How the type of working day affects work–life balance and mealtime balance: A study based on the time use survey

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 1082-1103
Author(s):  
Ángel Alonso-Domínguez ◽  
Javier Callejo ◽  
Cecilia Díaz-Méndez

How people balance work and personal or family life has been widely examined, showing gender inequalities that put women at a disadvantage relative to men. However, although this is a question of time compatibility, there has been no research on whether the type of working day (continuous or split) has different effects on this balance for men and women. The Time Use Survey enables us to examine this balance in two areas that are key to understanding the difficulty of reconciling timetables. On the one hand, there is the relationship between the type of working day and housework or family care (balance between paid and unpaid work). On the other hand, there is the relationship between the type of working day and eating (mealtime balance). The data indicate that the type of working day affects the balance between paid and unpaid work less than might be expected, since in all cases, it is women who do more unpaid work, while men’s involvement in housework changes little, whether they have a continuous or a split working day. However, the continuous working day is more favourable to balancing work and family life. In contrast, work–mealtime balance is a cultural feature that equalises both sexes in relation to an established habit that encourages sharing time outside work. We can thus speak of shared (non-work) time and unshared (unpaid) work.

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-109
Author(s):  
Marta Marszałek

The analysis based on data from the Time Use Survey 2013 presents how household activities related to paid and unpaid work are distributed between women and men in Poland. The share of persons involved in selected activities at the defined time is presented. The 24‑hour rhythm of paid and unpaid work refers to weekdays (working days and weekends separately) and months. The analysis covers different groups of households, defined by the source of income and household living arrangements. The results confirm the hypothesis about double burden of women imposed by the asymmetric allocation of household duties between women and men, irrespectively of the source of household income. They also demonstrate how living arrangements contribute to the differences in paid and unpaid work of women and men.


2007 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyn Craig

This paper draws on data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey ( TUS) (over 4,000 randomly selected households) to tease out the dimensions of the ‘second shift’. Predictions that as women entered the paid workforce men would contribute more to household labour have largely failed to eventuate. This underpins the view that women are working a second shift because they are shouldering a dual burden of paid and unpaid work. However, time use research seems to show that when both paid and unpaid work is counted, male and female workloads are in total very similar. This has led to suggestions that a literal second shift is a myth; that it exists in the sense that women do more domestic work than men, but not in the sense that they work longer hours in total. Using a more accurate and telling measure of workload than previous research (paid and unpaid labour including multitasked activities), this paper explores the second shift and how it relates to family configuration, ethnicity and indicators of class and socioeconomic standing. It finds a clear disparity between the total workloads of mothers and fathers, much of which consists of simultaneous (secondary) activity, and some demographic differences in female (but not male) total workloads. It concludes that the view that the second shift is a myth is only sustainable by averaging social groups very broadly and by excluding multitasking from the measurement of total work activity.


Author(s):  
Suzie Carson ◽  
Frances Krsinich ◽  
Susan Kell

The study of time spent on different activities rather than the study of people can offer new insights as well as new challenges. This paper presents the results from an exploratory analysis of data from the first New Zealand Time Use Survey. Interesting questions arise about the distribution of paid and unpaid work across different groups in society. Of particular interest is how men and women balance the competing demands of paid and unpaid work. This paper is a first attempt at understanding some of the complex relationships between social, demographic and employment characteristics and paid and unpaid work time.


2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Armstrong

This paper proposes that there is a need to push beyond the popular discourses of ‘flexibility’ and ‘work-life balance’. Developing a feminist-Bourdieuian approach and drawing on three illustrative case studies from my interview research with 27 mothers in the UK, I show the importance of maintaining a focus on class and gender inequalities. In the first part of the paper the concepts of capitals, dependencies and habitus which shaped, and were shaped by, this interview research are discussed. An analysis of three women's accounts of their experiences across work and family life is then used to illustrate that although these women all used terms such as ‘flexibility’ and ‘juggling’ in describing their work, the experience of that work was crucially influenced by their histories and current positioning. Tracing each of these women's trajectories from school, attention is focused on the influence of differential access to capitals and relations of dependency in the emergence of their dispositions toward work. Overall, the paper points to the significance of examining the classed and gendered dimensions of women's experiences of employment and motherhood.


2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSIE VANDEWEYER ◽  
IGNACE GLORIEUX

AbstractIn 2004, 9 per cent of female employees took advantage of the system of ‘career break’ or ‘time credit’ in Flanders, compared to only 3 per cent of male workers. Although the number of men taking a career break is increasing, they remain a small group. In this article the time use of men interrupting their careers full-time or part-time is compared to that of full-time working men, using representative time use data from 2004. Analyses show that a career break does not imply a reduced workload. Half of the men interrupting their career full-time do so to try out another job. Men who take part-time leave are mainly motivated by their desire for a better work and family life balance. About 80 per cent of the time they gain by working on a part-time basis is allocated to household and childcare activities. This suggests that encouraging men to work fewer hours could well be the best policy for achieving gender equality.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Corina Rodríguez Enríquez

AbstractTime has become a valuable asset within capitalism. “Time is money” is a well known and usually shared principle. As in regard to many other type of assets, the distribution of time is pretty unfair, as well as it is the value consideration of the time allocated for different people to different activities. The distribution of time, as well as what people can or cannot do with their time, is a key issue among feminist debates. The main argument is that time allocation to paid and unpaid work is very different and unfair between genders. Women allocate much more time to unpaid work, and men, on the contrary allocate much more time to paid work. This has a reasonable and direct consequence in terms of income generation. This unequal distribution of time (and work) represents the main obstacle to women’s economic autonomy and to overcome gender income gaps.


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