While cross-national work-life research is a flourishing field of research, but a recent one, it is relatively recent as national context had been the missing -˜elephant in the room’s of work-“life research for decades. Based on the keynote talk I gave at the 2015 Community, Work and Family conference in Malmö, Sweden, this research note highlights three pervasive challenges which I believe need to be discussed in our community of scholars, practitioners and policy-makers so that our research makes the strongest possible impact for individuals and organisations: (1) educating practitioners and policy-makers on the structuring impact that public and employer policies have on individual so-called private work-“life decisions; (2) analyzing the inequalities of access to these policies within each country, which are often masked by simplified country-level comparisons and (3) finding innovative ways to combine ambitious etic research designs with in-depth emic understanding of local cultures.
