"People are feeling overworked, stretched thin by long hours and the demands of caring for both children and often older loved ones," said Barbara Schneider, co-director, Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work at the University of Chicago. "And it isn't just Americans feeling the strain."

Over 120 participants attended the first international conference on why workplace flexibility matters on May 16-18, 2006 in Chicago, Illinois. Experts in both public and private sectors took part in a two-day conference to highlight work force challenges and the need for workplace flexibility as a global initiative. Researchers and policy makers from the U.S. and abroad examined how the needs of working families conflict with current workplace flexibility policies.

The international Conference featured leading researchers and scholars from across the world. New research from Europe, Australia Japan, India, and the U.S. identified the culture of overwork and the need for flexibility in the workplace as global.

Topics included:

• Conflicts between working families and the structure of work today
• Different populations of workers who enter, leave, and re-enter the workplace
• Policies for workplace flexibility and their impact on American workers
• Working families and workplaces in India, Australia, Japan, Europe, and the U.S.
• The need for government policies that support workplace flexibility

The meeting was co-hosted by Barbara Schneider and Linda Waite, Co-Directors of The University of Chicago Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work, and Kathleen Christensen, Director of the Workplace, Workforce and Working Families program at The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The meeting took place at the University of Chicago’s Gleacher Center. For more information on conference venues and accommodations, click here.

For additional information on the upcoming conference, please contact Demetria Proutsos at dproutso@uchicago.edu.

 

Seminar Series

The Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work co-sponsored the Abe Fellowship Program — CGP-SSRC Seminar Series, Fertility Decline, Women’s Choices in the Life Course, and Balancing Work and Family Life: Japan, the USA, and other OECD Countries. The meeting took place at the University of Chicago’s Gleacher Center on May 16–17, 2006. The event was organized by a Sloan Affiliate, Kazuo Yamaguchi, who is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. To view the agenda, click here. For further information on this event, please contact kyamagu@uchicago.edu.