The ideas about time discussed in Part 1 will be re-visited in Part 3, which seeks to develop a specifically feminist theory and politics of time. Part 2 sets the scene by showing how feminist perspectives can reframe our understanding and reveal aspects of our human relationship with time that are invisible in mainstream approaches.

This chapter focuses on the vexed question of whether it is meaningful to treat ‘women’ and ‘men’ as groups that have distinct qualities, experiences or ways of knowing the world, and the implications of this for relationships with time. After a brief outline of ‘difference’-based feminist arguments and their temporal significance, it considers the implications of recent developments in black and postmodern feminist thought. It agrees that ‘women’ and ‘men’ are not closed, stable or unified groups and that the meaning of being a woman or man is socially constructed and highly variable; it also endorses feminist critiques of the dichotomous thinking that underlies such classification. However, the chapter also argues that it is important not to lose sight of the stubborn ‘reality’ of male domination and women's collective interest in opposing this; it concludes that a politics of ‘solidarity in difference’ can provide a basis for a feminist politics of time.

Women and men: a naturally and/or socially different relationship with time?

A minority of feminists have long argued that many of the observable social differences between women and men have a natural foundation, and that there is a biological basis for both the ‘womanly qualities’ of nurturing, cooperation and conflict resolution and the male attributes of self-interest, competition and aggression. As discussed in Part 3, some writers claim specifically that women's experiences of menstruation and childbirth give them a particular relationship with time that is ignored by ‘malestream’ theorists and often forced to conform to inappropriate male requirements. Others argue that hormonal differences are a source of different patterns of time use, leading most women to prioritise their family while most men prioritise their careers (Hakim, 2000, 2007).

Against such claims, it is important to note that although men can never share the experiences of menstruation or childbirth, the significance and physical experience of these is in many ways socially produced, while many women do not menstruate and never give birth.