Uses of Time

» The event included the participation of the councillor for Economic Promotion, Work, Feminisms and Democratic Memory, Raquel Gil Eiroá, as well as more than 60 organizations that shared their experiences promoting healthier, more equal, more efficient, and more sustainable uses of time.

“Close your eyes and imagine it’s one hour less. Now, open them and observe how the time, no matter how much we want to, does not change”. The journalist Romina Vallès, in charge of presenting the event, started the day with a small game that encouraged the people attending to reflect on time poverty, the central theme of the annual meeting of the Pact of Time entities.

On November 7 at 4:30 p.m., the meeting room of the Gabriel García Márquez Library was filled with more than 60 entities that were able to reflect on the concept of time poverty through the presentation of a new dossier published by Barcelona City Council “From time poverty, to time for life” and the presentation of good practices from one of the member entity of the Pact of Time.

Just entering the room, the participants were asked to answer a very simple question: What is time poverty for you? “Running all day”, “no time to take care of myself”, “over responsibility”, “work”, “stress”, “anxiety”, “woman”, “poor well-being”, were some of the words that collected the experiences of the different entities and that spoke of feminization, impact on health, overload of reproductive work and centrality of productive work.

The day continued to present, through a one-to-one interview, the councillor for Economic Promotion, Work, Feminisms and Democratic Memory, Raquel Gil Eiroá.

The councillor emphasized the need to generate more awareness and give more visibility to time policies in all its strategic areas, to address through municipal policies the existing time poverty as a result of the unequal distribution of the right to time of citizens, as well as the importance of continuing to network with the different entities and organizations in the city.

Continuing with this line, she encouraged the member organizations to carry out a joint reflection exercise in order to move towards a new culture of time organization, especially in labour matters as a key factor that conditions people’s lives.

According to the councilwoman, the challenge for public administrations, companies and organizations is to go beyond the concept of conciliation that promotes a permits’ policy, and think about a new distribution of working time, encouraging telework in those organizations where hybrid work models are possible, but also by promoting other forms of working time organization. It is about rethinking the prevailing model of working time organization in a broad sense and avoiding the homogenization of telework, work permits or other time organization measures, that do not take into account the idiosyncrasies of the sector or the organization.

With regard to the Barcelona City Council’s instruments to combat time poverty, she highlighted three lines of work. The first one affects the organizations, through the projects of a Time Pact project and the NUST Network (Network of companies for a new working time). The second line of work approaches care from public policies, and a third line of work focuses on research, transmission and promotion of knowledge, of which the dossier that was presented during the day is an example.

The event was also an opportunity to present the Dossier “From time poverty to time for life”, a document prepared by Sonia Ruiz, Director of Gender Services and Time Policies of Barcelona City Council, Georgina Monge and Blai Martí, technical staff of the Directorate of Gender Services and Time Policies and Ana Paricio, Urban Psychologist at Barcelona Regional and specialist in inclusive urbanism.

The dossier, which aims to be a reflection and debate document that aims to improve the right to time of the citizens of Barcelona, not only conceptualizes time poverty or defines the structural and intersectional determinants of a lack of one’s own time, but also makes a diagnosis of the reality of the citizens of Barcelona through the incorporation of real experiences. In this sense, the voices of the women of the “Dones Amunt” project are incorporated, among others, and were explained in the event by one of its members, Gabriela Salas. At the same time, the dossier includes a tool for analysing the impact of time on public policies, which has already been put into practice to evaluate the “Transform Mobility in Schools” project.

Finally, the focus was on Paula Ramos, representative of the Espai Ambiental entity, who not only presented her best practices in terms of time use in the organization, but also encouraged the different participating entities of the day, to propose actions that are shaped through the participation of the entity’s workers, so that they respond properly to their needs.

The day ended with a guided tour of VilaVeïna de Provençals del Poblenou, where we were accompanied by Núria Salas, project coordinator, and Alba Panyella, project manager in the Sant Martí neighbourhood, who explained the dynamics, objectives and project activities.

From the Council and the Directorate of Gender and Time Policy Services, there has been a very positive assessment from the event, which is expected to serve to strengthen the links between the entities that are members of the Pact of Time and to give impetus to actions both of public policy and private initiative that are transforming the use of time in the city.