Work-Time, Male-Breadwinning and the Division of Domestic Labour: Male Part-Time and Full-Time Workers in Unsettled Times

Abstract

The majority of male workers spend full-time hours in the labour market while part-time employment is heavily female dominated. A decade of economic unrest in the UK following the recession of 2008–2009 was accompanied by a considerable expansion in the numbers of men working part-time. Growing male part-time employment is a significant phenomenon, with potential for narrowing gender inequalities in ways of working, inside and outside the home. Applying a gendered lens to men’s working lives, the article focuses upon the ramifications of this growing male work-time diversity. Unsettled times can create the circumstances for opening up acceptable behaviours, for ‘undoing’ gender roles. The financial circumstances of male part- and full-timers, and men’s engagement in unpaid domestic work, are compared. Part-time jobs are associated with more financial hardship than are full-time, but they offer up the potential for narrowing gender inequality in the sharing of core domestic work tasks.

Decolonizing Care: Hegemonic Masculinity, Caring Masculinities, and the Material Configurations of Care

“…Tarrant’s male participants found taking on new care responsibilities financially fraught if they were unemployed, retired, or unable to work. These dynamics are more pronounced in times of austerity with cuts in welfare benefit, a state withdrawal of services, increasing longevity and “care-precarity” throughout much of the global north (Boyer et al 2017; Warren 2022), resulting in growing care needs in a shrinking state (England and Alcorn 2018). These processes serve to accelerate the international migration of healthcare workers to the north, reproduce colonial binaries (Prattes 2022), enhance white privilege, and engender the outsourcing of care from the public to the private sector; sharpening inequalities when it comes to who can afford care and of what quality that might be.…”

“…Boyer et al (2017) speculate that ongoing recession and male unemployment could lead to an increase in SAHDs, where male caregiving could transform gender relations. Such possibilities are an evident, though often overlooked, aspect of the coronavirus pandemic (Warren 2022). Media has focused on the rise in male domestic abuse during lock-down, with less attention given to improved family relations generated by men working from home, spending more time with children, and carrying out routine domestic tasks often undertaken by women.…”

“…However, material configurations have also seen neoliberal care regimes commodify care, relegating public health to the responsibility of individual households and private agencies. The redistribution of care and the impact of austerity, precarity and the pandemic, mean unemployed, working-class, and elderly men are increasingly likely to be involved in caregiving (Hunter et al 2017; Milligan and Morbey 2016; Tarrant 2018; Warren 2022). Contrastingly, middle- and upper-class households may outsource care to migrant laborers, reinscribing hegemonic masculinity and white coloniality.…”

“…Care is a global issue, formative of masculinities and gender inequalities. As care relations are a fundamental axis upon which the sexual division of labor is produced in society, gender scholars have agitated for a “feminist theory of care” (Fisher and Tronto 1990; Held 2005), to undo masculinities (Elliott 2016; Hearn 2018; Warren 2022) and rethink care relations. Extending this approach, the paper argues for decolonial perspectives on care, that engage with the global migration of health workers, racial disparities in health provision, interdependencies between the global north and south, and inequalities underpinning neoliberal care practices.…”

Can Work Time Fragmentation Influence Workers’ Subjective Time Pressure? The Roles of Gender and Parenthood

“…Some scholars believe that frequent role switching can exacerbate role conflicts (Cornwell, 2013; Glavin and Schieman, 2012; Schieman and Young, 2010), which might increase the feeling of being rushed and harried. So far, many studies have emphasised that work time quality is crucial in the debates around the effects of working time and job quality on mental health (Wang et al, 2022a; Warren, 2022). However, the investigation of work time fragmentation is rather absent in the current literature.…”