Conference Agenda

Several studies have revealed a trade-off between the benefits of Work-Family Balance (WFB) policies and the negative consequences that these may generate on women’s wages and employment prospects (e.g., Brady et al., 2020). Additionally, evidence points to a connection between gender gaps within the household and negative results on satisfaction with WFB (Buchanan et al., 2017).

This research explores the relationship between gender gaps - in paid work, paid and unpaid working time- of dual-income couples in Chilean households and their satisfaction level with WFB. To answer this question, we test three, sometimes opposing, theories: relative resources/time perspective (exchange-bargaining theory), gender role identity (Buchanan et al., 2017), and gender deviance neutralisation (Bittman et al., 2003). We use the 2015 National Time Use Survey of Chile (N= 4,878) to test several OLS models. Additionally, we use an instrumental variable strategy to address, in part, the problems of reverse causality between WFB satisfaction and gender gaps.

Our findings indicate significant gender differences in satisfaction with variations in the agreements of the distribution of resources. Although these effects are tenuous in men, women show that more egalitarian allocations of resources, especially in paid and unpaid work, generate lower satisfaction with WFB. This effect provides evidence in favour of the threat hypothesis, meaning that challenging traditional gender norms translates into dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, women who contribute relatively more than their partner to the total household income show higher levels of satisfaction than the rest of the women. Additionally, evidence is found in favour of the gender deviance neutralisation hypothesis. That is to say, women who contribute relatively more to the household income compensate their partners for deviating from traditional gender roles by working longer hours at home, experiencing a drop in their WFB satisfaction. Therefore, policies that aim to increase the degree of reconciliation between work and family should not affect the potential income of women or their employability to reach positions of higher status and pay. Furthermore, they should seek to lighten the overall workload of more productive women by developing incentives to balance the unpaid working time between genders or through welfare support.

We explore what happened to gender, social class and household differences in remote working in the UK both during and ‘post lockdown’ up to 2022. This allows an investigation of the extent to which trends towards greater remote working appear to be more enduring and whether such trends have exacerbated or reduced gender and social class related inequalities. One criticism of research on work-life balance is that it is overly skewed towards middle class dual earner families above other socio-economic groups (Gatrell et al., 2013; Warren, 2015; Warren & Lyonette, 2018). Research on gender and the pandemic has also predominantly focussed on overall sex differences with a particular emphasis on the relative situation of men and women within coupled households (Andrew et al., 2020; Blundell et al., 2020; Chung et al., 2021; Collins et al., 2020). A broader criticism of contemporary research on work-life balance is that it privileges the position of coupled households above other household or family types, whether with or without dependent children (Chambers, 2012; Gulland, 2020; Kelliher et al., 2019; Levitsky, 2014; Wilkinson et al. 2017). Importantly, a lack of attention to household heterogeneity has meant that the experiences of single parent families the majority of which are headed by women, has largely been missing from discussions. Using the UK Labour Force Survey (2019-21) we examine occupational class, gender and household trends in remote working. The findings reveal that a pre-existing socio-economic divide in access to remote working between managerial, professional and intermediate occupations and other occupational groups widened considerably following the pandemic. However, although men were more likely to work from home prior to the pandemic, more recently this gap has diminished. These developments played out unevenly across households, with single mothers particularly experiencing a smaller increase in such arrangements. Between 2019 and 2022 the gap in the percentage of single and coupled mothers reporting some form of remote working doubled. Single mothers also exhibited a comparatively high representation in ‘lockdown sectors’ but also occupations with a high social contact infectious disease risk. Beyond the effects of specific household circumstances, intersections between pre-existing gender and social class-based inequalities contribute to the labour market disadvantages experienced by single mothers.

The COVID-19 global pandemic generated a great deal of discussion around how we live and work. For many developed economies, COVID-19 led to the widespread adoption of remote working. Similar occurred in developing countries although at a smaller extent, owing largely to the nature of work and employment – often informal, low paid, and arduous. The pandemic and the recent global economic crisis have highlighted further the need to protect poorer and vulnerable workers, not only in terms of higher incomes but improvement in wellbeing.

Our study investigates the linkages between gender, long working days, long commutes and well-being in Greater Accra, Ghana, by addressing the following research questions: i. Are women more time poor than men because of a double burden of work?; ii. How does commuting impact the length and experience of the working day, and; iii. How do long working days and long commutes impact the lives of women and men living and working in urban SSA.

In previous research on time poverty, time spent travelling to work has been considered ‘necessary time’ integral to the working day (Kalenkoski et al., 2011) but commuting time has rarely been incorporated explicitly in analyses (Qi & Dong (2018) is an exception). Commuting time is particularly pertinent in Greater Accra where, time travelling to/from work is often long (Orkoh et al., 2020; Agyemang, 2017). Long commutes and long working hours further reduce time for rest and leisure and may directly impact health, well-being and work-life balance.

We use mixed-methods approach that combined survey data and qualitative data from focus groups to report gender differences in the length of the working day and the experience of time poverty. The analysis of the survey data found that women were both more time poor and income poor than men. Women devote on average almost 25 minutes per day more to household work and also report marginally longer commutes than men. Time poverty was also found to be associated negatively with wellbeing and in particular with satisfaction with leisure time and leisure time use. Women reported lower satisfaction and part of the reason could be their longer working days. The analysis of the focus group data showed that impacts on family life, leisure time, health and well-being were through lack of choice about participation in paid work; the experience of long working days and, for women especially, time spent in unpaid household caregiving and chores.