Women and the double working day

Of the 14 included studies, with a total of more than 66,800 participants worldwide, five examined unpaid work (including caring for family members), nine examined domestic work time, and of these, four examined parental care. children.

The researchers found that in addition to the financial penalty women experience from taking on the bulk of the world's unpaid workload, there is also a cost to their mental health.

Overall, in 11 of the 14 studies reviewed, women reported increased depressive symptoms or psychological distress. For men, only three of the 12 possible studies reported any negative association.

“This double burden of paid and unpaid work exposes women to a greater risk of overload, time poverty and poorer mental health. Crucially, women also routinely trade hours of paid work to meet their disproportionately high unpaid job responsibilities."

Having a job means earning money and being more independent. However, accessing the labor market is not easy, especially for women.

Discrimination against women in employment is an obvious fact that still persists today. They have fewer opportunities : they occupy lower category positions and have more difficulties access, promotion, permanence and having the same working conditions. They also carry out the most precarious jobs and charge less for the same or similar work. Also, of every two people who work in the underground economy, two are women. To this we must add that unemployment is also primed with them.

It is even more complicated for women with children, the lack of co-responsibility leads them to take care of the home and family almost exclusively, leading to double working hours.

We are talking about a double working day when we refer to the double workload suffered by women, having to combine, due to a lack of co-responsibility and conciliation, paid work in the workplace with unpaid work in the domestic sphere.

The double shift not only means a greater number of working hours, one paid and the other not. It also involves an emotional divide between the demands of the job and the demands of the family.

The study Gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work after the pandemic, made public in February 2023 by the ”la Caixa” Foundation Social Observatory, indicates that men spend 28 hours every week caring for minors and doing the housework, but that figure is still far from the 43 hours they spend.

Despite the gap that still exists, the authors of the study, Lídia Farré (University of Barcelona) and Libertad González (Pompeu Fabra University), detect an improvement compared to the pre-pandemic situation.

"Women continue to assume a large part of the family responsibilities," the research states.

This continuous work means that women have few possibilities to develop other facets of life, such as enjoying leisure and rest. They have less time for themselves, as well as more difficulties in training and progressing at work.

All this, as a whole, increases the predisposition to suffer accidents, get sick or turn existing ailments into chronicles. However, this deterioration in health is not only manifested in the physical sphere. Also to the mental: exhaustion, fatigue, stress…. These risks remain invisible. Its effects accumulate and have long and short term consequences.

A more equal distribution of care responsibilities would have a positive impact on women's health.

Women's occupational health

However, the effects on health are not only located in the lack of co-responsibility and the endless double shifts, they are also noticeable in the sexual division of employment.

Women and men carry out different jobs, in addition, the tasks assigned to women have less value, recognition and prestige.

Those professions that are dominated by women are: cleaning staff, assembly lines, supermarket cashiers, nurses, care for the elderly and dependents, teachers, shop assistants, hairdressers... These jobs demand: agility, attention, concentration and precision when perform repetitive movements at high speed, directly affecting a small group of muscles or tendons.

It also means always maintaining the same posture, resulting in monotony and a sedentary lifestyle, osteoarthritis in fingers and hands, cervical, dorsal and lumbar pain caused by poor posture during work, excessive effort and work stress.

All of this leads to a higher frequency of falls and blows, also due to fatigue and equipment design problems, generally adapted for men, such as means of protection and safety, and fatigue due to the double working day.

In many houses, the distribution of household tasks is the cause of discussions and friction, but not only in the couple, but between parents and children. Gender roles have placed the weight of responsibility on women, mothers, and traditionally girls were taught to carry them out.

Continuing with the INE data, only 9.66% of men carry out housework without any kind of help, compared to 44.53% of women.

Those who do the least are young people between the ages of 15 and 24, although for this there are also differences: only 2.55% of the boys do household chores alone, compared to 9.19% of girls.

Data in Spain:

· Of the 54,723 leaves of absence for family care in 2020, 87.2% corresponded to women.

· In 2019, of the 2,896,600 people who worked part-time, 74% were women and 26% men. Most of them worked part-time because they couldn't find anything else, and of those who had chosen it, 21% had done so to attend to the "care of children, sick, disabled or elderly adults" and "other family or personal obligations". .

· Another piece of information: if Spanish salaried women worked full-time with the same intensity as men (93%), 60% of the gender wage gap would be eliminated.

In short: if someone in a family has to work less or stop working to care, they do it. Maternity, in particular, has a clear effect on the presence and permanence of women in the labor market and, consequently, on wages: women tend to reduce their working hours, take leave of absence, and even leave their jobs to take care of minors.

The reconciliation seeks to balance work responsibilities with the personal and family responsibilities of a worker – caring for their children, caring for the sick or elderly, or doing household chores – without having to sacrifice their career or income.

Reconciliation Types

Common work-life balance practices include flexible work hours, telecommuting, maternity and paternity leave, nursing leave and care for sick relatives, parental leave, and support programs for child and elderly care.

The application of a 2019 European directive has meant that, in Spain, paternity leave goes from 5 weeks (2018) to 4 months (2021), matching that of women. Undoubtedly, a giant step so that conciliation stops being an exclusive problem for women. However, much remains to be done, such as ensuring that there are enough nursery places and that they are affordable or expanding permits to get closer to the most advanced countries in Europe.

Transforming gender relations in society involves, in short, achieving a model of equality that allows women and men to share responsibilities in the home and upbringing in an equitable manner.