The current study examined the right to a professional workspace and separation between private and public within the home as an arena of gendered negotiation and struggle between spouses working from home during the COVID-19 crisis. Using a qualitative, inductive approach based on grounded theory, we conducted in-depth interviews with fifteen professional couples in Israel about their experiences with working from home and the division of labor and space between spouses. Our analysis revealed three key issues related to these experiences: the division of physical workspace between the spouses, the division of work time (compared to home time), and bodily-spatial aspects of the infiltration of workspace into home through the Zoom camera. The patterns described here suggest that the gendered power relations between spouses working from home are reproduced through an unequal negotiation of space and time in the home, so that in practice, men’s work was prioritized in spatio-temporal terms, whereas women’s workspace and time was more fragmented and dispersed throughout the home and day. These findings illuminate women’s right to workspace in the home as an issue of gender equality that has been amplified by the current global pandemic, and how gendered divisions of space and time serve to reproduce the gender order.

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The current study examined how state anxiety is related to social support (formal and informal), work–family conflict, and level of happiness among married mothers and single mothers by choice (SMBC) during the first lockdown of the Covid-19 crisis. The uniqueness of the present study lies in its comparison of married mothers and SMBC, whereas previous studies examined differences between single mothers, who are usually divorced, and married mothers. Moreover, the present research is the first to combine all relevant variables in one coherent study. A sample of 386 SMBC and 293 married mothers filled out a closed online questionnaire sent through social networks. The study findings show negative correlations between the level of social support, level of happiness, and type of support (friends, family, and significant others) and the level of state anxiety. Most women did not turn to formal sources of support such as aid and welfare agencies. Finally, a positive correlation was found between state anxiety and work–family conflict.

Happiness and passion at work are two interrelated constructs, the importance of which has been acutely pronounced during the Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant social isolation. We examine the nomological network of the two concepts, including the differentiation of obsessive and harmonious passion at work and well-being. Despite increasing research and theoretical interest in each concept, different terms and classifications exist, resulting in inconstant nominal and operational definitions. In this paper, through a systematic scoping review of the ambiguity of existing terms and use of different concepts for similar meanings, we clarify and discuss the construction of happiness and passion at work, including their interrelationship and differences. Hence, we propose new theoretical definitions (nominal definitions) for each concept that contain all three dimensions. Future studies will be able to develop new indexes (operational definitions) using validity and reliability tests.