Are you what you do?

A few years ago I was at one of those dinner parties where you only know the host, but they’re sitting miles away and everyone else knows each other. Turning to the guy next to me, I played (I thought) fairly safe with the conversation-opener: “So, what do you do?” He looked at me fairly scathingly said: “I don’t believe we should define ourselves by what we do”, and turned to the person on his other side, leaving me in a conversational limbo in which to reflect my social transgression.*I remembered this incident this week when I went to an event hosted by nef to discuss their report 21 hours which asks: what if the ‘normal’ working week was 21 hours rather than 40 hours? People could choose to work longer or shorter hours, but that would become the standard that was expected by government, employers, trade unions, employees and everyone else.They make a good case for making such a transition. It would change the tempo of our lives, help break the habit of living to work, working to earn and earning to consume, and therefore help society reduce our demands on the environment. It would help distribute paid work more evenly across the population, and free up time for a more equal burden of unpaid work such as caring.There would of course be transitional problems, and it’s not immediately obvious how such fundamental economic restructuring could happen painlessly (although nef do advocate a long transition period). But on the other hand, we’re going to see the need for economic restructuring anyway in the light of dwindling environmental resources – so it would be good if this could be done in a more positive way, seeing and harnessing the social benefits that such a scaling back has to offer.But the reason I remembered the exchange above was because – whether my dinner companion approved or not – there is an issue of identity tied up in our work life, and I wonder how this would change with a shorter week? In his work on needs, the Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef has identified nine fundamental human needs which are common across all countries and historical periods, and what changes is how different societies satisfy those needs (good explanation here). The economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the beginning of the 21st century we would be working a 15-hour week as this would be enough for us to meet our material needs. In Max-Neef’s terms, work should be about satisfying the need for subsistence (i.e. shelter and food). But instead we work longer and longer hours, and terms such as ‘presenteeism’ – being present at work just to be seen by others to be in work – have crept into the lexicon. Work has become a way that we satisfy our need for identity.As we shift to new working patterns how will we satisfy this need? Many people who work shorter weeks at the moment are saddled with the title ‘part-time’, with the derogatory connotations that they’re not contributing as much, when of course they’re often contributing hugely in terms of unpaid care at home.So how will we see ourselves in this new world? And how will we make the shift? Working less is going to have to be seen as much more, even though it will mean less pay and therefore less stuff and so much of what currently makes up our status, and our identity. *Incidentally he turned out to be a performance poet, and given that I was a trainee accountant at the time I was slightly surprised by his reticence to share this distinctly more interesting career choice.