I woke up on a recent Tuesday morning and while my husband was getting ready for work, I made the kids a not-so-healthy breakfast, ranted to them until they brushed their teeth, put on their shoes and socks, and drove them to school. . Then I took the car to the mechanic for minor repairs and returned home on foot. Before starting my work day, I made several calls to health care providers about our new health insurance. Later, when the kids got home, I prepared snacks for them and a few friends who wandered over to my place, loaded the dishwasher, and did some laundry.
This is not an essay about how women should do housekeeping work in addition to our paid jobs, nor is it a hymn to "slacker" efficiency that explains how I wake up at 4am, answering emails while the kids are still in bed. , and use productivity tricks to get things done twice as fast. Because here's my secret - one that seems as messy and uncomfortable to reveal as anything I could tell you about my sex life - I don't work that hard. I'm a freelance writer, which means I can more or less choose how much I work. And my usual choice is about 30 hours a week.
Many people look at those who work part-time as unfortunate exiles from the economic mainstream or as miserable slackers. Captivated by startup culture, our collective consciousness turns the hustle and bustle of the 80-hour workweek into the only career opportunity. So who admits that he has so little ambition that he prefers to work 30 hours a week?
As it turns out, a lot of people. A 2016 Pew Research Center survey found that among U.S. part-time workers, 64% preferred this option. Meanwhile, 20% of full-time workers — nearly 26 million Americans — would rather work part-time. If you don't believe the survey data, just look at these ubiquitous advertisements for multi-level marketing schemes and absurdly low-paying work-from-home jobs to see how desperately people want a part-time job that fits the rest of our requirements. life.
The reason many people work full-time (though they'd rather not) is obvious: part-time work as it exists today. irregular schedule and few opportunities for promotion. White-collar workers who are officially part-time often work full-time but are paid less and are taken less seriously than their counterparts. However, it is rare to see public calls for more and better part-time jobs. The fact that there is little news, think tank reporting, or cable TV ranting on this topic says a lot about whose ideas are taken seriously, since peer review itself is a 24/7 obsession. Those of us who don't work as hard, or rather don't want to work as hard as we do, are unlikely to fall into the ranks of the oddly ambitious underdogs extolling the modern work ethic in the Sunday press. If this happens, then the business case for more part-time work is pretty compelling. Recent studies in Sweden and New Zealand have shown that working fewer hours increases productivity. And in Melbourne's six-hour day experiment last year, employees spent less time in lengthy meetings and more focused on current tasks. They also spent less work time on personal tasks as they had more non-work hours to complete them.
Personally, I find that working fewer hours makes me more productive. But that's not why I do it. The real reason is that I have other things that I would rather do. The hour I don't spend on work (and I work a lot, trust me, and I love what I do) is the hour when I sit on the couch with my kids, read a sci-fi novel, and pause occasionally, to chat about their videos. games or favorites on YouTube. This is the hour of cooking, walking or volunteering. It's when I can act as one node in a vibrant network of parents, grandparents, and after-school programs for kids, hosting hangouts and snacks. It's also when I pay bills, run errands, do minor house repairs, and hire others to fix big ones—so neither my husband nor I have to do this on the weekends.
I know people who do a lot more unpaid work than I do
willing to work full time. They seem very content with their busy lives and it's hard for me not to envy them a little. As for me, I am a slightly depressed person who does not deal well with chronic stress and needs a lot of sleep. Many other people simply cannot work full time due to disability, illness, or difficult family needs. But this is not the reason why interesting work and career growth should elude them.
I know that I'm lucky. Unlike most workers, I can more or less set freelance hours. I have a spouse who makes good money, teaches at a high school, and also cooks and swears with children. (He also takes on a lot of household chores during the summer holidays, when many other teachers take on second jobs to make more money.) For those of us with those benefits, there's something to be said for using them. buy extra leisure time, not higher incomes and more possessions. For those who don't, there is reason to see shortening the working day as a political goal to fight for.
I try not to worry that my work schedule means I'm terminally lazy. However, I am concerned about its implications for gender equality. Like most heterosexual couples, I do less paid work and more unpaid housework than my husband. This Pew study found that women are more likely than men to choose to work part-time. But these dynamics make women more vulnerable to control and abuse, and more likely to end up in poverty after divorce. On a societal level, this reinforces the idea that women are better suited to housework than work, meaning that women who choose to work long hours often feel pressure to slow down their careers in order to take care of others. This is a huge loss for society.
As the gender balance in leadership positions from the entertainment industry to the White House improves, women's interests move forward. But one solution that won't improve gender equality in the workplace is to convince women like me, who would rather work fewer hours, that we've got our priorities wrong. Instead, we need to make life easier for people of all genders when their center of gravity is outside the office, and ensure that part-time workers are fully included in powerful institutions. On the political level, this means campaigns for higher wages, rules to stabilize part-time work schedules, child care allowances, and other support for primary caregivers. It also means changing the workplace culture: demanding more career-related part-time jobs and more respect for those who do them.