The new gendered labour of synchronisation: temporal labour in the new world of work

Research considering how time is organised has shown that women tend to carry a disproportionate burden of coordinating the schedules of their households. However, little research has considered how these gendered inequalities may manifest in the context of the shift away from 'standard' work patterns and towards variable and non-standard hours. We address this question by using interview and digital data to consider how a selection of 'ordinary' Australian young adults in heterosexual partnerships manage and coordinate their time. We contend that even for middle-class young adults with relatively high employment security, increasingly complex working arrangements are shifting existing inequalities in gendered divisions of temporal labour in ways that heighten feelings of temporal insecurity. We conceptualise our findings as part of an intensification of the existing need to schedule and manage lives that is widely felt in the so-called 'gig economy era', even by those removed from gig work proper.