Email: [email protected] this episode, we discuss Chapter 4 - Hours for What We Will: Work, Family and the Demand for Shorter Hours. In her book, Weeks analyses 3 different ideological cases for shortening the workday: (1) less work for more family time(2) less work for more free time(3) less work for more freedom to shape our societyAfter presenting each case and considering possible political premises for the ideal of a post-work society, we then offer our professional and personal insights from within the art world and organizational psychology. Benedetta thinks about what the issue of working hours represents for the inextricably personal nature of creative work and careers. She proposes as a framework, what economist Claudia Goldin called “time-greedy jobs”, highlighting its usefulness in understanding gender parity gaps.Nancy considers recently published interdisciplinary research on the positive outcomes of a four-day work week, and how social science must be centred in its policy making. She briefly touches on concepts of the Ideal Worker and how it is incompatible outside of hetero-normative assumptions of organizing a life. That is, the ways in which using space and inhabiting time differs when living a Queer life when considering the demand for shorter hours. (For a more in depth discussion on Queer Time, listen to Jack Halberstam’s talk on Queer Narratives at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.) Art of the Episode: Washing/Track/Maintenance: Outside (1973) by Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Washing/Track/Maintenance: Outside was a series of four performances staged at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, in Hartford CT, in 1973.In these performances Laderman Ukeles sought to make visible the ordinary maintenance work necessary for the functioning of any art institution and individual household. The performances were based on her Maintenance Art Manifesto (1969), which she wrote shortly after having a child and finding herself extremely frustrated with the seeming incompatibility of her identities as artist and mother, and the apparent invisibility of her domestic labor. This work underscores that to be equitable, a feminist time ethics must acknowledge and value these often invisible forms of labor.Question of the Episode: In what ways has the image(ry) of the Ideal Worker informed your approach to work? How does it determine how you organise your time, your relationships, you work outside of work, your notions of being a successful person? If you are a woman, what tensions does the embodiment of an Ideal Worker bring up for you? Works citedWeeks, K. (2011). The Problem with Work. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822394723Art Basel in Basel (2019, June 13). Panel discussion with Chus Martínez, Coco Fusco, Nadine Zeidler. Moderated by: Julieta Aranda. Between Production and Reproduction | Career and Motherhood in the ArtworldCampbell, T. T. (2023). The four-day work week: a chronological, systematic review of the academic literature. Management Review Quarterly, 74(3), 1791–1807. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-023-00347-3Chung, H. (2022). A social policy case for a Four-Day week. Journal of Social Policy, 51(3), 551–566. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047279422000186Fletcher, M., Evans, L., Parry-Williams, L., Ashton, K., & Green, L. (n.d.). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and employment. https://phwwhocc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Impacts-of-COVID-on-Women-Explanatory-Note-Eng-FINAL.pdfGoldin, C. (2021). Career & Family: Women’s Century-long Journey Towards Equity. Princeton University Press.Halberstam, J. (2005). In a queer time and place: transgender bodies, subcultural lives. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA70887604Jahal, T., Bardoel, E. A., & Hopkins, J. (2023). Could the 4‐day week work? A scoping review. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 62(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/1744-7941.12395Cover artwork by ⁠Simone Hutsch⁠ from Unsplash.Music by Tech Oasis from Pixabay.

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