The impact of telecommuting on the division of labour in the domestic setting
When people start working at home, it is plausible that the division of labour within the home will change, in particular the division between men and women. Gerda Casimir studied these changes, by analysing the results of an Internet survey, to which 171 respondents reacted. The core of the questionnaire consisted of 9 daily recurring tasks. For each task three questions were asked: who does this task on your home-working days, who does it on the other days and who did it before you started working at home? The respondents were recruited from companies with telework projects and defined as em... Mehr ...
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Dokumenttyp: | doctoralThesis |
Erscheinungsdatum: | 2001 |
Schlagwörter: | division of labour / family life / homeworkers / households / housework / information technology / netherlands / organization of work / social change / arbeidsverdeling / gezinsleven / huishoudelijk werk / huishoudens / informatietechnologie / nederland / sociale verandering / thuiswerkers / werkorganisatie |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Permalink: | https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-28791144 |
Datenquelle: | BASE; Originalkatalog |
Powered By: | BASE |
Link(s) : | https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/the-impact-of-telecommuting-on-the-division-of-labour-in-the-dome |
When people start working at home, it is plausible that the division of labour within the home will change, in particular the division between men and women. Gerda Casimir studied these changes, by analysing the results of an Internet survey, to which 171 respondents reacted. The core of the questionnaire consisted of 9 daily recurring tasks. For each task three questions were asked: who does this task on your home-working days, who does it on the other days and who did it before you started working at home? The respondents were recruited from companies with telework projects and defined as employees working in their own domestic environment for at least one day per week, on a structural basis, using modern information and communication technology.It was assumed that male telecommuters would not automatically take up more household tasks when working at home. Female telecommuters, on the other hand, were expected to perform more domestic tasks, in particular when the division of tasks was already asymmetrical before they started working at home. Families aspiring to a more symmetrical division of labour might use telecommuting as a strategy to realise or enhance this. Furthermore, it was suggested that telecommuting would amplify the extent of home-production. It was expected that family-oriented women would positively assess the changes in the direction of a reinforced housewife's role, whereas career-oriented women would evaluate this negatively.The results of the survey were surprising in several ways. None of the assumptions above was convincingly supported by the results of the survey. Male telecommuters increased their contribution more than female telecommuters did. Half of the male telecommuters did take up more household tasks, more than half of the female telecommuters did not change the division of domestic labour within their households. Asymmetrical households did not become more asymmetrical after telecommuting. Also, there was no indication of the utilisation of telecommuting as a strategy to ...