Restructured families: Issues of equality and need

The families of gay employees have recently come onto the corporate radar s creen. The needs they have in common with the families of straight employee s can foster connection. There are also tensions between gay and straight e mployees about the meanings of family, deeply rooted in the culture outside the workplace and sometimes so provocative that they appear only in indire ct allusions. The case of a corporate redesign of benefits surfaces both th e language of these commonalities and tensions and the underlying principle s of equality versus need. Providing equal benefits for all families has th e advantage of honoring equally the many ways the employees define a family , but the disadvantage of creating inequalities across families of differen t sizes and types. A need-based distribution has the advantage of respectin g differences, but the disadvantage of requiring a way to evaluate and rank relative needs, which heightens tensions. The authors discuss how these tr ade-offs are voiced and played out.