Most mothers want to combine family life with their careers.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 699.

Best of both worlds.

Read the text and right downs its main idea (5-8 sentences).

II. Reading activities.

Match the beginnings in A to the endings in B to make phrases from the text. Don't consult the text yet.

I. Pre-reading activities.

Unit 2.

Higher Education in Belarus

The Value of Education

SUPPLEMETARY READING

Say what new you have learned about your University and what impressed you most of all.

(p. 372, The basic course of Eng)

(Post graduate studies, Unit 1)

1. to alter a) balance between home and work lives;

2. to combine b) people;

3. to give priority to c) the best of both worlds;

4. to carry out d) the working lifestyle;

5. to want e) private life;

6. to take on f) family life with the career;

7. to maintain g) the top of profession;

8. to reach h) research;

9. to question i) part-time work;

Most working women with children are refusing to put their job before their families, a study has revealed. They are choosing to have the best of both worlds by altering their working lifestyle to make it fit around their role as a mother. The findings challenge the myth that more and more women in highflying careers continue to see their job as their top priority after giving birth. About 60 per cent of women fall into the 'adaptive' category, making time for their families while continuing to work. Only around 20 per cent are work-centred, researchers found.

The final 20 per cent are home-centred, giving priority to their family life. They are likely to give up their job to stay at home with the children.

The research was carried out by Dr Catherine Hakim, a sociology professor at the London School of Economics.

She said: 'Over the last 20 years, we have seen a completely new scenario in terms of social and economic changes. Women have genuine choices for the first time in history and they are choosing from one of three distinctive lifestyles. A minority of women are work-centered, a minority are home-centered and the majority are in the middle.

'These women, who I call "adaptives", want the best of both worlds. They want to combine family and paid employment and never going to give priority to paid employment'.

Most women who took on part-time work after having children fell into the 'adaptive' category, said Dr. Hakim.

Others chose their job, such as teaching, on the basis that it would allow them to maintain a balance between their home and work lives.

Dr. Hakim warned, however, that 'adaptive women' were unlikely to reach the top of profession. Despite the 'massive influx' of women in higher education and management-type jobs, work-centred women were in the minority, she said.

The so-called 'hundred-percenters' tended to be more focused than other women on competitive activities such as sport or politics and fitted their family life around their work, with many remaining childless even when married.

Home-centred women were the most 'invisible' group because of the current political focus on high-achieving, working women. They chose to give priority to their private and family life after marriage, and were the most likely to have large families. Dr Hakim's research was based on a survey of 3,700 people in Britain and Spain who were questioned about their lifestyle choices.

Digest, 2005, № 5.