Shifts in Reality

Delving deeper into their recent study, researchers at UC San Francisco were surprised to learn nearly two-thirds of the state’s working women are employed full time.

“That’s startling,” said Ed Yelin, the UCSF professor who led the 1999 California Work and Health Survey released last week. “The myth has always been women work part time.”

The reasons, however, seem to have less to do with a new equality between the sexes than with the economic realities of the Golden State.

“Many of us would like to believe the success of the feminist movement is behind it,” Yelin said. “But that probably accounts for a tiny fraction. The truth is, given what it costs to live in California, everyone has to work to make ends meet.”

The finding was only one of a number that raised eyebrows among researchers. The study also showed that fewer than a third of employed women are in traditional, permanent 9-to-5 jobs--a figure that roughly mirrors the overall population. Just 31% of women who work, compared with 35% of working men, work traditional hours, the study found. Most women work from home, are employed seasonally or take early or late shifts for economic or family reasons, the study found.

That just one-third fit the conventional employment mode, economists said, suggests a profound reorganization of workaday life for many--a trend driven by such factors as the Internet and the growth in home businesses.

Here, we take a look at three women who represent some of the diversity of working experience in California.

The Night Shift

Violeta Flores begins her commute to work a little past 11. That’s p.m.

But the 52-year-old La Mirada resident is used to it. She’s been working the graveyard shift since 1988 as a nursing supervisor at Kaiser-Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center.

“I never thought I’d last on the night shift,” says Flores, who oversees 60 nurses from a range of departments, including the critical care unit and the emergency room. “It took about six months for my body to adjust.”

It was with some trepidation that she applied for the off-hour job. But the position offered her career advancement, better benefits and higher pay than her previous post as an assistant director at a community hospital in Huntington Park.

Another selling point was that a nighttime shift meant a much easier commute than a daylight one. In the light nighttime traffic, it takes her about 45 minutes. During morning rush hour, it’s more than two hours, she says.

“I’d rather be working than stuck in traffic,” she says. “I don’t like to waste time.”

Still, the job has meant certain lifestyle sacrifices. She goes to sleep at 1 p.m. but wakes at 5 to have dinner with her husband, an accountant at a bank. She goes back to bed around 8 p.m. and rises again at 10:30 p.m. to prepare for work.

“It’s hard to only see each other in the evening,” says Flores, who also has a 25-year-old son. “But my husband is very supportive. We take turns cooking dinner. It works out fine.”

Flores says she plans to stay on the graveyard shift. She says her night crews are like family to her now.

“The people are really very nice,” she says. “And to be honest, I don’t think I could go back to working days. It would be too hard on my body.”

The Home Office

Her business line starts ringing by 7 a.m. on weekdays and some weekends at her Altadena home, and once, Donna M. Green was still in her nightclothes when a client knocked on her front door.

But Green says working at home beats her previous jobs in bank marketing and a 13-year stint as an administrative assistant at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

“I didn’t see there was going to be any movement [at JPL]--what would I do next?” says Green, 50, who’s divorced with grown children. “Eventually, it just became a job. There was no passion.”

In April 1992, she quit JPL and formed Donna M. Green & Associates, which sells corporate promotional items. Her clients include RJR Nabisco, Warner Bros. and Southern California Gas Co.

Green doesn’t miss the office environment and long hours pushing papers.

“I hated it,” she says. “I never worked 9 to 5, anyway.”

These days, at home, Green starts work about 6:30 a.m. Some mornings, she sits on her bed, making phone calls while keeping an eye on the TV news. At night, she curls up on the couch to read reports, and on Saturday mornings, she catches up on invoices. She spends days creating products such as a pen with a dove-shaped top for a record industry promotion featuring the song “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

By the end of the week, she doesn’t feel like she put in 55 hours.

“It’s just a good environment,” Green says. “I feel comfortable being home.”

The Traditional Day

The earliest Michele Nachum remembers reporting for work is 3 a.m. As head of public affairs for the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, she had to oversee a local television station that wanted to do a shoot for its morning program.

“I don’t mind working late, but getting up early is a shock,” says Nachum, who has been with the aquarium since it opened last year. “But it’s painful when that alarm goes off at 3 a.m. It’s like a heart attack.” But such predawn hours are rare. The vast majority of the time, Nachum’s work hours are as regular as the tides. Her job, which usually begins around 8 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m., is quite simple, and fun: promote the aquarium. Accomplishing this can mean doing everything from holding a fund-raiser or organizing a beach cleanup to handling media calls.

“If there’s a story about a whale, a shark or another sea animal,” she says, “I love the challenge of getting a call from the media and tracking down one of our aquarium experts in five minutes. It’s really cool.”

Like most people who work traditional hours, she struggles to complete errands. If she goes to the grocery store one night, the 30-year-old Long Beach resident probably won’t make it to the dry cleaners until the next night. And somewhere in between errands, work and working out, she squeezes in a personal life.

“I like my hours because I can still get home, spend an evening out with friends or have time for personal projects I’m working on,” says Nachum, who once worked the swing shift for the 10 o’clock news at a Nevada television station. “If you get off work at 11 p.m. like I once did, everyone is asleep.”

Martin Miller and Renee Tawa can be reached by e-mail at socalliving@latimes.com.