NEW YORK, N.Y. -- In her classic 1963 book The Feminine Mystique , feminist Betty Friedan identified "the problem that has no name" -- the dissatisfaction many women of her generation felt at being confined to the traditional roles of wife and mother. But now, Friedan, a Cornell University visiting distinguished professor, says, "There is a new 'problem that has no name,' and that is the toll that outmoded employment models and new-economy policies such as deregulation and privatization have had on working families."

According to Friedan, most jobs are still based on the model of the employee with a non-working partner who takes care of the family and the details of life. But as the global economy has drawn increasing numbers of women into the paid labor force, this model is out of step with reality. She says: "No one has moved to shorten the work week. In fact, it's getting longer. We still do not have a national child-care policy. The United States is by no means the leader, or a role model, for the world in the restructuring of work that takes seriously the equality of women and men."

For that reason, Friedan felt that an in-depth look at international approaches to work and family was sorely needed. And so Friedan and her colleague, Francine Moccio, director of Cornell's Institute for Women and Work (IWW), organized an international conference on the subject. Titled "Gross Domestic Product vs. Quality of Life: Balancing Work and Family," the conference took place at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2. In attendance were 26 scholars, activists and government officials from 14 countries, ranging from France and Finland to India and New Zealand.

The conference was funded by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, sponsored by IWW and co-sponsored by the Feminism and Legal Theory Project at Cornell Law School.

Organizers say they feel the conference achieved its goals, and they say they came away with more than they anticipated. "It gives me a goose-flesh feeling, a frisson of excitement, because something is happening here that is real and new," says Friedan, who co-chaired the event with Moccio. "Finally, we have begun to define some basic measures for quality of life and new terms of success for individuals, institutions and communities. That's the next step of women's progress."

Moccio said the conference's international focus was a key element in its success. "By coming together, we have identified similarities and differences in our experiences with globalization," she notes. "We recognized the compelling need for a transatlantic learning community on work/life balance. And those of us from the U.S. realized that if we as a society really want to promote work/family balance, a just allocation of our resources is imperative."

An opening plenary session identified contradictions and anxieties experienced by individuals, families and communities as they confront new challenges posed by globalization. In later sessions, a wide range of country case studies were presented on topics such as elder care in the Netherlands, experiments with the six-hour work day in Finland, flexible work policies in France, barriers for employed women in post-communist Hungary and contingent labor in the United States.

An important feature of the conference was the "strategy sessions," in which participants worked together to develop general policy recommendations. The collective bargaining group, chaired by New Zealand labor activist Maxine Gay, urged a combination of legislative and collective bargaining action to "promote quality of life and a balance between work and family" and called for a more democratic union movement with a strong international agenda.

Friedan's public policy group called for a new social movement focused on a national child- care policy, laws that create "wage and benefit parity between part-time and full-time workers" and social auditing policies that "hold corporations accountable to communities."

The corporate culture group, led by William Salter of the International Labor Organization, declared: "Life is more than work. Time is needed for family as well as other needs." The group voiced its opposition to "the long-hours culture" and its support for policies such as workplace flexibility, paid family leave and governmental and business initiatives to balance work and family.

A number of follow-up activities are in the works. A book of conference papers will be published, and organizers are creating an international quality of life survey. CNN.com has agreed to translate the survey, post it on its various country web sites and report the results.

Participants also have committed to host focus group sessions in their respective countries, bringing issues raised at Bellagio to a wider range of scholars and decision-makers. The Swedish prime minister's Office on Gender Equality already has agreed to host a follow-up session with European Union leaders, and the IWW will have follow-up meetings in Washington, D.C., and New York with the Children's Defense Fund, the European Trade Union Institute and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's office.