Managing Time in Domestic Space

Abstract

Much research shows that paid work performed at home supports a gendered division of household labor, leaving women disproportionately responsible for unpaid domestic work. For contract professionals, however, the flexibility to manage working time outside the constraints of a standard job allows both men and women to meld paid employment with household responsibilities. Interspersing paid and unpaid work, home-based contractors—both women and men—accommodate family needs. They arrange daily schedules to be available parents and household managers, and they develop longer-term career trajectories that allow adjustment over time. For women, however, long-standing notions of domesticity make such accommodation invisible, normative, and unremarkable. For men, in contrast, home-based contracting can create the space with which to challenge gender norms. For these home workers, therefore, the same arrangement simultaneously reinforces and resists conventional constructions of gender.