How have we organized the distribution of our time during confinement? Who has seen their availability of personal time reduced? How has teleworking worked? We speak with Teresa Torns, doctor of sociology and retired professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
How has our daily life and our use of time been affected in relation to confinement and de-escalation?
Some studies are rebelling that teleworking is not the panacea that was expected. If teleworking is not well regulated, it ends up happening that the workday is not only not shortened but ends up taking up the whole day. This is causing problems in many cases because you cannot distinguish between working hours and time outside working hours.
Who has been lost in this new distribution of time during confinement?
We see that gender inequalities have worsened and women have burdened much more with all kinds of work, especially when they have creatures or dependent people in their care. Nor has what we call sexual division of labor disappeared. In other words, women have been in charge of organizing and executing household and care tasks. Obviously, there have also been men who have done so, and these have realized that conciliation is a romantic myth.
On the other hand, many women have had to leave home to carry out their work activity. For example, the health personnel (doctors and nurses) but also the women who take care of others, those who clean, the shop assistants or those who work in the agri-food industry. The job insecurity that affects women has become more visible.
Teleworking has opened a window of hope among many people who believe it facilitates reconciliation. Has it really been that way?
Telecommuting cannot be the only solution. To begin with, because within the word telework there are many different realities. Not only has there been a problem of separating time from the working day from the other days; but we have not been able to separate the space either. The myth that technology helps us have better lives is very relative because being always connected overwhelms women much more. And women cannot self-organize because creatures will sue you forever.
The health crisis has opened pending debates such as the 4-day work week. What do you think about it?
In the 90s, from the Center for Sociological Studies on Everyday Life and Work (QUIT) we had already done some studies on this and had developed a balance on the policies of regulation of the working day. Then it was already seen that the 4-day days did not work well for women because it was better to reduce the working day every day, what we call a synchronous and daily reduction. Four days of work a week means that you will intensify your dedication and disappear from the rest of the activities during these 4 days. If you have to take care of a baby or a sick person … who will do the support and infrastructure tasks for you and yours when you are away? Better hours less each day.
It is very curious because when we talk about reducing working hours, we never refer to what to do with the rest of the day. We women always assume a greater total workload because we assume all those invisible tasks that have become visible during confinement.
What previous experiences can serve as an example?
The first companies to test this time distribution were Scandinavians. They converted one 8-hour job into two 6-job. It worked very well: companies increased the job (they went from 8 to 12 hours) and workers reduced the workday. This practice was subsidized by the state. But we live in a society where the center of life for people and cities is built around working hours. Therefore, it was a good technical solution that did not have enough support from the collective imagination.
Another example is the Volkswagen company that implemented the 4-day week. The first evaluations determined a collateral effect that was not expected: they increased the number of marital separations. There was no way to reconcile couple schedules!
Should we legislate and make public policies to advance in terms of time and conciliation?
Social consensus and hegemonic ways of thinking must be manufactured. We asked the political representatives not only to make policies in favor of conciliation, but also to set an example, such as the time of the meetings. But there was so much work and so much desire to change things that this never worked.
One of the perversions of today is that everyone wants to have a workday. Precariousness makes you either show job availability or you are nobody and you have no chance in the world of work.