35: Balancing Family & Law Career Part II

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission set out a list of recommendations for employers to consider in order to promote work-family balance. The document acknowledges that it reflects "both the increasing challenges faced by employees with caregiving responsibilities, and the low likelihood of successfully addressing such problems through mere compliance with existing law." To really assist in garnering a healthy work-life balance, businesses must do more than just the bare minimum required by legislation, including "thinking broadly about the ways in which family-friendly workplace policies can improve workers' ability to balance caregiving responsibilities with work."

A caregiver may be embodied as a parent, or one caring for an aging parent or relatives with disabilities, according to the EEOC. The trait shared by all of these caregivers is that "in addition to doing paid work, [they] are also engaged in significant caregiving outside of the workplace." An interesting and important note made in the recommendations is that women are by far the most likely to be the said caregiver in a situation. While men have taken on increased roles in parenting and caregiving, women still dominate. Simultaneously, "women's workforce participation has dramatically increased," meaning that women are taking on more responsibility than even before, and due to the recession, where mainly men's jobs were lost, their wages are more crucial than ever.