Female researchers
don't have leisure time

First published: 03/10/2011

Most writings on time spending state that women still carry out the lion’s share of domestic work (e.g. Bianchi 2000, Lachance-Grzela 2010),that women more often work less hours than men and that women have less leisure time than men (e.g. Van Dongen 2009). We wondered if these statements counts for all women? What about women who are highly educated, who are pursuing a career, who are very dedicated to their jobs and are highly ambitious? What about female researchers in photonics, for example? The purpose of this article is to investigate if this group of women differ from the ‘average woman’. First we will give you some background information on the field these people work in: photonics.

Photonics is the science/technology centred around one basic element, the photon. More in particular is photonics interested in the qualities of these small light parts (photons). The core sectors are lightening, production technology, medical technology, defense photonics and optical components and systems.[i] Lasers, LEDs, LCD displays, digital cameras, solar energy, medical imaging systems,… are only a few examples of the numerous applications of photonics (Photonics²¹ 2007). Today, photonics is designated by the European Commission as one of the key enabling technologies for the future prosperity of the European Union. It is a very important scientific field and needs much more new and qualified experts to cope with the rapid industry growth. In Europe today, more than 5 000 companies manufacture photonics products with almost 300 000 directly employed people (Photonics²¹ 2010). The global photonics market in 2008 was estimated to be around 270 billion euro, of which Europe took 55 billion euro (20%) (Actmost). People working in photonics are physicians or engineers who took an additional master in Photonics. On the basis of our analyses of the field (from 2004 until now) we estimate that women make up approximately 20% of the employers in photonics worldwide.

The data presented in this article are based on the results of an online survey distributed in 2006[ii] to 15 000 researchers in photonics worldwide. These people were reached thanks to the help of international networks and organizations (e.g. Network of Excellence on Micro-Optics (NEMO) and SPIE). The survey enclosed 7 topics: current position, organization, past career, future ambitions, working day, satisfaction, and demographic information. In total, 1674 researchers (1016 men and 658 women) sent us a completed survey back. As above-mentioned, we are going to take a closer look at the time spent on domestic work, paid work and leisure activities by the female researchers and male researchers in photonics.

Domestic work

We asked our respondents (those living together with a partner) about their division of domestic work (all kinds of household activities were included: taking care of children, shopping, washing the car, gardening, cleaning, ironing,…). Table 1 shows that around 8% of the female respondents reports contributing nothing or almost nothing to the household labour compared to her partner, in contrary to 71,2% of the male respondents. Of the female respondents, 58% indicates spending around twice as much time as her partner on household work or indicates to be the main responsible. In contrary, only 6,5% male respondents indicates being in that position. More female than male respondents indicate having an equal division: 34,1% versus 22,3%. We can, without a doubt, conclude that the biggest part our female respondents are, as women in general, burdened by “the second shift” (Hochschild 1990) in contrast to most of our male respondents who can count on a supportive partner. (Chi² = 483,421; df = 4; p < 0,001; Cramer’s V = 0,66).

Table 1: categories of the division in household labour for female and male researchers

Carrying the burden of domestic labour has far-reaching consequences for all aspects of life, including professional careers (Windebank 2001). The time one spends on household activities, cannot be spend at work or leisure activities. In the next paragraph we take a closer look at the hours our respondents spend on the work floor and the relation with the division in domestic labour.

Paid work

The average female partnered researcher reports working 45 hours per week in contrary to the average male partnered researcher, who reports spending 49 hours per week on the work floor. This finding confirms previous research on working hours and the difference between the sexes (e.g. Nordemark 2004).

With our data we can investigate the relationship between time spent on household activities and time spent on the work floor. The more time a woman or a man spends on household activities, the less time she or he spends on the work floor, seems a quite plausible proposition. Table 2 shows that there is, in fact, a relationship between time spent on household work and the hours spent on the work floor.

Table 2: Relation household labour and hours on the work floor (regardless of sex)

The relationship between the individual contribution to the household labour and hours spent on the work floor is significant and quite strong (ρ = -0,255; p < 0,001). The more one is responsible for domestic labour, the less hours one spends on the work floor.

If we repeat the same analysis, but control for sex, we get another interesting result. The relationship as shown in table 2 seems only to exist for our male respondents (ρ = -0,190; p < 0,001). The more the male researcher spends on household chores the less time he spends on the work floor. The hours women spent on professional work are, on the contrary, not affected by the time they spend on domestic labour (ρ = -0,035; p > 0,05).

Leisure time

This means that our female respondents who spend a great amount of time on domestic labour, are spending less time on other tasks (other than paid work), f.e. leisure activities. The survey does not, unfortunately, contain a direct question about the amount of hours spent on leisure activities. Albeit we did question how often the respondent encounters problems combining work with leisure activities (Figure 1). We can assume that respondents who indicates having problems combining work with leisure activities have not enough hours left for leisure activities.

Figure 1: The survey question on leisure time

We did not found any relation between the time male researchers spend on housework and the frequency of problems they encounter by combining work with leisure activities (ρ = -0,10; p > 0,5). For our female researchers we found a quite strong relation: the more they spend on housework, the more problems they have with finding time for leisure activities (ρ = 0,261; p < 0,001 and Somers’ D = 0,233; p < 0,001).

Conclusion and discussion

We will start by making a synthesis of our findings concerning the male researchers in photonics before focussing on the female. More than 70% of the male researchers in photonics are not (or in a minimal amount) burdened with household chores. This means that these 70% have extra time they can spend on paid work and leisure activities (hobbies, meeting friends, sports,…). Almost one fourth of the male respondents reports to be part of an equal division of household work and around 7% reports to be burdened by ‘the second shift’. We found that, the more our male respondents spend on household chores, the less time they spend on the work floor instead of cutting back on their leisure time.

One third of the women reports having an equal division concerning household labour and 8% indicates having a very supportive partner who shoulders the biggest part of the domestic chores. This means that more than half of the women of our research our responsible for the majority of the household work even though they are working long hours and are pursuing a high committed career. These women compensate the extra time they spend on domestic labour by reducing the time they spend on leisure activities and not by reducing their time at the office or in the lab.

We can conclude that these women (more than half of the female respondents) are either superwomen or that these women are building up a time-pressure, which will inevitably result in a decrease of job satisfaction and a higher turnover (Hill 2010:17). This latter hypothesis has been confirmed by recent research showing that women are far more likely to cite time-related issues as a reason for leaving a career in engineering than men (Frehill 2008).

If we want to keep (but also attract) more women into science, technology and engineering we have to make work of an equal division of domestic labour between men and women so that these women get a realistic chance to built out a proper career.