Unequal Time Clawson, Dan; Gerstel, Naomi
07/2014
eBook
Life is unpredictable. Control over one's time is a crucial resource for managing that unpredictability, keeping a job, and raising a family. But the ability to control one's time, much like one's ...income, is determined to a significant degree by both gender and class. InUnequal Time, sociologists Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel explore the ways in which social inequalities permeate the workplace, shaping employees' capacities to determine both their work schedules and home lives, and exacerbating differences between men and women, and the economically privileged and disadvantaged.
Unequal Timeinvestigates the interconnected schedules of four occupations in the health sector-professional-class doctors and nurses, and working-class EMTs and nursing assistants. While doctors and EMTs are predominantly men, nurses and nursing assistants are overwhelmingly women. In all four occupations, workers routinely confront schedule uncertainty, or unexpected events that interrupt, reduce, or extend work hours. Yet, Clawson and Gerstel show that members of these four occupations experience the effects of schedule uncertainty in very distinct ways, depending on both gender and class. But doctors, who are professional-class and largely male, have significant control over their schedules and tend to work long hours because they earn respect from their peers for doing so. By contrast, nursing assistants, who are primarily female and working-class, work demanding hours because they are most likely to be penalized for taking time off, no matter how valid the reasons.
Unequal Timealso shows that the degree of control that workers hold over their schedules can either reinforce or challenge conventional gender roles. Male doctors frequently work overtime and rely heavily on their wives and domestic workers to care for their families. Female nurses are more likely to handle the bulk of their family responsibilities, and use the control they have over their work schedules in order to dedicate more time to home life. Surprisingly, Clawson and Gerstel find that in the working class occupations, workers frequently undermine traditional gender roles, with male EMTs taking significant time from work for child care and women nursing assistants working extra hours to financially support their children and other relatives. Employers often underscore these disparities by allowing their upper-tier workers (doctors and nurses) the flexibility that enables their gender roles at home, including, for example, reshaping their workplaces in order to accommodate female nurses' family obligations. Low-wage workers, on the other hand, are pressured to put their jobs before the unpredictable events they might face outside of work.
Though we tend to consider personal and work scheduling an individual affair, Clawson and Gerstel present a provocative new case that time in the workplace also collective. A valuable resource for workers' advocates and policymakers alike,Unequal Timeexposes how social inequalities reverberate through a web of interconnected professional relationships and schedules, significantly shaping the lives of workers and their families.
Time is one of the most valuable assets you have, and, if you invest in it properly, it will change your future dramatically. Imagine your whole life on Earth like an hourglass, and, as each grain of ...sand drops, a part of your life disappears. Keeping this image in mind will make you look at time in a different way.
Abstract
Introduction
While the consequences of short sleep duration are well understood, relatively little is known about how irregular sleep durations are related to daily functioning. We utilized ...actigraphy and self-report methods to investigate the correlates of intraindividual sleep variability in two populations.
Methods
In Study 1, N=699 adults (mean age=38.04, SD=11.65; 44.78% female) completed online questionnaires on sleep, work status, and time management. In Study 2, N=100 college students (mean age=19.08, SD=1.26; 50% female; 50% underrepresented minorities) wore actiwatches for two one-week sessions (1 month apart) and reported sleep, psychosocial functions, and academic outcomes. In both studies, variability of sleep duration was defined as the individual standard deviation (ISD) of sleep durations.
Results
In Study 1, after controlling for mean sleep duration, greater variability in sleep duration was related to shiftwork (F=8.68, p=.003), younger age (r=-.15, p<.001), male gender (F=4.43, p=.036), and greater vulnerability to stress (r=.15, p=.001). Beyond mean sleep duration, variability in sleep duration also predicted poorer sleep quality (r=.25, p<.001), greater sleepiness during the day (r=.10, p=.014), poorer time management (r=-.09, p=.031), lower work efficiency (r=-.14, p=.002), and more procrastination (r=.11, p=.009). In Study 2, variability in actigraphy-defined sleep duration increased as the semester progressed (ISD=1.25±0.55 hours at T1; ISD=1.57±0.80 hours at T2, t=4.64, p<.001). After controlling for mean sleep duration, sleep variability was associated with greater perceived stress (r=.31, p=.002 at T1), poorer sleep quality (r=.39, p<.001 at T1; r=.30, p=.003 at T2), and lower expected grades (r=-.27, p=.01 at T2). Sleep variability was unrelated to depression or perceptions of one’s overall health.
Conclusion
Keeping regular sleep habits appear just as important as average sleep duration to psychosocial, work, and academic outcomes. Sleep interventions should incorporate specific guidelines on how to promote regular sleep and employers should institute work schedules that promote regularity.
Support (if any)
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation, Psi Chi Honor Society, and the American Psychological Association.
A volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology (Anderton et al, series editors) in which the authors discuss the changes in the everyday lives of American families. ...Moving beyond the images presented in the media, & anecdotes about family life, the author use four decades of time-diary surveys to reveal how time constraints, work, & family dynamics have changed family life. The authors find that in contrast to generally accepted beliefs of the state of the modern family, parents are spending as much or more time with their children & married mothers & fathers have equal workloads. In addition, they find that today's mothers feel more rushed than their mothers, feeling they pack more activities into less time. References. Adapted from the source document.
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