THE STALLED REVOLUTION

By Jill Smolowe

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls it the "stalled revolution." Since the '70s, women have poured into the workplace, compelled by economic necessity and personal ambition, to the point where dual-wage-earner families are now the norm. Yet somehow neither work nor the family has changed enough to make this a tenable situation. Day care is still catch as catch can. Employers still demand 110%, while spouses and children still need clean socks and a ride to the dentist. Add stagnating wages and layoff anxiety, and for millions of Americans, each week becomes a stressful triage between work and home that leaves them feeling guilty, exhausted and angry.

Over the past year, the Public Policy Institute at Radcliffe College has been studying the work-family conundrum. The project, called the New Economic Equation, conducted focus groups around the country with men and women on all rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. Last week the institute held a two-day conference to review the findings and propose solutions.

Judging from the discussion among more than three dozen business and labor leaders, economists and family experts, the news is not good. "People have accommodated all they can accommodate. They have made the trade-offs to get a better quality of life, and it is still insufficient," says Paula Rayman, the institute's director. "The workplace really hasn't changed much, and public policies haven't kept up with the social changes. So what are we going to do? It's a very challenging moment.''

What has changed, however, is that there is a new sense of urgency about the problem. "Ten years ago, people thought this was temporary," says Martha Minow, a professor of family law at Harvard Law School. "It is no longer possible to pretend it will go away."

There is some evidence, in fact, that many people, women in particular, have "downshifted" in an effort to cope. Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, found in a national survey of 1,000 people last year that 28% of the respondents had made a voluntary life-style change that involved a significant reduction in earnings: moved to a less stressful job, turned down a promotion or refused relocation. More and more mothers work part-time, though they routinely make less an hour than full-time workers doing the same job. And since 1990 the nation's mostly female temp force has mushroomed more than 85%. Yet only 8% of temps receive health benefits; pensions, vacations and sick days are virtually unheard of. In some cases, those part-time jobs are second jobs: in 1971, 20% of moonlighters were women; today almost half are. The trend, says Karen Nussbaum, who is heading a new women's bureau at the AFL-CIO, is that "more family hours are going into the paid work force now than ever before to maintain the standard of living.''

If there is any silver lining, it is perhaps that Radcliffe's multidisciplinary panels saw no deliberate villainy or single cause for blame. "Everyone is looking for scapegoats--the government, welfare mothers, the private sector," says Marina Von Neumann, former chief economist for General Motors. "But there just aren't any scapegoats." Yet the flip side of that, points out Ann Bookman, policy and research director of the women's bureau of the Department of Labor, is that "no one sector can take this on single-handedly."

In fact, the recommendations discussed at the conference are aimed at both government and business. Conferees proposed, for example, that the care of the young and the old should be "critical elements of our economic structure,'' says Bookman. That means, among other things, preserving Medicare coverage for elder care, extending public education below kindergarten and providing prorated benefits for part-time workers.

But the biggest changes, all agree, must come on the job, where family-friendly policies have too often been fringe benefits that anxious employees feel too insecure to exercise. A promising exception is General Motors' Saturn Co. in Spring Hill, Tennessee, where teams of up to 15 people decide how they will meet production goals set by management. Employees work 10-hour days, four days a week, with rotating day and night shifts. At the end of each three-week cycle, they get five consecutive days off. This adds up to far more family time a year and creates flexibility within the team for handling personal problems. Someone who needs a day off can switch with another member; those who want overtime can volunteer.

A similar system has been in place at Fel-Pro, a gasketmaker in Skokie, Illinois. "It makes a big difference," says Pamela Pope, who is married and has three children. "It gives me time during the week for car repairs, personal things." Fel-Pro also subsidizes tutoring for children having trouble at school and helps with college counseling. Says Elliott Lehman, Fel-Pro's chairman emeritus: "What we do increases our profitability." Yet the conferees note that there are few hard data on the link between family support and productivity. "Until we measure the effects of the ideas,'' says Rayman, "we won't know which ones will work."

Some conference participants suggest that the Federal Government establish an annual award for family-friendly companies--much like the coveted Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. And they insist that the issue be seen as affecting both men and women. Yet recognizing that the work-family dilemma has often been felt most acutely by women, Harvard's Minow concludes, "Our best hope is CEOs with daughters."

--Reported by Sam Allis/Cambridge

With reporting by SAM ALLIS/CAMBRIDGE