How the type of working day affects work–life balance and mealtime balance: A study based on the time use survey

Abstract

How people balance work and personal or family life has been widely examined, showing gender inequalities that put women at a disadvantage relative to men. However, although this is a question of time compatibility, there has been no research on whether the type of working day (continuous or split) has different effects on this balance for men and women. The Time Use Survey enables us to examine this balance in two areas that are key to understanding the difficulty of reconciling timetables. On the one hand, there is the relationship between the type of working day and housework or family care (balance between paid and unpaid work). On the other hand, there is the relationship between the type of working day and eating (mealtime balance). The data indicate that the type of working day affects the balance between paid and unpaid work less than might be expected, since in all cases, it is women who do more unpaid work, while men’s involvement in housework changes little, whether they have a continuous or a split working day. However, the continuous working day is more favourable to balancing work and family life. In contrast, work–mealtime balance is a cultural feature that equalises both sexes in relation to an established habit that encourages sharing time outside work. We can thus speak of shared (non-work) time and unshared (unpaid) work.

Keywords

Work–life balance mealtime balance type of working day mealtimes housework caring family

Introduction

The peculiar structure of the Spanish day in comparison with other European countries keeps debate in the media alive about whether Spain needs to modify its working day and bring working hours closer to those in the rest of Europe (El País, 2016, 2018; El Mundo, 2016; ABC, 2017).1 This has been so prevalent that in 2013 a Parliamentary Commission was created to study ‘the rationalisation of working hours, the balancing of personal, family life and working life, and shared responsibility’ (BOCG-10-D-339). To this end, it is argued that, in view of the difficulties involved in coordinating family or personal activities with work activities, a change in schedule is necessary, something which conflicts with the Spanish timetable, characterised by a working day divided into two parts and with a long break for the main meal of the day. It is also associated with the lower productivity of Spanish workers (BOCG-10-D-339).

Although it is important not to exaggerate how widespread this timetable is – since not all Spaniards have a split working day, nor do all other Europeans have a continuous one – the present study examines whether the type of working day is an obstacle to work–life balance or not. The difficulty of reconciling the working day with family and personal life is due mainly to the intersection of two activities in people’s lives that interfere with working hours. Firstly, people balance two types of work, that is they reconcile paid work with domestic and personal obligations – especially the care of dependants (children and/or the elderly) – and the basic chores involved in organising daily life (shopping, cooking, cleaning, leisure, etc.). Secondly, they have to balance their schedule with regard to eating, fitting together the hours of paid work with mealtimes, since in Spain, there are two main daily meals (lunch and dinner) (see Díaz Méndez and Callejo, 2014), and the main midday meal is eaten during working hours.

The effect of paid work on household duties has been extensively studied, with a focus on gender inequality in the distribution of domestic tasks. Unpaid responsibilities fall more heavily on women, and this inequality is particularly significant in the case of Spain (Belope-Nguema, et al., 2018; Meil Landwerlin et al., 2008; Poza, 2010). Although the issue of work–life balance is a matter of whether timetables are compatible or not, there has been no research that examines this relationship from the point of view of the worker’s type of working day. This is because none of the statistical sources provide information on the type of working day in order to allow analysis of the population’s hourly rhythms to pinpoint possible interference between paid work and other activities. However, it is possible with the Time Use Survey (TUS; Encuesta de Empleo de Tiempo (EET) in Spanish). This study aimed to analyse two areas of time conflict: on the one hand, we examine the relationship between the type of working day and how domestic and care tasks are shared out, in other words, the balance between paid and unpaid work; on the other hand, we look at the relationship between the type of working day and the timing of the day’s meals, or mealtime balance. Thus, the aim was to answer the question of whether the type of working day (continuous or split) is a determining factor for work–life balance.

We start by describing a Spanish working day and showing the gender differences. This is followed by information about the relationship between the type of working day and domestic chores and care responsibilities. Finally, we analyse the relationship between the type of working day and timing of meals.

Social habits and work–life balance

How working time is arranged has become a basic organising factor in societies today and takes on a societal aspect, since a person’s working day is tied inextricably to the remaining social time, including the time devoted to the family (Ortiz, 2014; Prieto, 2007; Prieto et al., 2008; Torns, 2015). The poor fit between the working and non-working spheres has been a source of conflict owing to the different roles played by individuals (Chou and Cheung, 2013; Pérez-Rodríguez et al., 2017; Thomas and Ganster, 1995). It is also due to the fact that time is a limited resource that is often distributed in an incompatible manner at the ‘work–family interface’ (Pérez Pérez et al., 2015: 16). And in this battle for supremacy, working time has definitely gained victory in the social organisation of time, both in terms of centrality and hierarchy (Ramos and Prieto, 1999; Torns, 2015).

In industrialised societies, the disposition of working time has traditionally been configured as the strategic and organisational prerogative of companies, but it is also one of the issues that has received most attention as a way to improve the quality of employment and its relationship with other spheres of people’s lives, optimising welfare and balance between the demands of family and work (Kinnunen et al., 2005; Pérez Rodríguez et al., 2017). New human resource management has identified changes in workers’ preferences, which has diversified working time patterns (Campbell, 2017; Lee, 2004; Lee et al., 2007; Messenger, 2004) and introduced alternative welfare benefits through the ‘right to request’ variations in employment contracts (Fagan et al., 2014:8).

There is a growing demand for flexible timetables and for support for families in dealing with problems of balance, especially from women, as men continue to enjoy the privileges of social time at women’s expense (Anxo et al., 2011; Esping-Andersen, 2009; Torns, 2015). The analysis of business management and organisation suggests that two strategies directly affect working time and the timing of meals: (1) the promotion of work–life balance has entailed the introduction of new organisational models with an approach of shared social responsibility and (2) occupational health, which is focussed on prevention, offers workers working environments and social habits associated with a better quality of life (Blanco Prieto and Alonso-Domínguez, 2020).

An institutionalist approach points to contextual factors to explain the different developments that have taken place in the organisation of working time, both in general terms and, more specifically, in the differences in the time that women and men devote to paid work and to meeting family needs (Altuzarra et al., 2018; Minnen et al., 2016; Moreno-Colom, 2017). In order to try to resolve these conflicts between roles, Europe’s welfare societies have introduced what some authors call a ‘gender social contract’ (Torns, 2015: 280), with part-time work as an alternative formula for work that allows for balance. In Spain, this form of work has been used less, but it is used mainly by women (INE, 2019), either to maintain a status that keeps them able to perform paid work and care tasks at the same time or as the only available and unfair way for women to find employment (Belope-Nguema, et al., 2018; Ortiz, 2014).

Some action carried out at the European level, such as Directive 2003/88/EC (BOE, 2003), limiting the maximum working week to 48 h, has not managed to improve the problems of organising working time. This is seen especially in countries where the provision of welfare falls mainly on families, as is the case in Mediterranean countries, and where there is no evidence of iso-work: women still work more hours than men, especially if housework is taken alone. It seems that neither the adoption of Directive 2003/88/EC, nor the 2005 Concilia Plan, nor the Equality Act (BOE, 2007), nor any of the subsequent legislative developments have so far managed to curb practices that are consolidated in our society. The social and institutional contexts continue to be decisive in making the burden of housework and caring fall on women (Altuzarra et al., 2018; Burnett et al., 2013; Giménez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012; González and Jurado, 2009; Hobson et al., 2011; Jurado and Naldini, 2007).

Here, research on the working environment and food deserves its own treatment. ‘Canteens’ have been ideal settings for exploring relationships of both authority and sociability at various stages of industrialisation. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, they have been an object of labour regulation, either in the service of the company, as part of Taylorist rationalisation of labour, or of trade unions’ negotiation for the improvement of workers’ working conditions (Gacon, 2014). Studies point to the need to improve the working environment in a context that is not very conducive to a healthy diet, currently within the framework of a preventive approach to occupational health (Leung et al., 2018). At least four factors have been identified as interfering with proper nutrition in the workplace: the structural organisation of the workplace, the available food supply, institutional and personal responsibilities, and the promotion or advertising of food in the workplace (Pridgeon and Whitehead, 2013). The alteration of eating patterns as a consequence of the work environment emerges as a focus of problems insofar, as it alters the rhythms of meals and limits the time available for eating properly. Skipping meals, buying processed foods that are eaten quickly, replacing food with snacks or increasing the consumption of sweet drinks are some of the changes in eating that have been identified as a result of the pressure generated by working hours and which make it difficult to follow a healthy diet (Eze et al., 2017; Persson et al., 2014). Solutions have shifted towards monitoring company canteens, with healthier offerings, in order to improve workers’ health parameters (Lassen et al., 2011; Leighton et al., 2009).

However, it is still problematic even when the day’s eating pattern is decided by the work environment, as is the case for most of the Spanish population. In Spain, there are two main meals: the meal in the middle of the day, which is eaten by most people between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. (more than 40% eat at this time), and dinner, which takes place after 8 p.m. for most (about 80% of people). There are also two short secondary meals, which only a part of the population eats: the afternoon snack (tea) and a light mid-morning snack. Both the ‘mid-morning’ and the midday meals take place during work time, but Spaniards mostly eat the two main meals of the day at home (Díaz-Méndez and García-Espejo, 2018).

The explanations put forward by researchers suggest that the late timing of lunch and dinner in Spain, differing by two or more hours from the rest of Europe, is an activity showing cultural traits that are well established among the population (Southerton et al., 2012). This delay can be understood as a form of balancing, since the delayed timing of the meal enables workers to return home to eat in company, instead of dealing with the need for food by snatching a fast and secondary meal at the workplace, as happens in other countries (Díaz Méndez and Callejo, 2014).

But eating out is another way to fit eating into working hours, and one in three Spaniards eats in restaurants and cafés very often during the work week. This habit applies more to men than to women, which may again show gender differences in how people choose to solve the problem of eating on a daily basis (at home or out). Researchers have, however, shown that, in the case of Spain, we are looking at a meal of similar length to a meal at home and also in company (Díaz-Méndez and Novo Vázquez, 2017). In other words, there is an effort to ‘eat with other people’, as opposed to the more individualistic style of other countries, and a large part of these ‘other people’ is made up of a person’s own family – partner, children and parents – thereby achieving mealtime balance. This requires a working day that allows for such a solution, specifically, either a continuous working day from seven or eight in the morning to two or three in the afternoon or a split working day, but with a good span of hours in the break.

Reconciling the claims of paid work and housework or caring and fitting mealtimes to the working day are two central factors to consider when looking at Spain’s response to a typical pattern of diversification in the use of working time and to examine the conflicts generated by the type of working day. At the same time, this helps us to obtain new explanations about the interference caused by different working hours and to know if the repeated complaints about changing working hours can be a decisive factor for achieving balance.

Methodology

The analysis presented here uses the files on time use available in the most recent iteration of the National Statistics Institute’s TUS for the year 2009–2010. The data refer to the Spanish adult population aged 16–64 years. The TUS (EET in Spanish) is increasingly recognised in the sociological community as a way to obtain an X-ray of how individuals spend their time, and on what activities, in a given society. This instrument collects all the information provided by the respondents about the activities they carry out during the 24 h of a day, differentiating between main and secondary activity for 10-min time periods. The survey asks what they are doing at a reference time, regardless of the duration of the activity, and therefore reveals a large number of activities that are not accounted for in other studies. The data provide an excellent picture of how the days’ time is organised and therefore of the distribution of jobs in households and of the interferences that occur in daily activities.

Time use studies are very useful for analysing some of the changes affecting the Spanish context. In the field of employment, it is worth inquiring into the flexibility of hours pertaining to new jobs, the new distributions between leisure time and working time and about how much time is devoted to in-service training. They also bring to attention to new jobs in traditionally unpaid sectors, such as the care sector, with a high level of participation by women. The great mass of detail about daily life that this survey provides is particularly relevant for the study of some social groups, such as the unemployed or persons with disabilities, and of certain activities that take place outside the scope of paid work, such as housework (INE, 2011).

In relation to the analysis of the working day that concerns us here, it is worth noting the specific characteristics that apply in Spain. According to current labour legislation (Ministry of Labour, Migration, and Social Security, 2019), Spanish people’s jobs are either full time, with a maximum of 40 h per week and a number of hours in accordance with the agreements of each sector, or part time, which means a number of hours less than the working day of a comparable full-time worker. Within these two types of contract, the daily workday may be continuous, with a standard timetable running from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and with a short break in the middle of the morning (20 min maximum), or split, divided between morning and afternoon, with a long lunch break, regulated in accordance with the agreements of the different sectors. We shall consider the data extracted from the TUS based on these formal definitions and apply these distributions of the working day to two specific areas: to the balance between paid and unpaid work (paid employment and housework/family care) and to the balance of mealtimes (paid employment and eating schedules).

Results

Characteristics of the Spanish working day and the distribution of hours

The full-time and part-time working days are the two categories into which paid working time is divided in Spain. As can be seen in Table 1, the most recent data show a very unequal distribution in relation to these two categories. Most Spaniards work full time (86%). This form of work predominates among men; but among those who have part-time working hours, women clearly predominate, so much so that 22.8% of Spanish women have this type of working day.

Table 1.

Distribution of full-time and part-time working hours for the employed population (over 16) by sex. Third quarter of 2019.

Employed	Total	Women	Men
Thousands	19,874.30	10,824.50	9049.80
Full-time working day (%)	86	77.2	93.3
Part-time working day (%)	14	22.8	6.7
Total (%)	100	100	100

Note. Source: National Statistics Institute. Active population survey (2019).

To learn more about the characteristics of these types of working day and to determine whether we are dealing with a continuous or a split working day, it is necessary to refer to the latest TUS (2009–2010), as no other Spanish survey offers these data.

As can be seen in Table 2, the gender differences in the adult Spanish population are equally notable when describing the percentage of men and women whose working time is organised in these categories.

Table 2.

Distribution of continuous and split working day for the employed population (over 16) by sex.

Employed		Women (%)	Men (%)
Full-time working day	Continuous	45.9	45.7
Full-time working day	Split	31.3	49.9
Part-time working day	Continuous	18.7	3.4
Part-time working day	Split	4.2	0.9
Total		100	100

Note. Source: National Statistics Institute. Time Use Survey (2009-2010).

The majority of workers, 49.1% of men and 64.6% of women, had a continuous working day. Men were divided into those who had a continuous full working day (45.7%) and those who had a split full working day (49.9%). The distribution in the case of women showed more women in a continuous full working day (45.9%) and fewer in a split full working day (31.3%). In short, the continuous working day was the most common among women (64.6%), although a significant part of this continuous working day was in part-time jobs (18.7%).

The TUS allows us to visualise the different rhythms of daily life between men and women, as well as the degree of synchronisation of their activities, in a graph. Synchronisation of activities shows that the individuals’ lives match, but a difference between the schedules of different people indicates independent and uncoordinated activities.

Balancing paid and unpaid work

As can be seen in Figure 1, the activity of employed women (red line) is concentrated in approximately the same time slots as that of employed men (blue line). However, the percentage of employed women is significantly lower in the central hours of the working day. This shows how the two sexes are differently involved in paid work, which is more intense in the case of men throughout the day, although it is also evident that we are facing a similar hourly rhythm between the sexes: greater intensity of labour in the first part of the day, a decrease in activity in the middle of the day and medium intensity in the second part of the day.

Figure 1.

Percentage of employed men and women (16–64 years) in paid work throughout the day. Source: Time Use Survey, 2009–2010.

Work activity reaches a peak hourly rate between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. when the line drops, with the fall being more intense and later in the case of women (women stop working at around 3.20 p.m. and men at around 2.30 p.m.). Figure 1 also shows how part of the population returns to work after the lunch break, while another part does not, with the red line (women) dropping more than the blue line (men). This hourly rhythm indicates a longer working morning for women, typical of the continuous day (especially from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.) and a greater presence of men in the split day. A second peak of activity occurs between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., when more than a third of men are working, but only a quarter of women are employed. The line declines progressively from 6 p.m. onwards, for both men and women, overlapping from 8 p.m. onwards, when the working day ends for the majority.

In Figure 2, we can see the hourly rhythm relating to housework and care activities. The rhythms of housework and caring are also similar between employed men and women, running parallel for both. However, the intensity of activity is clearly higher for women (red line) than for men (blue line), in contrast with paid work. Both employed men and women perform household and care tasks more intensively between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., with greater female participation during this period (it is likely that this is a time when children are cared for and dinner is prepared). There is a second peak, of lesser intensity, around 11 a.m., also with more intense activity among women. This peak reveals those who are doing housework and care tasks because they have part-time working hours and are at home, something that applies to one of every four women (18.7% continuous and 4.2% split) but is almost non-existent among men (0.9%), as shown in Table 2.

Figure 2.

Percentage of employed men and women (16–64 years) engaged in care and housework throughout the day. Source: Time Use Survey, 2009–2010.

Having seen these hourly rhythms for paid work and housework, we are led to wonder about the effect that the type of working day might have on unpaid work in order to reach a balance. We might think that work–life balance would be greater with a continuous working day, since, if the peak of housework and care activity is concentrated in the afternoon, those with a continuous working day will be more available to deal with these tasks. In contrast, those with a split working day, who return to work after lunch, will not be able to carry out these activities as they are in paid work. Balancing the two might also be easier for those with a part-time schedule, if it does not clash with this schedule. But what happens when men’s and women’s working hours are similar? Is there similar participation in housework when both have the same type of working hours? This can be answered with the data shown in Figures 3 and 4.

Figure 3.

Activities carried out by employed women and men with a continuous working day. Source: Time Use Survey, 2009–2010.

Figure 4.

Activities carried out by employed women and men with a split working day. Source: Time Use Survey, 2009–2010.

Figure 3 shows clearly and at a glance the different hourly situations in relation to work and domestic activity when working a continuous day. Similarities are seen with respect to the intensity and schedule of paid work, but the greater involvement of women in domestic activities in the afternoon is clear (yellow) and is significantly higher than that of men (red).

The start of household chores is earlier for those who work a continuous day than for those who have a split day (Figures 3 and 4). However, it is worth noting that women, with both split and continuous days, take on more of the household chores and care responsibilities before the beginning of the working day than men, with an observed peak of activity at 8 a.m. for the women working a continuous day and at 9 a.m. for those working a split day.

Women with a split day also have two other peaks of intensity in working and care in the home, as they are engaged in these activities during their midday break, as well as at the end of the day. We are probably looking at women who do the housework before starting their part-time work. On the contrary, women with a continuous working day do not have this peak of morning domestic work and concentrate their activity in the evening. Men with a split working day do not change their work activity in the home at midday, and the greatest intensity in their involvement in care and housework occurs in the evening, although in a different time slot from that of women with the same working day. Men with a continuous working day devote time to housework in the evening in a time slot that is similar to women with the same working day. These men dedicate more time to household work than those with a split working day, but all of them spend less time on it than women.

In essence, employed women, both those who have a continuous working day and those who have a split working day, perform more domestic chores than men in the same situations. In addition, part-time work, which is almost exclusively female, means that domestic responsibilities weigh more heavily on women. In contrast, although men with a continuous working day do more household work than men with a split working day, the impact of the working day does not fully explain their lack of involvement in domestic and care activities. The continuous working day is better for sharing tasks and responsibilities, but it does not significantly increase male participation in household work.

Balancing mealtimes

Finally, it is worth considering whether or not mealtimes, which divide the working day into two parts, create problems of balance. Having a long period for lunch could allow employees with split working days to attend to the food needs of their dependants or their own needs during the time between the morning and afternoon work periods. Meanwhile, a continuous working day might be thought to make it difficult to attend to food when the time for eating is in the working day. Both a continuous or split day could go against Spain’s food culture, in which lunch is generally eaten between 2 and 3 p.m., and interfere with the length of time and schedule for eating. The eating schedule in Spain clarifies this situation by associating it with type of working day.

As is shown in Figure 5, most people in Spain eat at similar times, something which researchers have demonstrated which does not occur with any other activity: neither in the hours of paid work, nor in the hours of household work, nor in leisure (Diaz-Méndez and Callejo, 2014). The majority of the population eats lunch between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. and most eat dinner between 8 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. (42.4%), although a significant 36.8% of Spaniards eat after this time. Dinner has two peak times, one early (centred on 9 p.m.) and one late (after 10 p.m.).

Figure 5.

Mealtimes by sex and working day. Source: Time Use Survey, 2009–2010.

The differences in mealtimes according to the type of working day show that people with the same type of working day have the same lunchtime. However, some variations are detected. Amongst the employed population, the peaks for eating are higher for men than women, due to the greater presence of men in paid work, but mealtimes do not show gender differences. Men and women in employment eat at the same time and do so between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. The time of day when most people with a split working day eat is 2 p.m., while those with a continuous working day show two peak times, one group at 2 p.m. and another, larger group at 3 p.m. This second time peak shows the delay in eating of those who have a continuous working day, which may be explained by the interest in getting together at home at the end of work.

These data appear to indicate that the Spanish working population makes a significant effort to eat lunch together at the same time, regardless of whether their working day is continuous or split, and here, gender differences are irrelevant, indicating that men and women eat together. This shared timing suggests that there is an adjustment between mealtimes and working hours in search of a balance for meals that allows workers to follow typical Spanish eating patterns so that they manage to eat together and at home.

This means, therefore, that they aim to reconcile mealtimes – the cultural patterns involved in the Spanish way of eating, at home and in company – without distorting working hours. Or, in other words, working hours do not seem to hinder mealtimes substantially for either men or women. We could call it a mutual adaptation or a reciprocal adjustment to their desire to share lunch or dinner times.

Distribution of free time and leisure

Typically, an adult’s total time is divided between time not available, time available and free time. The first of these indicates the time needed to fulfil work, family and basic biological obligations, the second covers other self-imposed occupations and the last shows the time remaining after fulfilling all obligations, including leisure (Bermúdez et al., 2019). Therefore, leisure time refers to the time that people devote to their own chosen activities that give pleasure. Leisure time is a time for personal enjoyment that has very favourable consequences for individuals in terms of relaxation, relieving tension, fun and the breaking of routines that constrain emotions (Elias and Dunning, 1986). Some authors regard leisure time as so complex and important that it is impossible to analyse many social institutions without considering how leisure influences them (Dumazedier, 1971; Friedmann, 1961).

The way that the 24 h of an average Spaniard’s day are distributed makes it possible to examine the difference between the time organisation of the day’s activities by those who work and those who do not (unemployed and economically inactive) and to outline the differences in how much time is allocated to work, free time and leisure time. As can be seen in Table 3, an employed person spends an average of 5 h and 24 min on working activity a day (to which must be added time spent travelling), organising the remaining hours of the day differently from those who do not work. An unemployed person devotes 11 h and 46 min to personal care (sleeping, washing, eating, etc.), 23 min to study, and 3 h and 53 min to household and care tasks. Finally, on an average day, an inactive person spends 12 h and 6 min on personal care, 1 h and 16 min on study, and 3 h and 17 min on household and family care work.

Table 3.

Time distribution for the main categories of activities in an average day by activity.

	Employed	Unemployed	Inactive
Personal care	10:50	11:46	12:06
Paid work	5:24	0:27	0:02
Study	0:07	0:23	1:16
Household and family	2:32	3:53	3:17
Voluntary work and meetings	0:08	0:22	0:19
Social life and entertainment	0:51	1:12	1:12
Sports and outdoor activities	0:30	0:53	0:56
Hobbies and computers	0:22	0:46	0:42
Media	1:51	3:05	3:14
Travel and unspecified use of time	1:24	1:11	0:55

Note. Source: National Statistics Institute. Time Use Survey (2009-2010).

As can be seen, leisure and social activities (voluntary work, sport, hobbies and media) take up almost three hours more for those who are unemployed and inactive than for those in paid employment. As regards differences between the sexes, the patterns for leisure activities show great similarities between men and women. However, as can be seen in Figure 6, and as has indicated elsewhere (Callejo and Prieto Rodríguez, 2015), important differences can be discerned. Thus, men start their leisure activities earlier, and the level of engagement is higher throughout the day. An exception occurs during the hours that coincide with typical Spanish mealtimes, where the rhythms synchronise, demonstrating the Spanish dynamic of eating in company and capacity of mealtimes to synchronise. In the hours following meals (4 p.m. to 5 p.m.), women’s leisure activity actually reaches a higher level than men’s. Thereafter, however, the gap widens and the patterns do not equalise until approximately 11.30 p.m., when leisure activities cease for both women and men.

Figure 6.

Percentage of leisure activities carried out by employed women and men (16–64). Source: Time Use Survey, 2009–2010.

As we have seen with the working hours and the care tasks shown in Figures 1–5, the differences in these time ranges could have two possible interpretations. The greater concentration of women in part-time work, and especially in the continuous working day, may explain the gap in the morning. As for the afternoon, many activities that are carried out mainly by women start at 5 p.m. This time range covers children coming out of school, the beginning and end of extra-curricular activities, the preparation of meals for afternoon teatime and dinner, help with homework and other domestic duties involved in looking after minors, such as hygiene before going to bed.

Conclusions

This study set out to examine whether the type of working day, continuous or split, influences how far individuals can balance work and private life. To reconcile or find balance involves coordinating schedules and means harmonising one’s own time with work time, but, in daily life, the supremacy of working schedules subordinates other activities. Reviewing the scientific literature reveals a clear gender bias in relation to this area. Employed women spend more time on obligations that are extraneous to paid work, taking care of household tasks and care responsibilities more intensively than men, regardless of how much they are engaged in paid work. However, the research does not address the question of whether this may be due to the fact that women have, to a greater extent, types of working day that are more favourable to such balancing than men do.

Those who do the most housework are women working a continuous shift, and this could mean that this workday is more favourable to work–life balance, as there are more women than men in this situation, with only one in four women working between 4 and 6 p.m. The first contribution of this study has been to provide data that indicate a greater intensity of housework by women during this time. Men who work a continuous day devote an amount of time to housework in the evening that is similar to women’s, and they spend more time on these tasks than those who work a split day. However, the data confirm that men in all categories spend less time than women with the same type of working day. In essence, despite the continuing gender inequalities in the engagement with unpaid work, the continuous working day is more favourable to balancing paid and unpaid work than the split working day.

This study’s second contribution is to highlight the greater involvement of women in housework at around 11 a.m., which may be explained by considering that more women are engaged in part-time work in the afternoon, a type of working day that is almost non-existent among men. But women are also involved in more housework before the start of the continuous working day. In short, they are at home longer than men and in that time they take on the household tasks, but they are also involved in more household activity even when both men and women have similar working hours. The fact that employed women spend more time on housework cannot be explained solely by their greater presence at home, as some studies on the subject have claimed. Our data show that women’s housework is more intense than men’s even before the start of the working day, whether they work a continuous day (housework is done before 8 a.m.) or a split day (housework is done before 9 a.m.).

We have therefore sought a form of complementary explanation, analysing the type of workday, to see if male and female workers with split working days achieve less balance and if both sexes show similar patterns. The data clearly show that the split working day is far from being balanced, as it takes up practically the whole day with a long break in the middle of the day. A long break, however, makes it easier to balance mealtimes and to eat together. In any case, the disincentive effect is even clearer in the case of men employed with this type of working day, since they do not engage in more housework activity in the middle of the day and their period of greatest involvement in unpaid work occurs in the evening, although for a smaller time frame than women with the same working day. In addition, part-time work, which is almost exclusively female, means that women have more responsibilities in the home.

The type of working day is a determining factor for balancing home and work, with the continuous working day being more favourable than the split one. However, women, with both a continuous working day and a split working day, carry out more domestic chores than men in the same category. Therefore, we could conclude that the social and institutional contexts play an important role in the feminisation of the responsibilities involved in work–life balance and go a long way to explaining why a substantial improvement in the reconciliation of work and home life does not seem to have been achieved. New models of business organisation that seek to promote reconciling work and personal life appear to be insufficient in themselves if the cultural barriers that prevent progress in shared responsibility for household work are not overcome. Men seem to be dissuaded from using their capacity of agency by a traditional corporate culture of human resources in organisations, where efforts towards balance are largely associated with a female role.

With regard to mealtime balance, the study has also sought out empirical evidence on how activities are coordinated, when they are regulated with respect to working hours but are voluntary, that is to say activities that can be modified, as is the case with mealtimes. In this regard, the third contribution of the article has been to find certainties about whether mealtimes change depending on the type of workday. It is striking how little evidence of interference between working hours and mealtimes our research data provides. One explanation for this is the legal regulation of rest time that facilitates strict compliance with eating schedules. People with the same type of working day share mealtimes, since employed men and women eat at the same time and do so between 2 and 3 p.m. But the time when most people on a split day eat is 2 p.m., while those who have a continuous day have two peak times, with one group eating at 2 p.m. and the other, larger group at 3 p.m. This second peak seems to indicate that those who have a continuous day delay mealtimes and return home to eat after work. The Spanish working population appears to make an important effort to share lunch, regardless of whether their working day is continuous or split, and here, the gender differences are irrelevant, indicating that men and women eat together.

Everything appears to indicate that, in the case of Spain, the meal in the middle of the day is a major part of the day’s food consumption and one that is not generally dealt with in the working environment. The way to adjust timetables is to delay the timing if one chooses to eat at home or to eat in restaurants and cafés on a schedule that coincides with the home-based meal. The timetable allows the structure of the midday meal to be maintained as a long main meal, as opposed to the solution of a secondary fast-food meal that is mostly present in northern Europe. In contrast to the balance between paid and unpaid work, the balance of mealtimes does seem to have been achieved in Spain.

As is seen in the literature review, companies’ concern for working environments has long been present in organisational systems, and this worry has now been reinforced, above all, in light of the impact on workers’ conditions and quality of life and on the consequent improvement in the organisations’ productivity and competitiveness. For workers, it has been key that the Spanish timetable is favourable for compatibility with family responsibilities, as it makes it possible to return home and eat in company, in the case of continuous working hours. When the working day is split, meals outside the home are also readily accepted because they follow the same pattern as those at home, that is a main meal, generally with others, and over a fairly long period of time. One could say that in Spain, time is needed, and the main and long meal is key in the preservation of a culture and a mealtime balance that has been achieved without the need for strict adjustment to the European schedule.

In conclusion, it might be asked why the two types of balance have been resolved in such different ways. The schedule for paid work does not seem to be an impediment to finding mealtime balance, especially with Spain’s continuous timetable, which allows for eating and socialising in the home environment, while the split timetable, as we have seen, also has many similarities when it comes to dealing with mealtimes. This leads us to think, as a future line of research, that eating is a pleasant activity, whether at the end or in the middle of the working day, because it is enjoyed and shared, while work–life balance implies an unpaid effort that is much more costly to accept, especially in the case of men.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is part of the research project BIOCES: Occupational welfare in Spain: mapping, determinants and effects. Plan Nacional de I+D+i (CSO-2017-82648-R) financed by the National Program for Research, Development and Innovation (I+D+I) focussing on Society’s Challenges (National Research Agency).

ORCID iD

Ángel Alonso-Domínguez

Notes

Author biographies

Ángel Alonso-Domínguez is a professor in the Department of Sociology of the University of Oviedo. He has carried out research on employment, training and social politics. He has published in edited books and articles in journals such as European Journal of Social Security, Papers, Política y Sociedad, Revista Española de Sociología and International Journals of Organizations among others. He has participated as a researcher in the European Network of Excellence Reconciling Work and Welfare in Europe (RECWOWE) and is currently a member of the accredited research group Promoting Employment and Welfare in Europe (PROMEBI)

Javier Callejo is a professor of Sociology at the National University of Distance Education (Madrid). He directed the Research Department of the Center for Sociological Research between 2010 and 2012. His research interests move between methodology of social sciences and sociology of consumption and communication. He published on trust in food and the times and duration of the relationship with meals of Spaniards (among them, with Díaz-Méndez: Homogenization of eating times in UK and Spain. British Food Journal 116 (5)). He currently leads the INCERCLIMA research project (Uncertainty and Climate Change in Spain).

Cecilia Díaz-Méndez is a professor of Sociology at the University of Oviedo (Spain). Her works include: ‘Nutrition and the Mediterranean diet. A historical and sociological analysis of the concept of “health diet” in Spanish society’ (Díaz-Méndez and Gómez Benito, Food Policy, 2010), Eating out in Spain: Motivations, sociability and consumer contexts (Díaz-Méndez, and García-Espejo, Appetite, 2017), ‘Behaviour change and the temporal ordering of eating practices: a UK-Spain comparison’ in IJSAF (Southerton et al., 2012). Her research interests focus on The Sociology of Food and Sociology of Consumption. She leads the Research Group in Sociology of Food ().

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