The Privilege of Meaningful Work

Intro

On the lips and fingertips of many thinkers these days is the question of meaningful work. This may have been fuelled somewhat by a sudden collective existential crisis about Work, our relationship to it, and what will happen when it changes irrevocably. There is fresh interest in defining, describing, and demanding meaningful work for ourselves in the face of automation threats and an awkward growth spurt while we wait for the bubble to burst. I categorise myself into the group of social scientists who recognise the vast motivational value in experiencing meaning in your working life [1], and I actively encourage everyone to foster its growth when possible. However, that may be a bigger ask for some than is immediately visible.

Meaningful work is defined slightly differently, depending on your source and their chosen discipline. Generally, it is work that’s perceived as valuable, worthwhile and has some amount of purpose or significance attached to it. For now, let’s assume it to mean a “positive psychological state whereby people feel they make a positive, important, useful contribution to a worthwhile purpose through the execution of their work,”. [2] Well. How very positive!

Like any writer with a habit of frowning, I’m less concerned with what the word technically means and more interested in what we think it's made up of. In fancy academic speak this means taking a look at the ‘antecedents’ – what events, actions, or environmental factors come before the actual thing of interest. For meaningful work, the long list of antecedents includes things like job autonomy, task identity, organisational justice, various leadership ‘types’, and it’s not too long before the list devolves into that really good snake oil fodder of personality traits and their ilk.

In between the encouraging recommendations for managers to manage differently and organisations to recognise the bottom line value there is something missing in much of the writing and research on meaningful work. What is it that makes such a thing possible, and does that collection of things remain neutral for any employee who happens to walk into the room?

When I read about meaningful work, I’m struck by how, despite being dependent upon and related to a certain structure of time and space, it's frequently discussed as a neutral outcome. Considering both time and space are gendered, and are often experienced very differently by women, does that then make meaningful work harder for us to achieve?

How does it sit in a space of privilege, and who then has access to it? How is the potential for meaningful work determined by a time and a place?

A time

One of the things antecedents to meaningful work have in common is their relationship to time (particularly the having of it). For example, it’s not unusual to find skill variety and task variety listed as the sorts of enriched job characteristics that result in positive work-related outcomes. If you’ll recall the description we’re using for meaningful work, this is very important. Having that variety available to you and the freedom, if you like, to decide between them in your working day is a solid way to improve the likelihood of meaningfulness. How long, when, and in what order you put these tasks is necessarily a part of the equation that determines the desired outcome. If you were working in a neutral environment where your time was not affected by gender norms, this would be great! If, instead, you were working in a gendered organisation where, due to ‘culture’ (i.e., the way we do things around here), you were expected to pick up the invisible labour in the office as you do in other parts of life, you may not experience the freedom of time that your male colleagues do. Less great.

In a recent study, researchers found women taking on almost twice as much ‘office housework’ as their male counterparts.[3] This adds to existing academic literature where performance reviews tend to look favourably upon employees going ‘above and beyond’. However, not all extra-mile work is perceived in the same way. Organising team events does not have the same grandeur as big-splash projects. Women disproportionately spend their time at work doing the necessary invisible labour that is foundational to the company’s success, but completely ignored. If your ability to experience meaningfulness in your work similarly relies on the ability to direct your time neutrally, being a woman will alter that equation. The invisible labour that reproduces life day after day – that repetitive, arduous labour of caring, cleaning, feeding, scheduling, etc. – leaks into our organisations. Women do more invisible work at work than men, regardless of occupation and managerial position. This includes tasks that range from maintaining a positive work atmosphere to actually cleaning the work environment. [4] If meaningful work requires control and freedom over one’s time, it will prove difficult to achieve when so much of your time is taken up with invisible, undervalued yet required repetitive labour.

A place

Despite having learned much since the pandemic insofar as flexible work possibilities go, there remains an inertia in many organisations to come up with new and better solutions beyond complaining that no one wants to work anymore. Granted, remote and hybrid work configurations are tricky and do require effort to make them fit-for-purpose. Rather usefully, these approaches help working mothers cope more easily with the demands of care and household-related invisible labour I mentioned above. [5] Unfortunately, there remains a proximity bias wherein an employee is less likely to be perceived as a good performer if not seen in the office. In some studies, researchers have found remote work to be associated with worse managerial perceptions of an employee’s commitment, productivity, team spirit, and promotion opportunities. [6]

To make matters more complicated for people just trying to work without being harassed, a study of 1,091 professional women who worked in the same job both remotely and on-site found that the women consistently reported less everyday gender discrimination in their remote work. [7] Whatever is a gal to do?? Show up to the office, be discriminated against and get slammed with a second shift at the end of the day but be perceived as a ‘good’ employee? Or – work remotely, manage the endless, embodied labour that prevents complete collapse of capitalism, and be seen as not-going-the-extra-mile? Decisions, decisions.

So, how does this impact one’s capacity to experience meaningfulness in relation to work? At this stage, it might be more useful to switch gears and consider what makes work meaningless. In a study of 45 participants for four very different occupations, researchers found meaninglessness arising via four relational processes: powerlessness, disconnection, devaluation and self-doubt. [8] In the interviews, participants reported feeling powerlessness as a result of being in environments where monitoring, control, and unfairness were consistent. In the battle to be in all the right places at all the right times, it’s conceivable that the impact of others might have an outsized impact on your ability to experience meaningful work.

Interestingly, the authors of the paper noted how research on meaningfulness at work had, up to that point, centered on the individual and not taken into account the role of others at work. I suspect that may still be an issue.

Final thoughts

Pushed to the forefront by hand-wringing over job loss and change in the face of AI, the next article wondering about the source and need for meaningful work is never too far from your linkedin feed. This isn’t to suggest hands should not be wrung, nor dialogue engaged in as we continue uncovering the ways in which work can do us some good. However, part of getting somewhere worth going means having better, less flattened, and co-constructive dialogue. If we want to understand the value and worthiness of meaningful work, we also need to consider who it's currently available to, and how we can make space for more of us. A good starting point is recognising that meaningful work is not possible without the invisible labour holding it up so high. And that a time and a place can make all the difference.

Works Cited

[1] Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1980). Work redesign. Addison-Wesley

[2] Albrecht, S.L., Green, C.R., Marty, A. (2021) Meaningful Work, Job Resources, and Employee Engagement. Sustainability, 13, 4045, p. 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su13074045

[3] Bol, J. C., Fogel-Yaari, H., Grabner, I., Sedatole, K. (2026): Promoting Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB): Unintended Gender Disparities in the Participation and Evaluation of Different Types of OCB. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5529958 or DOI: 10.2308/TAR-2024-0149

[4] Kaplan, A. (2022). “Just Let it Pass by and it Will Fall on Some Woman”: Invisible Work in the Labor Market. Gender & Society, 36(6), 838-868. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432221128544

[5] Collins, C., Landivar, L. C., Ruppanner, L., & Scarborough, W. J. (2021). "COVID-19 and the gender gap in work hours." Gender, Work & Organization, 28, 101–112.

[6] Wang, S., & Chung, H. (2026). "Revisiting Flexibility Stigma: How Framing Remote Working Shapes Bias Against Remote Workers." Gender, Work & Organization. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.70115

[7] Doering, L., & Tilcsik, A. (2025). "Location Matters: Everyday Gender Discrimination in Remote and On-site Work." Organization Science, 36(2), 547–571. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16949

[8] Bailey, C., & Madden, A. (2019). "We're not scum, we're human": Agential responses in the face of meaningless work. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 35, Article 101064. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2019.101064