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Overcooking and overbuying are two main causes of food waste in households. Therefore, this study tests whether two interventions, aimed at cooking planning versus purchasing planning, can reduce food waste in households by using self-report direct measurements. Because measuring household food waste can impact how much food is wasted, the effects of the mere measurement of household food waste over time were assessed as well.

A sample of 80 households was distributed into three groups (control, purchasing planning and cooking planning) and their household food waste was weighed over a period of 166 days. After the first 91 days, behavioral interventions were delivered to purchasing planning and cooking planning groups. Repeated measures ANOVA, linear regression and a two-level mixed model were used for data analysis.

Results showed that the interventions were not effective in influencing the participants to reduce household food waste beyond the reduction in the control group. However, there is evidence of a mere measurement effect that caused household food waste reduction over time.

This study's experimental period is longer than most of the studies that tested behavioral interventions for household food waste reduction. This enabled the authors to assess the effects of repeated measurement and discover that measurement alone can bring behavioral change.

This paper explores working mothers’ coping strategies concerning paid and unpaid work in Chile and Argentina during the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper aimed to understand the influence of cultural norms on motherhood and neoliberal workplace practices on mothers’ sensemaking processes and coping strategies. This study focuses on mothers living in Chile and Argentina where governments established mandatory lockdowns between March and September 2020. Drawing on the notion of neoliberal motherhood, women’s demands were analyzed when paid work and mothering duties collide in time and space.

Open-ended interviews were conducted with 17 women in Chile and Argentina. All interviewees had at least 1 child below the age of 6 and were working from home during the lockdown.

Neoliberal workplace demands, and disadvantageous government policies greatly heightened the dual burdens of working mothers. Women were expected to fulfill the discourses of the neoliberal worker and the good mother, while also adopting additional strategies in the wake of the lockdown. The data highlights mothers’ strategies to cope with care and work duties by adjusting to new routines involving their partners, relatives and the wider community.

The generalizability of the results is limited by the small sample of 17 interviewees, all from middle to middle-upper class. The changing scenario due to Covid-19 makes the collected data not sufficient to grasp the impact of the pandemic, as during the interviews (December 2020 and January 2021) the process was still ongoing.

Organizations should assess their role in the management of paid and unpaid work for both genders, as the neoliberal discourse views the worker as masculine, full-time, always available and productive, ignoring women’s additional care duties outside of the workplace.

The Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to reflect on care work and gender, collective versus individual responses to care and work demands and the idea of organizing.