Evaluation of the Time Allocation for Work and Personal Life among Employed Population in Lithuania from Gender Perspective

Abstract

In this paper, researchers examine the allocation of time for personal life and work. In fact, this phenomenon is particularly relevant in the 21st century because employed people are most commonly faced with many issues related with work-life conflict or work-life imbalance. This kind of problem can occur for both men and women, yet it is noteworthy that the time use features can naturally differ between both sexes: women and men. For this reason, focus of this study lies on the evaluation of work-life balance between employed Lithuanian men and employed Lithuanian women. Firstly, this article analyses the theoretical background of time allocation for personal life and work. Secondly, the methodology of empirical research is presented and substantiated. Although the research was conducted in Lithuania, the methodology can be applied in another country than refer to a nationality. The results of the empirical study have shown that there are some differences in time use between both sexes: women and men. Men spend relatively more time on sleep, other physiological needs (eating; personal hygiene etc.), science / studies, leisure (in the narrow sense), and traveling than women do. On the other hand, women spend relatively more time on paid work, housework and child care, and other activities of life. It should be emphasized that a significant difference in leisure time (in the narrow sense) use between men and women has been identified. This gives the opportunity to predicate that men spend more time in leisure (in the narrow sense) than women do.

Interrelationship Between Work and Private Life of Employees - Conflict or Balance?

“…Document analysis identified two main theoretical concepts regarding the interrelationship between work and private life of employees. These are the concept of work-life conflict (Carlson et al, 2000;Liu & Low, 2011;Hussain & Mujtaba, 2012;Lankeshwara & Wijesekara, 2015;Oosthuizen et al, 2016;Agha et al, 2017;Kim & Kim, 2017;Pejičić & Ranđelović, 2019;Lydeka & Tauraite, 2020;Marič et al, 2021), and the concept of work-life balance (Grzywacz et al, 2002;Lambert & Haley-Lock, 2004;Moore, 2007;Haar et al, 2014;Golubović & Golubović, 2015;Adikaram & Jayatilake, 2016;Fernandez-Crehuet et al, 2016;Stojanović-Aleksić & Bošković, 2017;Marič & Žnidaršič, 2018;Yusuf, 2018;Dilmaghani & Tabvuma, 2019;Apraku et al, 2020). Both of these work-life concepts (conflict and balance) are further researched and analyzed in order to discover their types and forms.…”

“…A survey by Lydeka & Tauraite (2020) assessed WLC of 406 male and female employees in Lithuania by comparing the allocation of time between their work and private lives. The main conclusion of this study was that both men and women prioritized work over their private lives.…”

Leisure Time Prediction and Influencing Factors Analysis Based on LightGBM and SHAP

“…It is debatable whether there is gender inequality in leisure. While some scholars initially argued that gender equality in leisure could exist [34,35], further studies have shown significant gender inequality in leisure, with men having significantly more leisure time than women being verified by a descriptive statistical analysis of survey data of employed men and employed women in Lithuanian [36], and there is a noteworthy disparity between the quality of leisure time experienced by women and men, with women reporting significantly lower levels based on a multilevel regression of data from the International Social Survey Programme [37]. In-depth interviews with 12 representative mothers show that women adjust their leisure time based on the preferences of their partners and children [38].…”

Time use, time pressure and sleep: is gender an effect modifier?

“…Additionally, women are more likely to wake during the night to provide caregiving. 16 , 17 To date, the majority of studies have focussed only on time use and sleep duration, 16 , 18 , 19 without consideration of the potential impact of time use and time pressure on other gender sleep inequalities, such as sleep quality and sleep difficulties.…”