There is something unsatisfactory about a trailing spouse.
For one, the phrase is American and it has entered the management lexicon for the sake of inclusiveness born of political correctness. We cant say wife because the partner may not be a woman and the partnership may no longer be a marriage. It could even be a same-sex partnership. That said, the vast majority of trailing spouses are wives.
Maybe Im old-fashioned but I dont feel comfortable with that word, spouse, as a descriptive noun. I cant imagine asking a colleague or friend, Hows your spouse? It has been with some reluctance therefore that I have been forced to confront the increasing seriousness of the trailing spouse problem in large corporations that undertake hundreds of personnel moves each year on international assignments.
The expatriate deal used to be quite straightforward when executives were almost always men. The expatriate wife was generally consigned to an ancillary role part hostess, part socialite, and part ambassador. But women are no longer so happy about the expatriate set-up. Some of them are expatriate employees themselves and those who are not are starting to dig their heels in, particularly if they are forging a successful career of their own in their home country. The problem would be less acute if they could find a good job in the assignment country. But work permits can be hard to come by, particularly in the US.
So some of the biggest companies are beginning to organise themselves in order to put pressure on intransigent governments to relax their work permit restrictions for the partners of expatriate employees. Human resources specialists at Shell International have set up a lobbying group called The Permits Foundation. Other corporate luminaries in the 20-member group include Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline and Siemens.
Kathleen van der Wilk-Carlton, manager of the Shell Spouse Employment Centre and the organiser of the new group, points out that the number of dual-income couples is growing across the western world. Something like half of women of working age in the UK now have a permanent job and the proportion is nearer 80% among the under-35s, she says. Increasing numbers are becoming reluctant to abandon promising careers to follow their husbands abroad.
Only the UK, Australia, Sweden and Venezuela at present allow an automatic right for partners of incoming expatriate employees to have work permits. The EU extends a blanket approval for its citizens moving within its borders. Lobbying in North America and Europe has already had some influence. Regulations were relaxed in the Netherlands and Canada in 1998, granting partners work permits for the same duration as that of the expatriate employee. Some governments have also introduced bilateral arrangements for the partners of diplomatic staff.
Then, last year, a lobbying group called Multinational Employers for Working Spouses (MEWS), persuaded the US Congress to introduce a bill that would have allowed work permits for partners of expatriates from a limited number of countries. But the change of government meant that the bill was not passed in time. A new bill is expected to be introduced in 2001. Van der Wilk-Carlton seems confident of her powers of persuasion. We want to educate, persuade and to encourage governments that this issue can be treated as something different from normal immigration law, she says.
But Congress needs to frame any legislation carefully, ensuring that big companies do not get special treatment simply because they are influential multinationals. Will, for example, the husband or partner of a freelance worker get the same deal? Any legislation should ensure that it covers all partners of people who work abroad for a specific duration. At a time of increasing popularity of freelance working, there should be no special treatment for the corporate behemoth.
Email address:
richard.donkin@haynet.com
Richard Donkin is editor of FTCareerPoint.com
