If you dare to ask: self-perceived possibilities of Spanish fathers to reduce work hours

ABSTRACT

Time scarcity is a reality for most mothers and fathers of young children who work full-time. Though the Spanish law recognizes a specific right to a reduced schedule for care reasons, fathers very rarely make use of this policy. Many of them simply think that, in their current employment circumstances, they ‘can’t’ cut down on work hours. This analysis focuses on the subjective perception that employees have of their difficulty to reduce work hours. Using a nationally representative sample of Spanish employees in charge of young children, and drawing on intersectionality perspectives, we propose that several stratification systems (e.g. gender and economic structure) overlap framing the subjective experience of how easy or difficult it is to adopt a reduced schedule. We confirm that fathers in middle-level service occupations (e.g. clerical workers) may be those most likely to be ‘undoing gender’ at work, as they differ significantly from other fathers in their perception that for them it would be easier to reduce their work hours.

RESUMEN

La escasez de tiempo es una realidad para la mayoría de padres y madres de niños pequeños que trabajan a tiempo completo. Aunque la legislación española reconoce el derecho específico de reducir la jornada por motivos familiares, raramente son los padres (varones) quienes hacen uso de esta política. Muchos de ellos simplemente piensan que, en sus circunstancias laborales, ‘no pueden’ trabajar menos horas. El presente trabajo se centra en el análisis de la percepción subjetiva que los empleados tienen sobre su dificultad de reducir su jornada de trabajo. Usando una muestra representativa de la población empleada española que está a cargo de niños pequeños, y partiendo de las teorías de la ‘interseccionalidad’, se propone que diferentes formas de estratificación social (como el género o la estructura económica) se superponen, dando forma a la experiencia subjetiva de los individuos sobre su dificultad para reducir el horario laboral. Se confirma que los padres que tienen ocupaciones de servicios de nivel medio (como los empleados administrativos) podrían ser aquellos que estén ‘deshaciendo el género’ en el trabajo, ya que difieren significativamente en su percepción de que para ellos ‘es difícil’ reducir su jornada.

KEYWORDS:

• Family-friendly companies
• gender roles
• WLB
• working time
• Spain

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• empresas familiarmente responsables
• roles de género
• conciliación
• tiempo de trabajo
• España

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Teresa Jurado-Guerrero, Leire Salazar and Nicolás Alemán for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their thorough comments and help with its edition in English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Irina Fernandez-Lozano is a lecturer at the Spanish National Distance Education University (UNED). She is part of the research team of the IMPLICA project ‘Working time, paternity and childhood. How can business policies promote father involvement in care and maintain gender equality?’. She has also worked at the Spanish Economic and Social Council, participating in the production of nationally and internationally conducted reports (Youth employment in the Mediterranean region; Third report on women’s situation in the Spanish society) and personal articles (‘Horizontal segregation in education and labour market’, ‘Recent changes in migration fluxes in Spain’).

Notes

1 In Spain, fathers are entitled to three types of leave in case they want to take time off work after childbirth: maternity leave, paternity leave and unpaid parental leave. None of them is compulsory for fathers. Maternity leave comprises a maximum of 16 paid weeks (of which 10 can be transferred to the father). Since 2017, paternity leave has been extended from 15 days to 1 month. It can’t be transferred to the mother. Unpaid parental leave can take up to three years (for each parent) after the childbirth. Social security benefits, and the maintenance of the job, are guaranteed in the case of unpaid parental leave. In addition, some regional governments offer low-flat benefits (Escot et al., 2012). For a synthetic revision of regional differences in the benefits associated to these leaves, see Escobedo and Navarro (2007).

2 There is a specific organization promoting legislative and cultural changes in this direction, the Commission to Rationalise Spanish Work Schedules (ARHOE) (http://www.horariosenespana.com/).

3 Correlation results available upon request.

4 As all taxonomies, the (regrouped) ISCO 08 classification may establish arbitrary conceptual frontiers. It has been complex to establish relevant categories for both men and women with a sufficient sample size (i.e. more than 10% of the sample) for at least two reasons. First of all, some relevant groups (e.g. managers) are relatively underrepresented in the Spanish labour market (less than 6% of the working population) so comparative quantitative analysis is difficult to address with these groups. Second, the high gender occupational segregation makes the issue of finding relevant categories for both sexes more complicated (e.g. while 13% of mothers work as ‘clerical workers’, only 6% of fathers do so). In any case, we have preferred to respect the inner composition of each one-digit category of the ISCO 08/CNO 94, which are widely accepted as standard classifications. Therefore, we have only regrouped consecutive one-digit groups.