Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

A feminist view of working-time reductions

Katy Wiese 3rd January 2023

Reducing working time is necessary to decouple work from growth. Well designed, it could redistribute care more evenly.

working time,days,hours,reductions,care,gender lens,women,feminist
Picking up kids from the kindergarten doesn’t happen to fall only on Fridays (riopatuca / shutterstock.com)

Giving people more freedom from work has many benefits. First, it can allow them to live a more sustainable life, which is necesssary to address the climate emergency. Living more sustainably sometimes takes more time. For example, going from a 40- to a 32-hour work week gives people more time to grow and cook their own food, repair broken goods, instead of buying new ones, and walk, cycle or use public transport, instead of driving a private car.

Secondly, as outlined in the recent European Environmental Bureau policy brief ‘Reimagining work for a just transition’, working-time reductions are an important ingredient of a just transition, as they help reduce the dependence of work on economic growth. Exponential growth is compatible neither with an economy that falls within planetary boundaries nor with one that is socially just. Working-time reductions can redistribute work more evenly in a post-growth society: in a steady-state or non-growing economy, fewer outputs are generated, which means fewer working hours are needed.

Last but not least, more time off work improves workers’ wellbeing. With extra time, workers can pursue meaningful activities for leisure and recreation. It also frees up time to redistribute unpaid care work, improve community services and increase political participation, all of which can have positive impacts on democracy and social wellbeing.

Working-time reductions must comprise collectively agreed decreases in time spent by a worker in employment. Aside from shorter working weeks, this can include more paid holidays or early retirement. Whether implementation is national, sectoral or at the company level, it is crucial that there is an underpinning collective agreement, with no cut in pay and with compensatory staff recruitment.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

An inspiring pilot project called the 4 Day Week Campaign has brought together 70 companies (representing 3,300 workers) in the United Kingdom to trial a four-day, 32-hour working week with no loss of pay. The initial results have been very positive for productivity, wellbeing and tackling the cost-of-living crisis.

Unpaid work

Crucially, reducing working time can help redistribute unpaid work, such as care and domestic responsibilities, more evenly in our societies. We still see big inequalities in free time available, particularly between men and women.

Women continue to do most care work around the world. In the European Union, more than three-quarters of all unpaid domestic and care work is done by women and the pandemic has only exacerbated these inequalities. Studies based on data from Germany, France, the UK, the United States and Italy show that women contribute on average 15 hours more per week to unpaid care than men.

Gender inequalities in unpaid work (not to mention pay) are influenced by work arrangements. Further studies show that women who work part-time do one hour more unpaid care work per day than women who work full-time—part-time working men however do not. Many women in turn choose to work part-time to juggle their job and care responsibilities: 29 per cent of women in the EU who do so, compared with just 6 per cent of men, name care responsibilities as the main reason.

This creates a vicious circle: fewer working hours often result in lower income and lower contributions to future pensions. Both widen the gender pension and pay gap.

Environmental, labour, economic and other policies are often not gender-neutral. If gender (or other relevant social category) is not considered, they unwittingly reproduce or even risk exacerbating inequalities. For example, the Common Agricultural Policy, which consumes a third of the EU budget, is not only environmentally damaging but also overlooks gender dynamics. While research shows that female farmers tend to adopt more sustainable farming practices, the funding scheme does not address their needs or tap their potential.

Gender lens

Let us apply the gender lens to working-time reductions. One of the most elaborated policy proposals, gaining traction worldwide, is Friday off—a four-day working week. A positive side-effect would be its environmental impact: one day less commuting has been shown to cut down on greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet this might not be so positive in terms of achieving a more equitable share of (unpaid) care work.

The care responsibilities of men often take the form of sporadic, discrete tasks—such as gardening or repairing things—which can be flexibly scheduled. But women tyically deal with activities—such as taking care of family members and friends—on a daily basis. So reducing the working week by a day might not reduce the burden for women.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

That is why many feminist scholars advocate instead shortening the working day itself. Working fewer hours per day would allow women to arrange care work more flexibly while simultaneously freeing up time for men to take on more of the daily care activities, such as taking kids to school.

Working fewer hours per day can also have positive impacts on mobility patterns. Men are more likely to drive a car, while women are more likely to use public transport. Women in general tend to have more sustainable transport choices. Fewer working hours per day could not only allow men to take on more of the care work but also to adopt more sustainable transport modes.

That is not to say that a four-day working week is off the table. As with many ambitious and visionary policy proposals, working-time reduction should be considered as part of a package. And as long as it is designed with environmental and social and gender justice in mind, the potential is enormous because of its flexible nature. It is though, equally, no silver bullet and its form should fit the conditions of particular localities and regions and specific sectors.

Katy Wiese
Katy Wiese

Katy Wiese is senior policy officer for economic transition and gender equality at the European Environmental Bureau.

You are here: Home / Economy / A feminist view of working-time reductions

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube