Заетостта и работното време. Джендърни аспекти
Employment and Working time. Gender Aspect

Summary/Abstract: In order to evaluate and measure the degree of equality, the achievements regarding equal opportunities for women and men on the labour market, it is necessary to take into consideration the volume and structure of aggregate work time for both sexes and esecially their share in paid and unpaid work. To analyse this status to try to understand why it is tending to become permanent, thus seriously threatening to restructure the labour market, the authors had to turn to the social division of labour issue and more generally the social gender relations, which offer valuable instruments for analysis of the mentioned situation. In what concerns the working time, studies show that since childhood, men’s life is structured mainly around professional work. Family responsibilities of women have increased lately since they are requested to dedicate more time to their professional work. The stress and the fear are a permanent condition. Their almost total inability to deal with everything, in a constant lack of time situation, makes them feel guilty in front of their children and families. It is true that “strategies for dealing” are being developed for using effectively free time spans, like shopping during working hours. But this practice, widely spread and tolerated during socialist times is inapplicable nowadays due to the work intensity, maximum effectiveness norms and requirements for total dedication to work. Overloading is often the case with women, squeezed between the necessity to ensure the economic survival of the family and the non-sharing of household tasks. The large weekly working hours extent of women has harmful effects of personal and of social significance: feeling of tiredness, of premature wearing out, difficulties in accessing to complementary qualification or re-conversion, difficulties in finding and keeping a job. In conclusion, there is no doubt that these phenomena can have but deeply negative consequences on the labour market functioning and on the families as well. This state of affairs should be realised by the governing bodies and by the society, if a true wish exists to understand the fluctuations of productivity, the demographic crisis or the migration processes.

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