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This article considers relations to time as both situated within a social space and, variable according to class and gender. On the basis of interviews with former ÉNA students on this very topic, we show that the hierarchy of positions is, for them, a reverse hierarchy based on the control of time they permit. Succeeding, in their opinion, involves having dispositions in time management which permit to avoid arbitration between their professional work and the rest of life, even though placed in a temporal context characterised by its demands on a great amount of availability for work. Following this, the situation for women with children constrains their expression of this « temporal aristocracy ».