The paradigm of work–family conflict is challenged by the fluid realities of the actual world. Through an innovative phenomenographic study of women's understanding of their lives, we show that the social imaginary of work–family conflict assumes that vulnerability is a constitutive reality for women. Consequently, with respect to the perspectives through which women are invited to make sense of their lives, the metaphor of conflict enforces a worldview based on traditional gender roles. Organizational policies that rely heavily on a social imaginary of work–family conflict may prove ineffective. On the one hand, they ignore the diversity of morphologies and vocabularies used by women today to understand themselves in relation to their family and workplace. On the other, work–family conflict arises as a product of policy measures and bureaucratic practices rather than as an experiential reality. Policy statements on work–family conflict have a performative character: they communicate a message about women's social status and identity. Therefore, effective organizational policies should integrate vocabularies and assumptions that make women aware of themselves in a confident manner by relying on social imaginaries that encourage agency and empowered participation in the world.
The paper argues that a mathematical approach might contribute to the consolidation of time as an epistemic object, while strengthening the sociology of time as a more influential domain in social sciences. This might be accomplished due to the performative role of mathematical formalisations. Also, it means appropriating the textual reality resulted in formalising processes as a space which researchers act through and upon. Thus, mathematical formalisations should be understood not only as modelling and data processing devices but also as relevant actors in networks of knowledge production. In this context, we reassess the practice of formalisation by proposing a vocabulary through which mathematical language might be used to meaningfully approach the socio-temporal order, with positive consequences in the reinforcement of a scientific community of practice.
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