Nakkihomma: attitudes towards and distributions of academic household work

The equality and work well-being group at the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) at the University of Helsinki conducted a survey about academic household work (AHW) tasks among the institute’s staff in autumn 2023. The main aim of the survey was to find out how different AHW tasks are divided among the staff members and how the staff members consider these tasks.

Before the actual survey, we asked the staff to list tasks they consider AHW (nakkihomma in Finnish; direct translation: Frankfurter task). A few examples of AHW tasks we got: sending calendar invitations for meetings, making coffee for others, helping to organize social events at the institute, emotional service work (being involved in discussion with colleagues or students about their personal affairs or problems). For the survey, we grouped the proposed tasks in three categories (number of tasks in parentheses): research-related tasks (3), society-related tasks (4) and community-related tasks (29). The last category was further divided into four subcategories: tasks related to meetings (7), social events (6) and facilities (9), and miscellaneous (7). We asked which tasks the staff members consider as AHW, and how frequently they are committed to each task.

We received a total of 91 answers to the survey. This corresponds to 33% of our staff, but according to the background information we collected, the different groups in terms of gender, career stage, language status (Finnish/non-Finnish speaker) and staff group (research/technical/administrative) were represented well.

The general attitude towards AHW was surprisingly positive: 57% of respondents had a positive attitude while 35% had a neutral attitude. Senior research staff members use a considerable amount of time participating in different committee meetings while early-career researchers do not so much; however, they do a great deal of practical duties related to meetings. Furthermore, we found out that a lot of emotional service work is being done. Interestingly, early career researchers do not consider this generally as AHW while senior researchers do. Male staff members contribute more to technical writing and guiding tasks while female staff use more of their time in emotional service work and general collective AHW tasks. Finnish speakers contribute more to writing and guiding tasks while non-Finnish speakers are more frequently committed in “catering” AHW like making coffee. Technical and administrative personnel generally contribute more to AHW than research staff.

We hope that the results of this survey will help us developing a more equitable and inclusive atmosphere in our institute by enabling us to pay more attention in distributing AHW tasks in a more equal and just manner.