more poorly-paid, less skilled occupations; it offers little training, poor
promotion prospects and reduces women’s employment prospects and earnings over their
lifetime (Booth, 1991; Tam, 1997, pp. 108–10, 119, 243) while movement into part-time
work is often associated with downward occupational mobility (Main and Elias, 1987). It
tends to depress levels of pay, even compared to full-time women employees, it has
intensified polarisation between women, confers second-class rights of industrial citizen-
ship (Roche, 1991, pp. 114–18; Humphries and Rubery, 1992, pp. 247–50; Rubery,
Horrell and Burchell, 1994, pp. 214–20) and fits poorly into the wider system of state
benefits, with particularly serious consequences for women’s pension entitlements (Ginn
and Arber, 1993). It cannot provide the economic independence essential for gender
equality (Lister, 1997), leaves women vulnerable if their marriages break down, and is
particularly unfavourable for lone mothers because of the low pay and poor long-term
prospects that it offers. Part-time work fails to challenge the male work model and the
long hours culture; indeed, it tends to reinforce them since most part-time workers rely on
having a partner in full-time work. It is more segregated than full-time work and rising
segregation here has offset the reduction in segregation since 1971 among full-time
workers (Hakim, 1996, p. 166). It thus supports what has been seen as one of the central
mechanisms in women’s labour force disadvantage (Crompton, 1997, p. 42). Finally, the
shortcomings of part-time work for women’s integration into the labour market are
matched by its relative ineffectiveness in transforming gender relations in the home, since
part-time women workers carry a heavier burden of domestic labour and exercise less
power in marriage than full-time workers (Gershuny, 1992; Kiernan, 1992; Vogler and
Pahl, 1993).
To set against these drawbacks, part-time work has certain advantages, particularly for
balancing the claims of home and work. Its attractions in this respect can be seen in the
high levels of satisfaction that women who work part-time express with their working
hours, the balance between work and family life and even pay and conditions (Mars,
1991; Hewitt, 1993, pp. 65–70).1 Part-time work may also be seen as a ‘bridge’ into the
labour market since it allows many women to work who would otherwise be unable to and
provides them with greater continuity of employment (Tam, 1997). For these reasons,
many commentators have argued that the main priority should be to improve the con-
ditions of part-time work rather than to dismantle it, through measures such as a
minimum wage, better employment rights and benefits for part-time workers, increased
integration into career ladders, the extension of part-time work to better-paid and more
skilled jobs, together with a wider provision of childcare facilities (Marsh, 1991; Rubery,
Horrell and Burchell, 1994). It has also been argued that upgrading part-time work would
help to extend it to men and so undermine the established sexual division of labour
(OECD, 1994, pp. 97, 186; Plantegna, 1996).
Many of these proposals are desirable objectives in themselves, but it is doubtful

whether they could make more than a limited contribution to renegotiating the gender
contract, let alone other elements of the compact around the MBWF. Most of the
problems listed above would be ameliorated rather than overcome, leaving the division
between part-time and full-time work relatively intact. Even a considerable extension of
part-time work to managerial and professional occupations would be of limited value, for
if such jobs were chosen mainly by women, then it would institutionalise an even more
clearly demarcated peripheral status than exists at present in these careers (Corcoran-
Nantes and Roberts, 1995).
It would appear, then, that neither the upgrading of part-time work nor the promotion
of family-friendly policies is likely to promote the degree of integration of women into the
labour market which is necessary to secure their economic independence and to
encourage the continuing transformation of the MBWF. Nevertheless, the argument that
women who work part time often prefer this arrangement and do not wish to combine
caring with the pressures of present forms of full-time work must be taken seriously. This
provides a further reason to suggest that if the division between full-time and part-time
work is to be overcome in ways that are acceptable to both women and men, we must
move in two directions simultaneously: the upgrading of part-time work, like the exten-
sion of family-friendly working practices, must be accompanied by reductions in working
hours for all. The former cannot be a substitute for the latter.
4.3 Shorter working hours (SWH)

The need to create a new bargain over time and the limitations of the proposals con-
sidered above suggest that fuller consideration should be given to the potential con-
tribution of a shorter working week to a new compact around the family. While the
consequences of such a step are inevitably to some degree hypothetical, it seems likely that
it could make significant contributions to the goals of family/work balance, gender equity
and reductions in poverty and social exclusion. First, it would produce a healthier balance
between the claims of family and work by reducing the overload experienced by dual-
earner and lone-parent households, by reclaiming time for family life and by meeting the
desires of parents and children for more time together.
Second, it would have several positive consequences for gender equity. Of fundamental
importance, it would start to close the gap between part-time and full-time employment
(Dickens, 1995, pp. 213–14) which in turn would reduce the segregation of the labour
market associated with this gap (Beechey and Perkins, 1987; Horrell and Rubery, 1991)
1
At the same time, there is evidence of more dissatisfaction among a minority of women part-time workers
than some surveys suggest (Fagan, 1996; Tam, 1997, pp. 196–204).
534 C. Creighton
and help women to avoid less-skilled, poorly-paid part-time work. In occupations where
women work full time, it would begin to challenge the long hours culture and thus start to
overcome the perceived incompatibility of work commitment and family responsibilities
which impedes women’s career progression, handicaps lone parents and inhibits men
from giving greater priority to childcare (Lewis, 1997; Liff and Cameron, 1997). In turn,
the improvements to women’s labour market position could be expected to react back on
their position within the family, since they would receive greater powers of ‘exit’ (Lister,
1997, p. 183) and since they receive more help with domestic labour and childcare and
gain more power within marriage when they work full time and when their financial
contribution is relatively equal to that of their husband (Gershuny, 1992; Kiernan, 1992;
Vogler and Pahl, 1993; Ward, Dale and Joshi, 1996, p. 115). While it is widely recognised
that men’s long hours of work are a major impediment to their assuming more domestic

responsibilities (Marsh, 1991), there is of course no guarantee that they would use their
additional non-working hours for domestic tasks; much depends upon the prevailing
cultural climate.1 However, there are reasons to think that the present conjuncture in
Britain may be conducive to this. The women’s movement has consistently pressed for a
more equal division of domestic labour; men have increased their contribution over time,
albeit slowly (Gershuny, 1994); assistance from fathers with childcare is the preferred
option of many parents and has, for some time, been more common in Britain than in
many countries (Dex and Shaw, 1988); and there is some evidence that men wish to be
more involved as fathers, and desire more balance in their lives, than in the past (Pahl,
1995; Winkfield, 1995, pp. 28–29; Wilkinson, Cooke and Mattinson, 1995).
It is not being claimed that SWH will deal with all problems, for there are further
obstacles to women’s fuller integration into the labour market, but by attacking the long
hours culture, reducing occupational segregation and improving women’s domestic
situation it will weaken three major props to gender inequality. If action to cut working
hours is not taken there is a real danger that women’s lives will become structured by two
contrasting but complementary developments: on the one hand, the male work model will
encompass increasing numbers of women while, on the other, the interaction of market
forces with the decisions of thousands of fragmented individuals and households will
produce a new settlement over time, income and the sexual division of labour, based
largely around the extension of part-time work for women (Hakim, 1996, pp. 93–8).
Third, there is the contribution that reductions in working time can make to reducing
poverty, polarisation and social exclusion by spreading work more equally among adults.
There is little confidence that current policies will succeed in restoring full employment,
yet proposals such as those for a citizen’s income (Parker, 1989), which would remodel
welfare around the acceptance of a permanent pool of unemployed, are a counsel of
despair for they would lead to a significantly higher level of social exclusion for the indi-
viduals and families concerned. For this reason, debates on public policy cannot afford to
ignore the contribution to work sharing that shorter hours might make.
The debate over shorter working hours has been more muted in Britain than in many
other European countries. This is ironic, since the restructuring of the former time
bargain has gone further here than elsewhere, making shorter working hours particularly
appropriate to present dilemmas in this country. Three main objections to proposals for
shorter hours have been made: (i) the majority of full-time workers do not want shorter
hours and/or the loss of income which this might entail; (ii) it could entail longer hours for
1
Comparative studies confirm that women’s full-time employment does not necessarily result in more
domestic help from husbands (Vinay, 1996, p. 210; Rubery, 1998, p. 199).
some part-time workers, which they may not desire; and (ii) it is ineffective as a means of
work sharing (Hinrichs, Roche and Sirianni, 1991).
One major obstacle is the apparent lack of enthusiasm for shorter hours, although there
is also much uncertainty and confusion about what workers really want. Many surveys
have shown that among full-time workers relatively few men, though a larger proportion
of women, would welcome shorter hours, particularly if it meant a cut in income;
similarly, a majority of part-time women workers say that they would not wish to work
longer hours (Marsh, 1991, pp. 75–7; Hewitt, 1993, pp. 66–8, 70–2; Fagan, 1996,
pp. 99–100). This raises the question of how fixed these preferences are and what trade-
offs may be envisaged between time and money.
It should be recognised that current preferences are expressed within a particular set of
circumstances whose parameters can be changed. Different possibilities could produce a

different set of preferences (Gardiner, 1997, pp. 149–61). The economic and political
climate in Britain has not been conducive to serious discussion of a shorter working hours
policy; even so, a significant minority of full-time and part-time workers would, respec-
tively, like shorter and longer hours of work, and in a changing context these preferences
could spread more widely (Marsh 1991, p. 75; Horrell, Rubery and Burchell, 1994,
pp. 125–8; Fagan, 1996). Much of the caution about shorter hours may be attributed to
fears about loss of income. The campaigns of the engineering unions for a shorter working
week, without cuts in pay, received substantial support from their members. Schor has
suggested, on the basis of surveys in America, that people respond more positively to
exchanging future rather than present income for a cut in hours (1991, pp. 146–8). This
suggests that public discussion of shorter hours should pay close attention to the way costs
are apportioned between employers and workers and the extent to which the state should
cushion the impact by appropriate measures such as increases in the minimum wage and
child benefits (Fagan, 1996, p. 80).
The attitudes of part-time workers raise a different set of issues. Hakim has claimed that
they reflect the decision of family-orientated women to prioritise family responsibilities
over paid work. Others, however, argue that her analysis underestimates the extent to
which women’s choices are shaped by the structural limitations of their situation, in which
younger women, especially, wish to maintain commitments to both work and family and
are responsive to affordable, good quality childcare provision, and that it neglects the
significant minority who want longer hours (Thompson, 1995, pp. 73–4; Fagan, 1996,
p. 79; Crompton, 1997, pp. 16–19; Gardiner, 1997, pp. 149–54, 203–7; Proctor and
Padfield, 1998, pp. 129–81).
Consideration of attitudes to shorter hours should also bear in mind that families
already trade money for time in various ways, whether by women working part time or by
dual-earner families paying for childcare and other domestic services. Public discussion of
shorter hours could explore the possibility that collective decisions could bring more
optimal trade-offs than families can achieve by themselves.
The other major area of dispute is the contribution that SWH may make to increasing
employment. Hinrichs, Roche and Sirianni (1991) have argued that the impact of recent
reductions upon work sharing has been disappointing. While this may be largely true,
their reaction seems to reflect failure to achieve more ambitious targets rather than lack of
job creation as such; moreover, there are considerations which suggest that we should be
cautious before generalising from the experience of the period to which they refer. First,
reductions were implemented during a long recession when demand for labour was con-
tracting, involved only small cuts in hours and were generally limited to particular firms
536 C. Creighton
and industries. Even so, they produced some, if limited, increases in employment; results
could be more positive if applied over wider areas in an expanding economy.
Second, potential gains were frequently offset by the introduction of more flexible
working arrangements. As these have spread throughout the economy and have been
adopted by organisations which have not yet cut hours, the scope for using this strategy
in the future to avoid hiring additional workers is reduced. Similarly, the spread of
annualised hours contracts will reduce the incentive for workers to use shorter hours to
extend overtime.
Third, the problems that trade unions experienced in dealing with new flexible working
arrangements made it difficult for them to negotiate additional recruitment (Hinrichs,
Roche and Sirianni, 1991, pp. 16–17). Fourth, most reductions in hours came through
collective bargaining with little guidance or pressure from the state. More political

direction could influence the impact upon work sharing. Finally, criticism of proposals for
SWH must be balanced against present trends, some of which are cutting hours through
the spread of part-time work, which is far more deleterious for employees than a planned
and negotiated reduction.
The issue of reductions in working hours raises many issues which go beyond the scope
of this paper, including the effects upon the costs and competitiveness of firms, consumer
demand, public finances and the need to raise the levels of skill of the British workforce
(Richardson and Rubin, 1994; Gershuny, 1995; Bruegel and Perrons, 1995), and the
balance between these consequences will be critical for the implementation of a shorter
hours policy. The concern of this paper has been primarily with the contribution that
shorter hours could make to a new compact which would help to move beyond the
decaying, but still breathing MBWF. If, however, it can assist in unlocking a gender order
which contributes to some of the endemic problems of the British economy (Bruegel and
Perrons, 1995), then shorter hours may help to achieve an even wider range of objectives
than those discussed here.
5. Conclusion
In this paper I have argued that the rise of the MBWF involved a compact over several
dimensions of social and economic life, an important aspect of which was a particular
distribution of time. The decline of the MBWF has extended the freedoms of women but
has also destabilised some of the more positive aspects of the compact. If the MBWF is to
be more completely transcended, a new compact is needed and shorter working hours
have an essential part to play in its creation. Other changes in the organisation of time,
such as flexible arrangements over the lifetime of individuals, are not excluded but should
not be allowed to substitute for a shorter working day/week. To achieve the latter will
require a coalition which can both confront the opposition of employers and reconcile the
very real differences in the priorities of women and men. An essential step towards this is
for public discussion of family and work-time policies to give more sustained consider-
ation to the advantages and disadvantages of a shorter working hours policy and the
alternative ways in which this might be implemented.
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Cambridge Journal of Economics 1999, 23, 519–541

The rise and decline of the ‘male

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Manuscript received 13 March 1998; final version received 29 April 1999

© Cambridge Political Economy Society 1999

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2. The rise of the male breadwinner family

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3. Decline of the male breadwinner family

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4. Towards a new compact

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4.1 Flexible working arrangements

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4.2 Part-time work

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4.3 Shorter working hours (SWH)

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