Maryline Bèque^[1]

Work and family life are two time-consuming “activities” that can compete with each other. Family life and professional life are sometimes difficult to reconcile, especially as certain ways of organising work and private time do not facilitate this reconciliation. Indeed, having young children and atypical or variable schedules does not help to reconcile working hours and the time one wishes to allocate to the family.

According to Tremblay (2006) these difficulties, when unmanaged, can have negative consequences for employees and result in family and emotional relationship problems, lack of job satisfaction, stress and health issues.

The aim of this study is to draw up a profile of the employees who most often declare difficulties in reconciling work and family life, and to highlight the working conditions that hinder or favour the articulation of these two times. The aim is also to observe whether men and women face the same difficulties in reconciling private and professional time and whether these difficulties have an impact on health.

The study was based on the ‘Working Conditions and Psychosocial Risks’ survey of a sample of 20,000 employees, representative of all private and public sector employees (Box 1). This survey, conducted by DARES in 2016, provides a concrete description of work and its organisation. In addition, it includes an in-depth questioning on psychosocial risk factors and a module devoted to perceived health and mental health.

The 2016 edition of the survey has been enriched with new questions on the difficulties of reconciling family and professional life. We were interested in one of these questions, which assesses the relatives’ point of view on the lack of availability due to working hours. It examines the consequences of poor reconciliation, i.e., difficulties with close persons linked to the lack of availability of the surveyed individuals: ‘Do your family and friends complain that your working hours make you too unavailable to them? Always, often, sometimes, never’. The questionnaire does not specify which close persons are concerned.

Thus, the survey puts into perspective the difficulties of reconciliation in relation to working conditions and psychosocial risks, as well as the impact on health.

1. Who report reproaches from their environment?

Thirteen percent of employed women and 14% of employed men say that they are ‘always or often’ reproached by their family and friends because of their lack of availability due to work. The presence of children in the household increases the difficulties with relatives for both men and women, and more so when the children are young, especially for women (Garner and Méda, 2004). Indeed, 16% of people living with a partner and children under the age of 18 report being reproached by their family and friends. This proportion falls to 12% when the children are over 18 (Table 1).

For men, reproaches expressed by their environment are more frequent for those living in single-parent families^[2]. For women, it is those living with a partner and children under 18 who report more reproaches from their environment.

Table 1: Likelihood of reporting reproaches from family and friends by selected individual characteristics

Do your relatives and friends complain that your working hours make you too unavailable to them? (‘Always, often’)		Women	Odds ratio	Men	Odds ratio	Average	Odds ratio
	Gender
	Women					12.8	1.2***
	Men					13.8	Ref.
	Type of household
	Single people	10.7	NS	9.7	NS	10.1	NS
	Couples with children over 18 or without children	11.3	Ref.	12.9	Ref.	12.1	Ref.
	Couples with children under 18	15.9	1.3 **	16.9	NS	16.4	1.2 ***
	Single-parent family	12.5	NS	16.8	2.3 **	13.3	1.6**
	Socio-professional categories
	Professionals in executive or higher intellectual positions	16.6	0.8 **	17.7	NS	17.3	NS
	Intermediate occupations	14.3	Ref.	12.3	Ref.	13.4	Ref.
	Administrative employees	7.1	NS	––	0.4 ***	6.5	0.8 **
	Commercial employees	12.4	1.3 **	15.0	NS	13.0	1.2 **
	Workers	13.3	1.4 **	13.1	NS	13.2	1.4 ***

Ref: reference; NS: not significant at 10%; significance levels: *10 %, **5 %, ***1 %.
Note: the odds ratios presented here are derived from a logistic regression explaining the reporting of close persons’ complaints by the socio-demographic variables and working conditions cited in note 3.
Reading: 15.9 % of women living with a partner and children under 18 years of age report complaints from their relatives.
Scope: employees in metropolitan France who responded to the self-administered questionnaire.
Source: 2016 Working Conditions and Psychosocial Risks survey; DARES, DGAFP, Drees and Insee.

Difficulties in reconciling work and family life also vary greatly according to socio-professional category. Managers face the greatest difficulties in reconciling work and family life, and these difficulties are felt in the same way by women and men. Indeed, 17% of female executives and 18% of male executives report being reproached by their environment, compared with 13% of both male and female workers. This overexposure of executives can be explained by their working conditions, especially long working hours.

2. Working conditions that increase reproaches from the environment

2.1. The role of working hours: contrasting effects for women and men

Working during night shifts and alternating hours makes it more difficult for employees to reconcile their professional and private lives and fosters reproaches from family and friends. The more atypical the working hours, the more reproaches from the environment are reported, and more so for women. Among full-time employees, those with alternating working hours report more difficulties with their family and friends: this is the case for 29% of women and 18% of men who work three shifts (Table 2). Night work is the working condition that most encourages reproaches from the environment: 25% of employees (28% of women and 24% of men) who usually or occasionally work at night feel they are reproached by their family and friends, compared with 11% of employees who never work at night.

For people with variable or unpredictable working hours, balancing family life and work is more difficult. Thus, difficulties are more frequent for both men and women when schedules vary from one day to the next. On the other hand, having knowledge of one’s working hours on an exclusively day-to-day basis (a fairly rare occurrence, but slightly more frequent for men) only increases environment reproaches for men.

Commuting time increases the amount of time spent away from home and can exacerbate difficulties in organising family and work life: among employees whose daily commute exceeds one hour, 20% report reproaches from their family and friends, whereas this proportion amounts to 12% for those who commute less than 15 minutes a day.

Here again, differences appear between men and women: having a daily commute of 31 to 60 minutes increases environment reproaches for women, but not for men. On the other hand, men are the most likely to mention difficulties with their family and friends if their commute time exceeds one hour (23% of men and 18% of women).

The differences observed between men and women reveal that difficulties with close persons reflect a social division of labour that is still organised according to gender (Gollac and Bodier, 2011; Bèque and Mauroux, 2017). Thus, in the survey, 40% of men declared working more than 40 hours a week, compared to 22% of women.

Table 2: Environment reproaches by working hours and duration

Do your family and friends complain that your working hours make you too unavailable to them? (“Always, often”)	Women	Odds ratio	Men	Odds ratio	Average	Odds ratio
Daily working hours
The same every day	9.6	Ref.	9.9	Ref.	9.7	Ref.
2×8 shifts	22.7	2.2 ***	12.0	NS	16.6	1.6 ***
3×8 shifts	29.3	2.0 **	18.4	1.8 **	21.4	1.8 ***
Variable from day to day	18.0	1.5 ***	23.7	1.2 *	20.7	1.4 ***
Night work
Usually, occasionally	28.3	1.6 ***	24.2	1.7 ***	25.4	1.5 ***
Never	11.4	Ref.	10.9	Ref.	11.2	Ref.
Working time
Full time	14.8	Ref.	14.0	Ref.	14.4	Ref.
Part-time	8.5	0.7 ***	10.1	NS	8.8	0.7 ***
Predictability of working hours
Monthly	11.3	NS	10.7	NS	11.0	0.8 **
Weekly	20.6	Ref.	19.1	Ref.	19.9	Ref.
Day-to-day	20.7	NS	32.7	1.5 **	28.6	1.4 **
Impossible	21.7	NS	28.0	NS	26.0	NS
Commuting time (in minutes)
0 *	––	––	––	––	7.1	NS
1-15 minutes	11.3	Ref.	12.9	Ref.	12.0	Ref.
16-30 minutes	12.6	NS	13.8	NS	13.3	NS
31-60 minutes	15.5	1.4 ***	12.2	NS	13.8	NS
More than an hour	17.8	2.3 ***	22.9	1.5 **	20.1	1.7 ***
No regular route	14.3	NS	16.0	0.7 **	15.4	NS
Hours per week in domestic tasks
Less than 6 hours	12.4	Ref.	13.9	Ref.	13.4	Ref.
7 to 12 hours	12.2	NS	13.3	1.1*	12.6	NS
More than 12 hours	14.5	NS	13.8	1.2*	14.3	0.8*

Ref: reference; NS: not significant at 10%; significance levels: *10 %, **5 %, ***1 %.
Note: the odds ratios presented here are derived from a logistic regression explaining the reporting of close persons’ complaints by the socio-demographic variables and working conditions cited in Note 1.
Reading: 22.7% of women who work 2×8 shifts report complaints from their close persons.
Scope: employees in metropolitan France who responded to the self-administered questionnaire.
Source: 2016 Working Conditions and Psychosocial Risks survey; DARES, DGAFP, Drees and Insee.

2.2. The role of psychosocial factors: work intensity and mental workload

In addition to working hours, the 2016 CT-RPS allows us to observe the consequences of psychosocial risk factors on the reconciliation of personal and professional life.

One of the immediate consequences of work intensity is to make this reconciliation more difficult. In the 2016 CT-RPS, 21% of women and men who say they ‘always’ or ‘often’ have to hurry in their work report difficulties with their family and friends, whereas this proportion is 7% for employees who do not (Table 3). Similarly, having an excessive amount of work increases difficulties with family and friends for both men and women.

Table 3: Work intensity and mental workload

Do your family and friends complain that your working hours make you too unavailable to them? (‘Always, often’)	Women	Odds ratio	Men	Odds ratio	Average	Odds ratio
Obligation to hurry
Always, often	20.7	1.6***	20.5	1.4***	20.6	1.4***
Sometimes, never	5.6	ref	8.7	ref	7.3	ref
Having to do an excessive amount of work
Yes	20.4	ns	22.3	1.4***	21.4	1.2***
No	7.5	ref	8.7	ref	8.1	ref
Not relevant	7.4	ns	6.4	0.6	7.0	0.8
Having to think about too many things at once
Always, often	20.0	1.3**	23.9	2.0***	21.8	1.6***
Sometimes, never	6.4	ref	7.0	ref	6.8	ref
Keep thinking about work outside the workplace
Always, often	21.4	1.6***	25.6	2.2***	23.4	1.9***
Sometimes, never	6.9	ref	7.2	ref	7.1	ref

Ref: reference; NS: not significant at 10%; significance levels: *10 %, **5 %, ***1 %.
Note: the odds ratios presented here are derived from a logistic regression explaining the reporting of close persons’ complaints by the socio-demographic variables and working conditions cited in Note 1.
Reading: 20.7% of women who say they always or often hurry report complaints from their close persons.
Scope: employees in metropolitan France who responded to the self-administered questionnaire.
Source: 2016 Working Conditions and Psychosocial Risks survey; DARES, DGAFP, Drees and Insee.

While mental workload and being overwhelmed are more common among women (Pak, 2016), it is men exposed to these risk factors who report slightly more reproaches from their environment than women. Thus, 24% of men who admit to thinking about too many things at once report difficulties with their family and friends, compared to 20% of women in this case.

Similarly, employees who express a feeling of being overwhelmed are more likely than others to report difficulties in reconciling work and family life: 26% of men and 21% of women who continue to think about their work outside the workplace report difficulties in reconciling their family and professional life, compared with 7% of men and women who do not.

However, it is difficult to establish the direction of causality; reconciliation problems may increase mental load or feelings of being overwhelmed. Conversely, feelings of being overwhelmed or a high mental workload may increase difficulties with close persons.

3. Working conditions that promote reconciliation

Certain modes of work organisation that promote autonomy or mutual aid within the work group reduce difficulties with the environment.

Being able to help each other with colleagues and/or superiors improves employees’ work-life balance, and more so for men. Indeed, only 9% of male employees with a high social support score^[3] report difficulties with those close to them, compared with 26% of male employees with a low social support score (Table 4). For women, on the other hand, reproaches from family and friends do not vary according to social support.

One reason for this is that strong social support certainly helps to reduce the feeling of time pressure, i.e., the intensity of work.

Table 4: Self-help and autonomy

Do your family and friends complain that your working hours make you too unavailable to them? (‘Always, often’)	Women	Odds raito	Men	Odds ratio	Avergae	Odds ratio
Social support score*
0-2	18.4	Ns	25.8	1.6***	21.2	1.4**
3	16.5	Ns	21.2	1.5***	18.7	1.2**
4	14.5	Ref	12.7	ref	13.6	ref
5	13.2	Ns	14.1	1.4**	13.6	1.2**
6	7.1	Ns	9.1	ns	8.2	ns
In the event of unforeseen personal circumstances, being able to leave for a few hours
Yes, it is easy	8.7	Ref	11.0	ref	9.9	ref
Yes, but it is not easy	17.5	1,6***	18.8	1.3**	18.1	1.4***
Impossible	19.3	1,8***	20.2	1.4**	19.6	1.5***
In the event of unforeseen personal circumstances, being able to change one’s working hours by making arrangements with colleagues
Yes	11.9	Ref	12.4	ref	12.2	ref
No	17.4	Ns	19.1	1.3**	18.3	1.2**
No colleagues	9.0	Ns	11.1	0.6*	9.6	ns

Ref: reference; NS: not significant at 10%; significance levels: *10 %, **5 %, ***1 %.
Note: the odds ratios presented here are derived from a logistic regression explaining the reporting of close persons’ complaints by the socio-demographic variables and working conditions cited in Note 1.
Reading: 18.4% of women with a low social support score report complaints from their relatives.
Scope: employees in metropolitan France who responded to the self-administered questionnaire.
Source: 2016 Working Conditions and Psychosocial Risks survey; DARES, DGAFP, Drees and Insee.

Similarly, employees who say they have room for manoeuvre in their work report fewer difficulties with their family and friends than employees with little autonomy. Indeed, only 9% of women and 11% of men who say they can easily take a few hours off work to deal with unforeseen personal circumstances report difficulties with their environment, whereas this proportion rises to almost 20% for employees who do not have this possibility. Difficulties with family and friends also increase when employees cannot change their working hours by making arrangements with their colleagues: 19% of men in this situation report difficulties with their environment, compared with 12% of those who can make arrangements with their colleagues.

4. What are the differences between men and women?

4.1. The role of gendered representations

The fact that women do not seem to report more reproaches from their environment than men is rather surprising, but certainly linked to the fact that women who have difficulties reconciling work and family life have withdrawn from the labour market permanently or temporarily, or to work part-time (Garner and Méda, 2004; Pak, 2016). Thus, 9% of employees working part-time report reproaches from their environment, whereas this proportion is 14% for full-time employees. Part-time work therefore seems to have a protective role, particularly for women, who more often than men say they have chosen to work part-time to look after their children. In response to the question ‘What is your main reason for working part-time?’, 23% of women working part-time and having at least one dependent child under the age of 18 said they did so to look after their children, compared with less than 1% of men.

Executives, both men and women, are the most likely to report reproaches from their environment. This is particularly due to the fact that executives do not have the same working conditions as blue-collar or white-collar workers, and that men and women do not have the same time constraints.

It was therefore important to consider the determiners of work-life balance and the differences between men and women ‘all other things being equal’. In order to control for the effects of different characteristics and to analyse the results with equal working conditions and individual characteristics, a logistic regression model was constructed^[4].

Thus, for equivalent working conditions and psychosocial constraints, it can be seen that women are more exposed than men to reproaches from their environment, especially blue-collar workers and shop assistants. One explanation could be that gender roles are more marked in the working classes than in the middle or upper classes. Indeed, ‘the […] inequalities and disparities vary according to socio-professional categories. In particular, the more professionally autonomous a woman is, the less unequal the division of domestic labour is’ (Pfefferkorn, 2011).

On the other hand, again with equal working conditions, being a manager protects a woman from the reproaches of her environment. Although women managers have working conditions which encourage reproach from their environment —in particular, long working hours—, they have the means to compensate for their time constraints, especially by having greater financial resources. For example, they can finance the fulfilment of certain domestic and family tasks (childcare, housework, etc.).

4.2. Domestic working time

In the 2016 CT-RPS, working people were asked about the number of hours spent on domestic work. To the question ‘Approximately, how many hours per week are you involved in domestic tasks (preparing meals, food shopping, laundry, etc.)?’, 72% of male and 44.5% of female full-time workers answered ‘less than 6 hours per week’; 6.1% of male and 19.3% of female full-time workers answered ‘more than 12 hours per week’. Moreover, this gender gap does not narrow, or does so only slightly, for part-time workers (Table 5). Thus, domestic tasks are still predominantly performed by women, even though the gender gap has decreased in recent years (Pfefferkorn, 2011), mainly due to a decrease in female domestic time (Ricroch, 2012).

Table 5: Women’s and men’s domestic work time by working hours

Domestic work time per week	Less than 6 hours	7 to 12 hours	More than 12 hours
Full time
Men	72.0	22.0	6.1
Women	44.5	36.2	19.3
Part-time
Men	71.2	17.1	11.7
Women	35.5	34.0	30.5

Reading: 72% of men working full-time report less than 6 hours of domestic work per week.
Scope: employees in metropolitan France who responded to the self-administered questionnaire.
Source: 2016 Working Conditions and Psychosocial Risks survey; DARES, DGAFP, Drees and Insee.

Regarding women who do less than 6 hours of domestic work per week, 12.4% report being reproached by their environment, and this rises to 14.5% for women who do more than 12 hours of domestic work per week (Table 2).

However, this correlation disappears in an ‘all other things being equal’ analysis, which takes into account the socio-professional category in particular. If women who report doing more than 12 hours of domestic work per week are also the ones who report the most reproaches from their environment, this is because female employees and workers, who work more at home, report more reproaches (Table 1). In short, spending much time on domestic tasks is not in itself associated with an increase in reproaches from family and friends; but contrary to what one might have thought a priori, it does not protect against them either.

5. What are the links with health?

5.1. Great gender disparities

The survey measures the psychological well-being of the people surveyed using the WHO 5, a questionnaire developed by the WHO^[5].

Of those reporting reconciliation difficulties, 18% have a low psychological well-being score and are at risk of depressive symptoms, compared with 9% of those who do not report reconciliation difficulties. There are large differences between women and men: the proportions are 26% for women and 11% for men.

This difference between men and women is confirmed in an ‘all other things being equal’ analysis that neutralises the effect of the main individual characteristics (sex, age, socio-professional category, etc.), working conditions, and psychosocial constraints. Thus, the probability of presenting a depressive symptom is multiplied by two for women who have difficulties with their relatives, as compared with those who do not, whereas for men the effect is not significant (table 6).

The causal direction between reconciliation difficulties and risk of depression is difficult to establish. Employees at risk of depression may be more sensitive to the reproaches of their environment. Conversely, reconciliation difficulties may increase the risk of depression.

Table 6: Psychological well-being

Probability of reporting a low well-being	Women	Odds ratio	Men	Odds ratio	Average	Odds ratio
Having close persons who complain about the lack of availability for them
Always, often	25.6	2.0 ***	11.3	NS	18.2	1.6 ***
Sometimes, never	11.6	Ref.	6.6	Ref.	9.1	Ref.

Ref: reference; NS: not significant at 10%; significance levels: *10 %, **5 %, ***1 %.
Note: the odds ratios presented here are derived from a logistic regression explaining the reporting of close persons’ complaints by the socio-demographic variables and working conditions cited in Note 1.
Reading: 25.6% of women who declare that they ‘always or often’ have complaints from their close persons have reduced well-being.
Scope: employees in metropolitan France who responded to the self-administered questionnaire.
Source: 2016 Working Conditions and Psychosocial Risks survey; DARES, DGAFP, Drees and Insee.

Nevertheless, it seems that the persistence of gender stereotypes leads to a marked division of social roles: women are in charge of domestic work and children, while men are more legitimate to invest themselves mainly in the professional sphere (Papuchon, 2017). Even though more and more women are in paid employment, these persistent gendered representations would explain the greater impact of reproaches from family and friends on women’s psychological health.

Bibliography

Bèque M. and Mauroux A., 2017, “Quelles sont les évolutions récentes des conditions de travail et des risques psychosociaux?”, Dares Analyses n° 082, December.

Garner H. and Méda D., 2004, “La difficile conciliation entre vie professionnelle et vie familiale”, Premières Synthèses, n° 045, December.

Garner H., Méda D. and Senik C., 2005, “Conciliation entre vie professionnelle et vie familiale, les leçons des enquêtes auprès des ménages”, Travail et Emploi, n° 102, 57-67.

Gollac M. and Bodier M. (dir), 2011, Mesurer les facteurs psychosociaux de risques au travail pour les maîtriser, Rapport du collège d’expertise sur le suivi statistique des risques psychosociaux au travail, April.

Pak M., 2016, ‘Du côté des pères à temps partiel familial’, Social and Family Policies, n° 122, 123-131.

Papuchon A., 2017, ‘Rôles sociaux des femmes et des hommes: l’idée persistante d’une vocation maternelle des femmes malgré le déclin de l’adhésion aux stéréotypes de genre’, Femmes et hommes, l’égalité en question, Insee Références, 81-96.

Pfefferkorn R., 2011, “Le partage inégal des ‘tâches ménagères’”, Les Cahiers de Framespa [On line], n° 7. http://bit.ly/3a6kDos

Ricroch L., 2012, ‘En 25 ans, moins de tâches domestiques pour les femmes, l’écart de situation avec les hommes se réduit’, Femmes et Hommes-Regards sur la parité, Insee Références, 67-80.

Tremblay D.-G., 2006, “Introduction. La conciliation famille-travail: perspectives internationales”, Enfances, Familles, Générations, n° 4, 1-8.

Box 1: The Working Conditions and Psychosocial Risks Survey 2016

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