Telework and the boundaries between family and work life during the pandemic

Abstract

Teleworking is booming since the outbreak of the pandemic. This way of organizing work has advantages but also risks, among which is the blurring of the boundaries between personal and professional life, which can be a source of conflicts. In this study, the conflict between family life and work (in both directions) is analysed for a sample of teleworkers taken from a study carried out by Spain’s Centre for Sociological Research in October 2020. Three main phenomena are analysed: First, the characteristics of teleworkers who experience conflict more frequently; second, the impact of conflict on the preference for future telework; third, the relationship of telework with intra-couple conflict. It is found that work-family conflict, in all its forms, is a highly feminized phenomenon.