Juggling Work and Home in a Post-industrial World

Case Studies of Dual Career Households

Abstract

The UK economy operates with few, if any, formal barriers for women participating in the labor market on a basis equal to men, yet a gender wage gap persists. In order to understand how informal barriers might operate, I focus on dual career households, which form a sub-set of dual earner households, where the intertwining of home and work is likely to be particularly complicated since it may require the prioritizing of one partner's career at the expense of the other partner's career. In particular I draw on case studies of couples living in East Midlands, UK to highlight the ways in which working practices may adversely affect the career trajectories of members in dual career households with dependent children, and as such examine the ways in which working practices are 'beyond tolerance'.