When role switching helps and hurts: Gendered patterns and workplace contexts of subjective time pressure in the UK

Subjective time pressure is a pervasive feature of contemporary social life and is associated with stress and poorer mental health. Prior research has connected time pressure to the cumulative demands of coordinating multiple social roles, often conceptualizing role switching as uniformly harmful and focusing primarily on aggregated transitions across roles or contexts. However, little attention has been paid to how the temporal experience of switching varies across levels of intensity and differs by gendered patterns of responsibility and workplace contexts. Drawing on nationally representative UK time-use data collected in 2020-2021, this study examines how daily transitions across activity domains are associated with subjective time pressure among men and women and further investigates whether workplace arrangement moderates these gendered patterns. Findings indicate that men exhibit a nonlinear U-shaped association between role switching and subjective time pressure, with pressure higher at low and high levels of switching and lower at moderate levels, whereas women exhibit a positive association between switching and subjective time pressure. Gender comparisons show that men experience greater pressure at low switching levels, whereas women report higher pressure across much of the moderate range. Workplace arrangement further conditions these patterns among women, with a weaker positive association between switching and subjective time pressure among remote than onsite workers, while showing no significant moderation among men. These findings advance a gendered time-use perspective on role switching and suggest that workplace efforts to address time pressure should consider the organization of daily transitions alongside workload.