Between temporal liberation and temporal recolonisation: Experiences of time under a four-day workweek

Abstract

This article examines how female employees experience temporal change under a four-day workweek in a childcare non-profit organisation. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, it analyses the lived temporal experience of reduced work-time. The findings reveal a paradox: while the four-day workweek promises temporal liberation, women's experiences often involve a form of temporal recolonisation, whereby free time is rapidly absorbed into existing webs of gendered obligations. The analysis shows how temporal interdependencies across work, family, and institutional schedules constrain how this time can be experienced, with inequalities amplified rather than reduced. Women with fewer resources face intensified temporal coordination burdens, while those with greater educational and economic capital navigate temporal tensions with more autonomy. Participants express ambivalence about changes organisationally framed as successful, revealing tensions between rest and productivity, autonomy and obligation, individual benefit and collective coordination. By developing the concept of temporal recolonisation, the article explains how work-time reduction, when detached from broader temporal ecologies and gendered expectations, can paradoxically reinforce the very inequalities it seeks to address. This contributes to scholarship on temporal inequality by showing that reduced working hours redistribute temporal resources unevenly, rather than simply creating free time.