Writing this letter has been a productivity gain for me as a full-time academic, parent and unpaid carer for my disabled partner. While Tania Roettger’s reflection on parenthood and productivity was refreshing and resonated, it risks reinforcing a narrow narrative about time, work and care, shaped by persistent gender inequalities in paid and unpaid labour (Whisper it: becoming a mum can make you a more productive writer, 28 May). For many women, productivity gains are less about drafting a paragraph for a novel and more about contending with chores that remain gendered.
Policy debates from the four-day week to Living Hours increasingly recognise problems of too much versus too little paid work. Yet framing time solely in terms of the number of hours worked misses a crucial issue. The rhythms, scheduling, predictability and control of working time are fundamental to wellbeing, especially given women’s disproportionate responsibility for unpaid labour, which continues to structure and constrain how time is experienced.
The working patterns for many do not create productivity gains so much as time poverty: rushed lives characterised by constant negotiation between paid and unpaid work, caring and personal time. Roettger suggests that parental productivity “comes at the expense of time to relax, time alone, time without anything to do”. But time is not a void to be filled, and for many, having “free” time is a luxury rather than a trade-off.
Roettger’s account of sharpened focus under constraint resonates, but it reflects a privileged position within broader inequalities of time. Time is a resource that reflects power, raising the question of who gets to decide how it is spent. Achieving gender equality in the home, workplace, politics and beyond is impossible without addressing inequalities in time. Without this, calls for productivity risk obscuring a deeper reality: for many, time is not a resource to optimise, but a pressure to endure.
Dr Louise Lawson is a lecturer in social policy at the University of Glasgow.
