Meaning of Housework and Other Unpaid Responsibilities Among Older Women

ABSTRACT

This study explores the meaning and conditions of housework and other unpaid responsibilities for older women. Taped, in-person interviews were conducted with 53 ethnically and economically diverse women, 55–84 years old. The interview guide contained open-ended questions regarding the process of taking on housework and other unpaid responsibilities and the centrality to personal identity. Participants reported shifts in perceptions of housework as work, decreased importance of housework with age, the attitude of care recipients affecting the experience and meaning of unpaid responsibilities, and the impact of historical racist events on viewing unpaid responsibilities as opportunity.     

Racial-Ethnic Differences in U.S. Married Women’s and Men’s Housework

Married women continue to spend more time doing housework than men and economic resources influence women’s housework more strongly than men’s. To explain this, gender theorists point to how gender figures into identities, family interactions, and societal norms and opportunity structures. The extent of this configuration varies culturally and, in the United States, by race-ethnicity because of how race-ethnicity conditions access to resources and influences gender relations within marriages. Housework levels and gender differences may be lower in Black married couples compared to other couples because of Black women’s higher historical levels of employment and consequently long-standing need to balance work and family responsibilities. Race-ethnicity also likely conditions the symbolic meaning and thus association of economic resources and housework. We use pooled time diary data from the 2003 to 2007 American Time Use Study from 26,795 married women and men to investigate how and why race-ethnicity influences housework. Our results indicate Hispanic and Asian women do more cooking and cleaning compared with White and Black women and the inverse relationship between women’s earnings and housework is steeper for Hispanic women compared with other women. We find no evidence that married Black men devote more time to housework than White men, either core or occasional, unlike earlier studies.     

The Great Convergence: Gender and Unpaid Work in Europe and the United States

Over the past decades, men's and women's time use in industrialized nations has changed dramatically, suggesting a gender revolution. Women increased their time in paid work and reduced time in unpaid activities, while men increased their time in unpaid work, but not enough to compensate for women's retreat. We investigate developments regarding men's and women's unpaid work across Europe and the United States, using time diary data from the mid‐1980s and onward. We find evidence for gender convergence in unpaid work over time, but different trends for housework and childcare. Gender convergence in housework primarily resulted from women reducing their time, whereas childcare time increased for both sexes, resulting in convergence only where men increased more than did women. Decomposition analyses show that trends in housework and childcare are explained by changes in behavior rather than compositional changes in population characteristics. Though level differences in unpaid work persist, our findings regarding trends support gender convergence in that they are general across country contexts that vary regarding policy and social norms about gender, family, and work.     

Relatively Different? How do Gender Differences in Well-Being Depend on Paid and Unpaid Work in Europe?

Absolute as well as relative hours of paid and unpaid work may influence well-being. This study investigates whether absolute hours spent on paid work and housework account for the lower well-being among women as compared to men in Europe, and whether the associations between well-being and hours of paid work and housework differ by gender attitudes and social context. Attitudes towards women’s and men’s paid work and housework obligations may influence how beneficial or detrimental it is to spend time on these activities, as may social comparison of one’s own hours to the number of hours commonly spent among similar others. A group of 13,425 women and men from 25 European countries are analysed using country fixed-effects models. The results suggest that while men’s well-being appears to be unaffected by hours of paid work and housework, women’s well-being increases with increased paid working hours and decreases with increasing housework hours. Gender differences in time spent on paid work and housework account for a third of the European gender difference in well-being and are thus one reason that women have lower well-being than men have. Gender attitudes do not appear to modify the associations between hours and well-being, but there is a tendency for women’s well-being to be higher the less housework they do compared to other women in the same family situation and country. However, absolute hours of paid work and housework appear to be more important to women’s well-being than relative hours.

American Househusbands: New Time Use Evidence of Gender Display, 2003–2016

The traditional gendered division of household labor, where women did the bulk of all domestic labor, is eroding. The literature on housework, however, does not discuss the ways how to test for the non-traditional gender performances. Using the American Time Use Survey (2003–2016), the present study fills in this research gap and re-tests the relationship between relative earnings and the performance of housework. The analysis of women’s time spent on domestic work shows that the traditional gender display explanation still applies to women’s participation in routine tasks such as cooking and cleaning. Thus, breadwinning wives display gender neutralizing behavior and ‘do’ gender. On the other hand, American men show non-normative gender behavior in cooking and cleaning, but not in maintenance, where they still ‘do’ gender. This paper unveils a persistent traditional gender performance of women in housework and a new pattern for men’s involvement in indoor routine housework.     

Domestic Outsourcing,Housework Shares and Subjective Time Pressure: Gender Differences in the Correlates of Hiring Help

We use data from matched dual earner couples from the Australian Time Use Survey 2006 (n = 926 couples) to investigate predictors of different forms of domestic outsourcing, and whether using each type of paid help is associated with reduced time in male or female-typed tasks, narrower gender gaps in housework time and/or lower subjective time pressure. Results suggest domestic outsourcing does not substitute for much household time, reduces domestic time for men at least as much as for women, and does not ameliorate gender gaps in domestic labor. The only form of paid help associated with significant change in gender shares of domestic work was gardening and maintenance services, which were associated with women doing a greater share of the household total domestic work. We found no evidence that domestic outsourcing reduced feelings of time pressure. We conclude that domestic outsourcing is not effective in ameliorating time pressures or in changing gender dynamics of unpaid work.     

Historical changes in the household division of labor

A number of studies published in the 1970s asserted that the amount of time women spend doing housework shows no historical decline. This article draws on evidence from time-budget surveys—three from the United States (1965, 1975, and 1985) and three from the United Kingdom (1961, 1974, and 1984)—to investigate the evolution of housework time for men and women over the last three decades. Clearly much other than housework has changed over this period. More women have paid jobs, more men are unemployed, and families have gotten smaller on average. Even having controlled for such sociodemographic changes, we conclude that in the two countries, women in the 1980s do substantially less housework than those in equivalent circumstances in the 1960s, and that men do a little more than they did (although still much less than women). These changes correspond closely to developments in four other countries (Canada, Holland, Denmark, and Norway) for which historical time-budget evidence is available.     

Cross-National Comparison on Family Satisfaction: Super-Specialization Versus Super-Equality

Research has documented that women still assume the main burden of domestic tasks and childcare within the household, despite the recent changes towards a greater equality. This division of labor has clear implications in satisfaction with family life. However, little research has combined other domestic responsibilities, such as decision making and care of dependent relatives with housework to study satisfaction, from a comparative perspective. In this article, data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)-2012 are used to explore the effects of a proposed index on balance in the couple, for women and men separately, through different multilevel models. The results suggest that the empowerment that could be assumed from a leading role in decision making does not improve satisfaction and that super-equality is the option yielding the highest levels of satisfaction, regardless their hours of paid-work. Differences by countries persist after controlling for individual and contextual variables, with the Latin American countries being those with the most satisfied populations.

     

Measuring Housework Participation: The Gap between “Stylised” Questionnaire Estimates and Diary-based Estimates

This article compares stylised (questionnaire-based) estimates and diary-based estimates of housework time collected from the same respondents. Data come from the Home On-line Study (1999–2001), a British national household survey that contains both types of estimates (sample size = 632 men and 666 women). It shows that the gap between the two types of estimate is generally smaller in the case of women. But the gap between the estimates in the case of women is associated with the amount of housework performed as secondary activities and the level of irregularity in housework hours. Presence of dependent children, on the other hand, inflates the gap for both men and women. Men holding traditional gender-role attitudes tend to report more housework time in surveys than in diaries, but the tendency is reversed when they undertake long hours of housework. The overall results suggest that there are systematic errors in stylised housework time estimates.

Maternal employment and time with children: Dramatic change or surprising continuity?

Despite the rapid rise in mothers' labor force participation, mothers' time with children has tended to be quite stable over time. In the past, nonemployed mothers' time with children was reduced by the demands of unpaid family work and domestic chores and by the use of mother substitutes for childcare, especially in large families. Today employed mothers seek ways to maximize time with children: They remain quite likely to work part-time or to exit from the labor force for some years when their children are young; they also differ from nonemployed mothers in other uses of time (housework, volunteer work, leisure). In addition, changes in children's lives (e.g., smaller families, the increase in preschool enrollment, the extended years of financial dependence on parents as more attend college) are altering the time and money investments that children require from parents. Within marriage, fathers are spending more time with their children than in the past, perhaps increasing the total time children spend with parents even as mothers work more hours away from home.     

Doing it from your heart: the role of older women as informal volunteers

This paper explores the contributions made by older women to the community as informal volunteers. It argues that ageing policy is not gender neutral and tends to ignore the contributions made by women outside paid work. As well as being ignored in policy, women's unpaid roles have been denigrated by some feminist commentators, who suggest that these roles subordinate the position of women. The aim of the present paper is to explore the lived experiences of older women in relation to their informal volunteer roles, using role identity theory as a framework. The study utilizes data from a qualitative study using focus group methodology. Findings demonstrate that informal volunteering contributes to the women's identity and gives their lives meaning. These findings suggest that a more positive policy framework around ageing is needed to ensure that the worth of these contributions is recognised.     

Parental leave: The impact of recent legislation on parents’ leave taking

We use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine the impact of leave entitlements on unpaid leave usage by men and women after the birth of a child from 1991 to 1999. The results indicate that legislation providing the right to unpaid leave has not affected men's leave usage. The results for women are mixed: in some specifications, leave entitlements are associated with increased leave taking or longer leaves, but the results depend on how we define leave coverage. Our results point to the limited impact of unpaid leave policies and the potential importance of paid-leave policies.     

夫妻教育匹配对男性平等分担家务的影响

利用2000年和2010年中国妇女社会地位调查数据,考察了21世纪最初十年间中国婚姻家庭的家务分工特征及其变化,着重检验了夫妻教育匹配对家务分工平等化的影响.研究发现,夫妻平等分担家务的现象近年来呈缓慢的上升趋势,2010年全国接近两成的已婚夫妇相对平等地分担家务.夫高妻低的教育匹配模式不利于推动家务分工平等化以及改变"女主内"的分工模式;与之相对,夫妻教育相同和夫低妻高的教育匹配模式在不同程度上推动着男性平等分担家务.文章认为,夫妻平等分担家务代表了现代社会经济和性别平等文化背景下家务分工演变的方向.实现这一转变,女性自身教育水平的相对提高以及教育匹配现象的演化扮演着极为重要的角色;而营造良好的社会舆论环境与完善社会服务体系,则是家务分工平等化的重要社会保障.     

Paid Work and Unpaid Work: Diary Information Versus Questionnaire Information

Time-use information is preferably obtained from diaries, as this method is considered more reliable than information from questionnaires. Data from the Danish Time Use Survey 2001 thus indicate differences in the level of unpaid work, whereas only minor differences appear for paid work. That is: people reporting many hours of paid work tend to over-report the actual number of hours worked, while those reporting a small number of hours tend to underreport their contribution. For unpaid work, the same pattern appears. Moreover, men are found to be more unreliable than women in evaluating their amount of work on the labour market, while the opposite is the case for the unpaid/household work, with women underreporting their contribution more than men. The implication is that labour supplystudies based on questionnaire-information, i.e. Labour Force Surveys, are less accurate than studies based on diary-information.     

家庭因素对性别工资差异的影响——基于CFPS数据的实证分析

随着职业性别隔离现象不断减少、男女受教育水平和教育收益率的逐步收敛,人力资本、职业和行业分布已经无法解释我国性别工资差异不断扩大的趋势。从家庭出发,考察婚姻、家务劳动分工和子女这些典型的家庭特征因素对性别工资差异的影响,运用2016年CFPS数据,在解决内生性问题的条件下,研究结果表明:婚姻通过增加女性家务劳动时间和子女间接影响女性工资,家务劳动时间和母亲身份对女性工资率具有显著的惩罚效应,女性平均每周承担家务劳动17小时,这导致其周工资率减少34%,子女降低母亲8.5%的周工资率;相对于未婚女性,已婚女性每周多做7小时家务,这降低了她们14%的周工资率。男性则存在婚姻溢价效应。Oaxaca分解也显示,家庭特征,尤其是家务劳动时间,是性别歧视之外导致性别工资差距的主要原因。本文按收入阶层的异质性分析表明,家庭特征可能引起低收入阶层更大的性别工资差异。本文的分析还显示,家务劳动对男性和女性具有门槛效应,且阈值位于10.5小时左右。     

健康对家庭时间分配的影响

本文利用CHNS数据探讨健康因素对已婚男女时间分配所产生的影响。实证结果显示健康状况受损与自身的市场工作时间呈负相关关系;健康受限使得城市男女趋向于减少家务劳动时间的承担,而农村样本却表现了与城市同类人群相反的方向。而且值得关注的是,健康因素对于男女时间分配的影响效应是不一样的。     

Women and retirement

A feminist analysis of retirement is presented by questioning the applicability of traditional definitions and theories of retirement to retired women. The effects of marriage, caregiving and other family obligations on women's retirement are examined within the context of salient social, psychological and economic factors. An empowerment-oriented perspective that considers interactions and connections between family and work roles, public and private and personal and political levels are recommended to alleviate the high poverty rates among older women, to promote parity among men and women during retirement and to emancipate women from substantial involvement in unpaid work, specifically, caregiving and home labor.     

Outsourcing of Housework and the Transition to a Second Birth in Germany

The struggle that women face in reconciling their work and family roles is one of the main explanations proposed for the rapid decline in fertility rates in some developed countries. This study examines the role of the outsourcing of housework in reducing such role incompatibility and in increasing fertility among women in Germany—a country with below-replacement fertility rates, which enacted a series of large-scale schemes from the beginning of the 1990s that give incentives to households to outsource housework. Based on Goode’s role strain theory and by using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this study analyzed whether women who outsourced housework after the birth of their first child had a higher probability of having a second child. A survival analysis of 3990 person years demonstrates that, controlling for observables, the outsourcing of domestic labor is positively associated with a higher probability of a subsequent second birth in German women.     

Patrilocal Residence and Female Labor Supply: Evidence From Kyrgyzstan

Many people live in patrilocal societies, which prescribe that women move in with their husbands’ parents, relieve their in-laws from housework, and care for them in old age. This arrangement is likely to have labor market consequences, in particular for women. We study the effect of coresidence on female labor supply in Kyrgyzstan, a strongly patrilocal setting. We account for the endogeneity of coresidence by exploiting the tradition that youngest sons usually live with their parents. In both OLS and IV estimations, the effect of coresidence on female labor supply is negative and insignificant. This finding is in contrast to previous studies, which found positive effects in less patrilocal settings. We go beyond earlier work by investigating effect channels. In Kyrgyzstan, coresiding women invest more time in elder care than women who do not coreside, and they do not receive parental support in housework.     

Meaning of aging in women's lives

As limited resources led me to combine teaching and research responsibilities, my students have been participating in an assignment that involves listening to aging women in order to discover how women explain the aging process. We have conducted 329 comprehensive interviews of women who were living in the decade of their sixties, seventies, eighties, or nineties. In this sample of predominantly southern women in the United States, meaning of age is explained in a process involving both looking back (reminiscence) and looking ahead (preminiscence) at one's life course with specific references to changes in one's body, family, home, and keeping the faith.