The right to time? Unequal working hours, and the failure of gender equality policies and legislation

Abstract

The paper was stimulated by the question of time. To what extent does Malta's employment legislation support gender equality in the right to time? More pertinently, do Malta's working- time patterns help change the traditional gender arrangement, or rather, strengthen the conservative male breadwinner model? This article seeks to contribute to a well-established literature on working- time legislation, and the gendered forces behind women's lives.

The focus rests largely on Malta's culture of long working hours combined with traditional expectations, which seem to suggest incompatibility with gender equality. Although long work hours, and the traditional gender arrangement, have long had a negative impact on women's labour market participation, the phenomenon is a rarely, studied aspect of working-time regimes. The approach adopted in the study, and its methodology, give a voice to Maltese women and their existing realties through eliciting data from in-depth interviews This approach may well be innovative within the context of literature on working-time regimes and working-time arrangements. This article will also discuss policy implications and recommendations for legislative measures that may well be of relevance to policymakers in Malta.