Flexible working and equal opportunities in the United Kingdom: a case study from retail

Flexible working has been widely advocated as a social panacea, capable of resolving unemployment, maintaining economic competitiveness, and enhancing equal opportunities between women and men. Flexibility has neutral or even positive connotations for both employers and employees. These meanings are differentiated, and empirically explored, by reference to the British component of a qualitative, comparative six-country European study of flexible working in the retail sector. Specific attention is paid to the determination of flexibility; for example whether it is employer led, employee chosen, or a complementary combination, and whether flexible working facilitates equal opportunities, both within the workplace and in the wider sense of promoting long-lasting changes in parental roles and responsibilities as specified under the European Union's mainstreaming initiative. It is concluded that the introduction of flexible working has opened up a whole range of possibilities for differential engagement in the workplace. However, these arrangements need to apply to all levels of the occupational hierarchy and similar arrangements need to be introduced in relation to caring if the officially stated objectives for greater equality of opportunity are to be realised. To bring about gender equity it is necessary to consider social reproduction as a whole and modify the division of labour between women and men within, and between, paid and unpaid work.