The Time Use Initiative (TUI) participated in the 14th edition of Emprenem en Femení, organised by Esplugues de Llobregat City Council in collaboration with the Baix Llobregat Women’s Council, as part of the 7th Congress of Women of Baix Llobregat. Held under the theme “Time4Entrepreneurs: tools to better organise us”, the event brought together women entrepreneurs from across the territory of Baix Llobregat to reflect on one of the key challenges affecting their professional and personal lives: the organisation and management of time. Ariadna Güell, Deputy Director of TUI, delivered the keynote session and facilitated a practical workshop focused on time planning and decent working time.
The event also marked a new step in the revitalisation of the TempsxEsplugues network, a local network of businesses, companies, and organisations committed to promoting healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable uses of time. By placing the right to time at the centre of the discussion, the initiative highlighted the growing importance of time policies as a tool to improve well-being, productivity, gender equality, and work-life balance. During the presentation, participants were invited to reflect on how time is distributed in everyday life and why it has become an increasingly scarce resource. Drawing on TUI’s work on time poverty and gender inequalities, the session explored how women continue to face disproportionate responsibilities related to unpaid care and domestic work, often limiting the time available for entrepreneurship, participation, rest, and personal development.
The presentation also included a participatory exercise on the distribution of participants’ daily 24 hours, encouraging collective reflection on the realities of time use among women entrepreneurs. Participants worked on key skills for organising working time more effectively, including task prioritisation, common planning mistakes, estimation of workloads, and the development of productive daily habits. Beyond individual planning techniques, the workshop highlighted the importance of creating organisational cultures that respect time as a finite and valuable resource. Discussions connected personal experiences of time pressure with broader questions about decent working time, sustainable entrepreneurship, and the need for organisations to adopt practices that support productivity without compromising health and well-being.
The session concluded with a presentation of local resources available to women entrepreneurs and an invitation to join the renewed TempsxEsplugues network. Through this initiative, Esplugues de Llobregat City Council seeks to strengthen collaboration between businesses, commercial establishments, social organisations, and public institutions committed to improving time use and promoting the right to time across the municipality. By contributing expertise on time-use policies and practical tools for time management, TUI helped reinforce the central message of the event: that ensuring women entrepreneurs have greater control over their time is not only a matter of personal organisation, but also an essential condition for gender equality, economic empowerment, and sustainable development.
