La ville et le temps des femmes

• Main Authors: Michelle Kergoat, Danièle Touchard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille 2007-12-01
• Series: Espace populations sociétés
• Subjects: equality policy; gender differenciation of functions; obligatory time schedule; time schedule articulation
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/eps/2281

The increasing power of feminine professional activities has brought into light a new problematic of time schedule articulation. The persistence of the “Mister Breadwinner” model, which calls for women being at all times available for domestic and family tasks, results in the overstuffing of women’s time schedules; this hinders their possibility of entering the labour market, of implicating in citizen activities, and more globally impedes their autonomy as well as their ability to participate in the higher decisional spheres.Taking into account these gender inequalities, about ten years ago, the city of Rennes has adopted an “equality policy”. Its first action focused on the formation and the professional qualification of its agents, but there soon appeared limits to this action, linked to a sexual differenciation of functions.This led the city of Rennes to opt for a more ambitious path, aiming to better articulate its citizen’s time schedules, either by providing new services or improving the ones already in place, and also by rethinking the planning of urban space in order to reduce “obligatory time schedules”, permitting as a result a better conciliation between women and men of their normal life “time schedule”.