In the field of work/care reconciliation a lot of research has been conducted on the distribution of productive and reproductive tasks between partners (mostly men and women) and the policies that can affect this distribution in order to obtain a more gender equal society. The lack of any real change in the gender distribution of care work to match women’s increased participation in the labour market begs the question what strategies people use to find a balance between their work and their private life. In this paper, we focus on local politicians, a group of multi-taskers, often participating in the labour market and having a family next to their political engagement. This combination of work, politics and private life, which are often hard to tell apart, makes it challenging to find a balance. We are interested in how they actually organize their everyday life and what strategies they employ so as to reconcile work/politics and care. The data for this research were collected in 2013 comprising 350 in-depth interviews. In our analyses we use the Grounded Theory framework to look at the way local politicians manage their different roles. Based on the stress literature, we differentiate between proactive coping, problem focused coping and emotion focused coping. For this paper we will focus on proactive coping strategies. Further, we reflect on how the used strategies and the expectations coming from gender roles affect women negatively.
