Affiliations: CRTD (Centre de Recherche Travail et
Développement), CNAM, Paris, 41, rue Gay Lussac, 75005 Paris, France.
E-mail: liviascheller@gmail.com
Abstract: Objective: This article is based on an exploratory study in
occupational psychology. Participants: The participants were French female bus drivers in
1996. Methods: The qualitative approach of the study, based on interviews
with and observation of some 40 drivers, stressed their difficulties in
managing two occupations, professional and familial. In fact, the job involves
work in shifts that change every week for every driver. Results: The management of family duties, still planned by the
majority of the women, requires of them extremely complex strategies of
reconciliation. The real dynamics of such reconciliatory work is not ever taken
into account in studies undertaken in occupational psychology or in ergonomics.
Conclusions: This article is therefore intended to stimulate
researchers concerned in particular with women's work to think about a
methodological approach pertinent to analyzing the activity of reconciliation.
This activity does not consist a simple proximity between professional and
familial tasks but demands, rather, a mental and material linking of the two
occupations that remains for now only implicit in women's work. Our task is to
render it explicit in order to identify it.
Keywords: Reconciliation, professional and family work, activity of linking, women bus drivers, reflexive activity
DOI: 10.3233/WOR-2011-1264
Journal: Work, vol. 40, no. Supplement 1, pp. 5-14, 2011
