Gender, agency, and time use among doctorate holders

The case of Iceland

Bibliographic Data

ID4356083
AuthorsMarianne Staub (0000-0001-9611-0498, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland, corresponding author), Guðbjörg Linda Rafnsdóttir (0000-0003-2662-5773, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland)
Year2020
Volume29
Issue1
Pages143-165
Publication date2020-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTime & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0961-463X • E-ISSN: 1461-7463
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0961463x19884481
OpenAlexW2991086665
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited34

This article investigates how doctorate holders in Iceland make sense of time and utilize their own time management as an instrument in their career development and whether gender is a defining factor in this context. The project is based on 32 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with participants holding 5- to 20-year-old doctorate degrees in Iceland. These interviews were then analyzed using a phenomenological approach. The results indicate that the men generally felt a higher level of agency regarding their work-life balance and time management than did the women, who more often expressed difficulties finding a proper balance and expressed being more stressed about the often fragmented time they had to combine their career and family obligations successfully. The study provides a picture of how societal time norms among highly educated people are very gendered and how time is still inevitably linked to power. The contribution of this study to prior studies is that, even when comparing highly educated people among whom it is more likely to find a higher level of egalitarian attitudes, in a country where gender equality is assumed to be at a higher level than in many other countries, women still seem to experience time differently from men in terms of personal autonomy

Agency (philosophy · Autonomy · Balance (ability · Context (archaeology · Economics · Management · Paid work · Political science · Power (physics · Sense of agency · Social science · Sociology · Time management · Work (physics · Work–life balance · Gender Diversity and Inequality · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology · Work-Family Balance Challenges

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