Housework at work: resistance or what?

Within an abductive and qualitative research design, we develop a comparative analysis of worktime domestic labour wherein workers can reconcile domestic and work obligations via domestic technology innovations. To develop social positioning theory empirically we conducted interviews with office workers, which allowed us to compare experiences across occupational hierarchies. We thereby uncovered resistant practices among those in top-tier jobs that we traced to three important conditioning structures, namely, career segregation, managerial discourse, and technological skill – structures which were variously shaped by gender and the distribution of unpaid work. Accordingly, our findings showed that men in top-tier jobs were more free in relation to worktime domestic labour as compared to similarly positioned women who mostly relied on ad hoc strategies or managerial agencies to avoid sanction. In this context, our article responds to calls for research that systematically considers person properties, relational human components and resulting human (community) interactions.