Dual Clocks, Triangulated Self: The Juggle of Work and Family Among Unmarried Professional Women in Urban China

Haiyi Zheng and Bingyu Li

Gender, Work and Organization, 2026, vol. 33, issue 2, 315-332

Abstract: Unmarried professional women remain an underexplored group in scholarship on the work–family interface and gendered identities. This study, applying interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), examines how unmarried professional women in China navigate competing temporal regulations and construct selfhood in daily life through the framework “dual clocks, triangulated self”. Findings suggest that the participants mostly prioritize the linear and pressuring career clock while attempting to incorporate the family clock into their career plans, with the latter manifesting as a haunting sense of anxiety. Beneath the “career‐first” strategy, the enterprising, relational, and desiring selves exert uneven influences on their temporal experiences across different domains, reaching a temporary impasse. With the enterprising and relational selves dominating and entangling, whereas the desiring self unsettles without fully rupturing the status quo, this impasse appears stable and agentic on the surface but is underpinned by vulnerability and oppression. This study contributes to research on professional women's work–life identities by addressing the overlooked temporal struggles of unmarried women, highlighting how competing ideologies of time from the state and organizations shape their experiences. It also extends theories of selfhood by depicting the dynamic interplay among multiple selves, complicating the conventional understanding of agency in work–life tensions.

Date: 2026
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