Un impensé des résistances à l’égalité entre les sexes : le régime temporel

Abstract

When measuring changes in « gendered working time », part-time work (TTP) is a key indicator. Present-day conditions of offer and customs referred to part-time labour in France reveal a breakaway from the temporal Fordist regime. With its excessive references to the post-war boom years, and too great a focus on offer, research on part-time work does not take this breakaway into account. Such research has, of course, alerted us to the potential dangers of reduced-time working under the Fordist system based on so-called « standard » working, but does not enable us to see how this method of working can also become, more constructively, part of a different system. The article examines this blind spot of scientific investigation. In addition to reduced working time, the factor characterizing customs with respect to part-time work today is the practice of multiple activities, leading to the same level of social usefulness as a full-time job. The interesting fact to observe is that a significant number of these multiple activities are organized within an institutional framework (via public policy schemes) and, as such, are socially supported and recognized. « Supported part-time working » has accompanied the increase in part-time work for nearly twenty years. Both movements (new social customs in terms of part-time work and the institutionalization of part-time work) lead us to consider the possibility of an alternative temporal system in which a genuine break with the gender-based order might be underway.

Keywords

• gender
• public policies
• part-time work
• gender-based division of labour
• life course
• reconciling work/family