Rethinking Social Time: Feminist Perspectives

Abstract

In the final years of the 20th century, conceptions of time and work are changing rapidly. The crisis of (paid) work as the fundamental principle regulating society and personal identity has cast doubt on the legitimacy of an exclusively economic and quantitative interpretation of time. This paper argues that feminist thought can make a major contribution to the revision of the temporal paradigm that has hitherto been dominant. It will be shown that the radical change of perspective associated with a feminist critique of this malestream time makes it possible to deconstruct/reconstruct the categories generally used for the analysis of social time.