Work, Gender and Social Sustainability. Towards a new work culture

Since the Covid 19 pandemic, teleworking has been gaining strength as a working modality that can contribute to the creation of a more sustainable world.

In this sense, the project entitled "Work, Gender and Social Sustainability. Towards a new work culture", directed by Dr. Francisco Tirado, UAB Senior Lecturer, and Dra. Ana Gálvez, Senior Lecturer at the UOC, and funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, wants to analyse the relationship between telework, conciliation and social sustainability. The project shows that teleworking cannot operate as a tool that effectively contributes to family and work reconciliation and sustainable development if it is not recognized that there are significant gender differences operating in its implementation and development. In the same way, it teaches us that teleworking will not be a fair and egalitarian work modality that contributes to social sustainability if it is not analysed and evidenced that there is an organizational culture based on the physical presence in the workplace and a patriarchal distribution of gender roles that promote conciliation to be considered an exclusively female problem.

Deploying a whole series of case studies in institutions that have promoted teleworking, as is the case of the Diputació de Barcelona, ¿¿it is analysed how the implementation of teleworking does not depend on technical issues such as having a good technological team or learn appropriate uses of it. On the contrary, the organizational culture mentioned before must be combated to reach this effective implementation.

Finally, the analysis of these cases reminds us that this implementation is directly related to the control and remote monitoring methods established by employers to monitor work activity. If these methods are very demanding and intrusive, they will generate psychological discomfort and rejection on the part of the people who work remotely.