The health emergency caused by COVID-19 has reopened, with particular vigour, the debate surrounding the impact of teleworking on working conditions, as well as on the possibilities it offers for conciliation. Given the high level of telework among women, it is necessary to reflect on the impact that the use of this mode of productive work may have on them and on other aspects of daily life. The extent of teleworking implies a threat to women in the sense that teleworking can have a particularly negative impact on women’s work, and this, in turn, would put at risk the progress made during the last few years in the area of gender equality. The regulation of telework is necessary to prevent it from turning into a trap that places the burden of conciliation on women.

Human resources of a company constitute one of its main competitive advantages. Valuing the importance of this resource and working intensively in order to retain this talent will constitute one of the main challenges of the future for companies. The study of one of the most important sectors in the Spanish economy, the commercial retail sector, allows an analysis of the importance of the management of human capital through motivation. As part of this point, the concept of personal, family and work balance gains importance as a tool for human management and for the retention of talent. In order to facilitate the application of measures for balancing life, the following conditions are required: gender equality, parity and joint responsibility. The benefits for both workers and companies are many. Among them, the minimal or zero cost which the implementation of these kinds of measures involve. New technologies in particular assist a real balance. Providing knowledge about and spreading the concept of personal, family and work balance, by analysing its applicability in one of the most important sectors in the Spanish economy, is the objective of this study.

This article is a summary of the work which obtained the prize for the best Bachelor’s Thesis (TFG) in Economics and Business Studies concerning gender during the 2018/19 course. The complete work is held in the UOC’s institutional repository (O2), the portal which collects, disseminates and preserves the UOC members’ free-access digital publications that were produced in the development of their research, teaching and management activities. You can consult the complete work at: http://hdl.handle.net/10609/110566.

The difficulties in work-life balance has become greatly important in the societies of the 21st century. An evergrowing number of organisations are interested in promoting and encouraging this approach, with the objective of improving the well-being and quality of life of their male and female workers in addition to attracting and fostering talent, improving productivity and, ultimately, becoming more competitive. In this context, one of the most used measures for achieving such objectives is teleworking. This article analyses, from the point of view of female teleworkers, if this labour system constitutes an efficient strategy for the work-life balance. The methodology used has been qualitative, specifically working with indepth interviews and discussion groups. The sample was composed of women teleworkers with some form of family dependents. The principal results show that teleworking for these female workers is a labour system which goes far beyond work-life balance. This is a kind of logic or mechanism which redefines the unfolding practices and which leads to the creation of new meanings in the realm of work and in compatibilisation with domestic, family and personal life. By practising teleworking, these women are producing a critical discourse with the prevailing labour model, characterised by their long working days which exclude the possibility of a life at the margin of the world of work. They use the possibilities of flexibility which teleworking provides them in order to reclaim their roles as professionals and as mothers, and as a result do not give up either of these roles, making use of teleworking as a tool for revealing a labour market which excludes all that is related to the sphere of care.

The fact that women do not occupy positions of responsibility within highly competitive companies in the technological sector demonstrates how organisations are failing to adapt to the present reality: women are half of the population and are sufficiently prepared to occupy professional posts, but they are rarely welcomed. The liberalist explanations, that is to say, those which maximise the principle of freedom as regulating the market, indicate that women are not present because they take private decisions which involve a lack of ambition or commitment to the companies. In the face of this evidence, I maintain that the organisations are less than healthy social structures, which impose rules and values that cannot be adapted to the differing realities of women and men who are eager for another organisational culture – one which could fit better with their lifestyles. This work tackles this question by providing evidence on the basis of two generative axes of psychosocial risks for the knowledge society: (1) the imbalance between personal and work lives (2) the imbalance during the management of personal and emotional relations, as well as in the daily practices in the organisations, in the family and, in general, in society. The results of this work show that the technological companies are facing up to some changes relating to the profile of their workers, however, there is a need for a more profound reflection and cultural changes which abandon the idea that there exists a male professional ideal.