A survey on Smart Working and gender issues in Italian research institutions during the Covid-19 emergency

Abstract

The report presents the results of a survey on Smart working (SW) and gender issues in the Italian research institutions during the Covid-19 emergency. The survey aims at providing a preliminary analysis of the workloads, time dedicated to work tasks and family care, ways to deal with SW during the emergency period. In particular, it investigates the different ways to reconcile work and family life in a gender dimension to highlight if and how SW's activities influence the family dynamics between women and men during the emergency period. For this reason, the analysis explored the following aspects: 1) the division of household and family care labor; 2) the free time management after the Smart Working activities; 3) the evaluation of SW activities (positive and negative aspects//weak and strong aspects, technological issues, perception of the quality of work and potentially improving factors) 4) the evaluation of SW's experience in relation to the Covid-19 emergency. The results generally showed a respondents’ positive attitude towards SW. Among negative aspects they identified the loss of social contacts with colleagues derived from working at home.