Volunteering and the gender division of labour: A Franco-British comparison

Cross-national analyses of the gender division of labour usually focus on employment and domestic labour. This paper argues that formal and informal voluntary work should be included in such analyses. Using available secondary sources, the paper compares the gender division of voluntary work in Britain and France – two countries with well-documented differences and similarities concerning employment and domestic labour. The paper reveals that French women, with a higher commitment to the labour market and a slightly larger share of the burden of domestic labour, have a higher commitment to formal voluntary activity but engage less in informal volunteering than their British counterparts whereas French men, with shorter hours in employment and a slightly smaller contribution to domestic labour, undertake more formal and informal voluntary work than their British counterparts. In France, men consistently undertake more voluntary work than women whilst in Britain, there is a degree of gender equality in formal voluntary work but women undertake significantly more informal voluntary work than men. The paper explains the differences and similarities found by considering the role of the state and social policy, the question of ‘time availability’, and the question of what motivates individuals to undertake voluntary work.     

Non-parental childcare,time pressure and the gendered division of paid work,domestic work and parental childcare

What impact does out-sourcing childcare have on the time parents spend on paid work, domestic work and childcare, and how they share these tasks between themselves? Using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS) 2006 we investigate the effects of formal and informal non-parental childcare on the time use of couples with children aged 0–4 years (N=348). We examine associations between non-parental care and (1) couples' combined time in paid work, domestic work and childcare, (2) parents' time separately by gender in paid work, domestic work and childcare (subdivided by activity type) and (3) parents' self-reported time pressure. Total workloads (the sum of paid work, domestic work and childcare) are neither higher nor lower when non-parental care is used, either for households combined or for each gender separately. The way time is spent, and how activities are divided by gender does differ, however. For mothers the use of any non-parental care and more hours in formal care is associated with more paid work hours, less childcare time and higher self-reported time pressure. Fathers' time is more constant, but they report higher subjective time pressure with increasing hours of formal non-parental care.     

Parental education, time in paid work and time with children: an Australian time-diary analysis

How does parental education affect time in the paid workforce and time with children? Potentially, the effects are contradictory. An economic perspective suggests higher education means a pull to the market. Human capital theory predicts that, because higher education improves earning capacity, educated women face higher opportunity costs if they forego wages, so will allocate more time to market work and less to unpaid domestic labour. But education may also exercise a pull to the home. Attitudes to child rearing are subject to strong social norms, and parents with higher levels of education may be particularly receptive to the current social ideal of attentive, sustained and intensive nurturing. Using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time‐use Survey 1997, this study offers a snapshot of how these contradictory pulls play out in daily life. It finds that in Australia, households with university‐educated parents spend more daily time with children than other households in physical care and in developmental activities. Sex inequality in care time persists, but fathers with university education do contribute more time to care of children, including time alone with them, than other fathers. Mothers with university education allocate more daily time than other mothers to both childcare and to paid work.     

Voluntary work in the Norwegian long-term care sector: complementing or substituting formal services?

ABSTRACT

Across Europe, governments call for increased involvement of volunteers to shoulder some of the welfare burden. Nevertheless, there is little research into what kind of work and how much volunteers currently contribute in the long-term care services and whether this has the potential to substitute formal services. Drawing on findings from a survey of employees in Norwegian nursing homes and home care districts, we examine the nature and volume of voluntary, unpaid work in the long-term care services in Norway. Our data suggest that volunteers to a very limited degree carry out work that has traditionally been considered the formal system’s domain: personal care and practical help. Nearly all the voluntary, unpaid contributions in our data takes place within cultural, social and other activities aimed at promoting mental stimulation and well-being, indicating a classic specialisation of tasks between volunteers and professionals. However, there has been an expansion of the formal care system to include activities aimed at promoting well-being in recent decades. This may indicate that there is a certain level of task sharing between voluntary and formal care. Thus, social workers need to consider voluntary service provision when assessing the needs of clients.     

Productive Engagement Among Older Americans: Prevalence,Patterns, and Implications for Public Policy

This study estimates the prevalence of productive engagement among adults aged 60 and over residing in the United States over a nine-year period. We analyze three waves of data from the Americans' Changing Lives Study, which allows the findings to describe the non-institutionalized older American population. Focusing upon five activities—formal paid employment, irregular paid work, unpaid volunteerism, caregiving, and informal assistance to others—we identify changes in the engagement rates, examine the extent to which engagement occurs through single or multiple concurrent activities, and document intra-individual patterns of engagement within and across forms of productive activity, including the continuity, initiation, and cessation of involvement. The findings reveal that late-life productive engagement is widespread, with the majority of older individuals involved in multiple forms of activity concurrently. Non–market-based activities such as caregiving, informal assistance, and volunteering are most prevalent. Initiation and cessation of activities are common and yield more complex patterns and lower rates of non-participation than are revealed in cross-sectional analyses. Time spent in productive engagement is highly variable and exhibits an overall decline across time. We conclude by highlighting policy strategies to increase the availability and quality of opportunities for productive engagement and promote planning for engagement in late life.     

Enough Time for Housework? Low‐Wage Work and Desired Housework Time Adjustments

Although studies examine preferences for hours spent in paid employment, little attention has been given to preferences for hours spent in unpaid household labor. This study examines the extent to which women working in low‐paid retail jobs would prefer to spend more or less time on household work and how alignment between preferred and actual time on housework is related to characteristics of paid work. Using original survey data and company records on a sample of women working at a U.S. retail firm (N = 277), the authors found that mismatch between preferred and actual time on household work was common. Roughly 42% wanted more time on household work and 18% wanted less. Working multiple jobs, work schedule unpredictability, and nonstandard work timing contributed to wanting more time on housework. Findings add to understanding of how low‐wage, precarious employment shapes workers' ability to attend to necessary tasks of household management.     

The social stratification of time use patterns

Time use is both a cause of social inequality and a consequence of social inequality. However, how social class stratifies time use patterns is seldom studied. In this paper, I describe the time use patterns in the years 1983 and 2015 by social class, and gender in the British context. Using sequence analysis methods, I show how the diversity of time use patterns in British society is socially stratified. I find that 13 clusters capture the heterogeneity of time use patterns and that these clusters are associated with social class, gender, and day of the week. These clusters capture patterns of paid and unpaid work schedules, as well as leisure patterns. The results show that men have experienced a reduction of the standard Monday to Friday 8-hr working day, while women have experienced a general increase in this type of schedule. On the other hand, patterns of domestic working days have reduced for women and increased for men. Important differences exist in paid and unpaid work patterns between social classes. Working-class women have experienced an important increase in shift work on weekends. They are also much more likely to be doing unpaid work on weekdays compared to upper-class and middle-class women. Working-class men are more likely to experience non-working days and leisure days on both weekdays and weekends and are more likely to be doing shift work. They are also more often doing unpaid work on weekdays compared to men in upper-class households. Patterns of childcare indicate that all families have increased their childcare time. Men in upper-class households in particular have experienced an important growth in childcare time between 1983 and 2015. I conclude by discussing how time use can further our understanding of social stratification.     

Brave New Volunteers? The Value of Paid and Unpaid Work for Flemish Red Cross Volunteers

This paper considers the current debate on the changing position and meaning of paid work in Western societies. In the wake of a structural crisis of fulltime employment, a new role and potential is attributed to voluntary work. With data drawn from a survey of Red Cross volunteers in Flanders (Belgium), this research assesses empirically the value volunteers attach to paid and unpaid work and their disposition to combine paid and unpaid work more flexibly. Contrary to current theorizing about the advent of a brave new world of work, this study provides evidence for a continuing existence of strong paid work orientations, even among a population that actually performs unpaid work. Moreover, it is not the economic (dis)embedding of volunteers, but the extent and nature of their social participation that primarily explains the strength of paid work orientation and the propensity to tailor paid work more flexibly to volunteer work.

Differences between paid and unpaid social services for beneficiaries

In many Western welfare states, social work services that have traditionally been provided by paid employees are being replaced by family support, community support, informal networks, and volunteering. For the field of social work, it is relevant to know what it matters to beneficiaries whether services are provided by volunteers or by paid employees. The central question of this article is therefore as follows: What are the differences between unpaid and paid social services for beneficiaries? The article is based on literature review and focus groups. Our results suggest that beneficiaries do experience some differences regarding the advantages of volunteer services for beneficiaries that can be summarized in three propositions: (1) services provided by volunteers are more relational than are services provided by paid employees, and they are therefore perceived as more equal, flexible and sincere. (2) The effects of volunteer services for beneficiaries are not exclusively positive. (3) Although particular tasks may appear to be interchangeable to some extent, the relative advantages of a given task depend upon whether it is performed by a paid worker or by a volunteer. Additional research is needed in order to provide further validation.     

REREADING UNDECLARED WORK

The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether undeclared work is the same when conducted by men and women. Conventionally, the view is that such work is always profit-motivated market-like work and that women's undeclared work mirrors their subjugated position in the formal labour market in terms of pay, contract type and sector. Reporting evidence gathered during 861 face-to-face interviews in contemporary England, this paper finds that to represent undeclared work as a profit-motivated market-like endeavour is to read such work through the lens of men's accounts of such work. For women, although some undeclared work is of this variety, the vast majority is conducted for friends, neighbours and kin for reasons associated with redistribution and social capital building and thus more akin to unpaid mutual aid than employment. To unshackle narratives of undeclared work from current market-centred readings, therefore, this paper differentiates between profit-motivated market-like informal employment and undeclared work carried out in a moral economy of paid favours so as to unravel the nature of men's and women's participation in this sphere and explore the implications for understanding women's community engagement.     

Reconsidering the Division of Household Labor: Incorporating Volunteer Work and Informal Support

The gendered division of household labor is more multifaceted than the allocation of paid work and domestic work. People also engage in volunteer work and informal support. I investigate the applicability of household labor allocation theories—specifically the time constraints, economic, and “doing gender” perspectives—to all unpaid work. I analyze the 1997 Australian Time Use Survey diaries of 1,797 married couples using logistic, ordinary least squares, and seemingly unrelated regressions. Analyses show that volunteer work and support work are substantial expenditures associated with paid work and housework, but they do not create a “third shift.” Volunteer work and support work are part of the gendered household labor allocation process determined, in part, by time constraints and by gender.     

The erosion of citizenship

The Marshallian paradigm of social citizenship has been eroded because the social and economic conditions that supported postwar British welfare consensus have been transformed by economic and technological change. This article argues that effective entitlement was based on participation in work, war and reproduction, resulting in three types of social identity: worker-citizens, warrior-citizens and parent-citizens. The casualization of labour and the technological development of war have eroded work and war as routes to active citizenship. Social participation through reproduction remains important, despite massive changes to marriage and family as institutions. In fact the growth of new reproductive technologies have reinforced the normative dominance of marriage as a social relation. These rights of reproduction are described as 'reproductive citizenship'. The article also considers the role of voluntary associations in Third-Way strategies as sources of social cohesion in societies where social capital is in decline, and argues that the voluntary sector is increasingly driven by an economic logic of accumulation. With the erosion of national citizenship, Marshall's three forms of rights (legal, political and social) have been augmented by rights that are global, namely environmental, aboriginal and cultural rights. These are driven by global concerns about the relationship between environment, community and body such that the quest for social security has been replaced by concerns for ontological security.     

Researching the gender division of unpaid domestic work: practices,relationships, negotiations,and meanings

The paper focuses on the potential of quantitative research methods for sociologists who research the gender division of unpaid domestic work. To begin, it reflects on the emergence of the sociological interest in unpaid domestic work and identifies an early core concern with making invisible work visible. It is argued that quantitative research methods provide us with the most valuable opportunities for ‘recognising’ unpaid domestic work since they facilitate larger scale representative projects. However the data in most of the large scale surveys are scant, and fail to reflect developments in the conceptualisation of unpaid domestic work. Four areas of concern to contemporary sociology are identified: domestic work practices, relationships, negotiations and meanings. Given the complex questions that these four sub‐topics raise, the paper proposes a range of sub‐areas as a focus for ongoing sociological research into unpaid domestic work. It is concluded that, despite the methodological challenges presented, detailed indicators of the multiple dimensions of unpaid domestic work need to be agreed so that valid information can be collected in large scale surveys as routinely as it is on paid work.     

How does paid work affect who does the childcare? An analysis of the time use of Australian couples

This paper analyzes the effect of paid work by coupled parents of young children on the joint decisions to spend time engaged in childcare. We explore this using Australian Time-Use Survey data from 2006. We examine the effect of paid work in terms of the effect that total work time on a given day has on the amount of time spent on childcare; the allocation of time on activities across work and non-work days; and the effect of non-traditional work hours. The results show that mothers perform a large share of childcare, irrespective of their earning power or their partner’s availability to take on some of these tasks. The use of formal and informal childcare by others allows the mother to balance the competing demands of work and her own childcare; an effect that does not hold for fathers. These effects on childcare are also almost solely concentrated in the routine component of childcare (e.g. preparing meals, changing nappies), with each parent ‘protecting’ interactive childcare from the effect of both paid work and the relative availability of their partner to take on some of this childcare.     

The Other Side of Employed Parents' Life in Slovenia

In this article are described some basic patterns of employed parents' life and the social and psychological factors which prevent changing their prevailing ways of life. Most parents with children up to the age of 15 (more than ninety percent) are regularly employed. In terms of formal financial resources not all dual-earner families are above the social security level. Parents try to improve their living conditions in the following ways: all household work is done by family members (mainly mothers), they do different kinds of paid informal work and resolve their housing problems by building on their own with the help of relatives and bank credits. During all stages of life women are more burdened with informal work than men. Activities connected with the mass media and/or activities which have utilitarian value are the main preoccupations of parents in their free time. Most parents have no choice concerning their employment status and even the possibilities of choosing among various free time activities are quite limited.     

A part of,yet apart from the team: Substantive membership and belonging of trans and nonbinary athletes

Increasingly, bills and policies prohibit the participation of trans women in competitive sport. The current sociopolitical moment begs the following question: how do interpersonal interactional moments function alongside formal policies and rules to shape trans athletes’ experiences of belonging in sport? Although formal institutional rules govern trans athletes’ ability to compete in sport, informal social sanctioning also denies these athletes equitable, or even de facto, membership in sport. I draw upon two case studies to explore trans athletes’ experiences of membership in elite “women's” sport. I apply Evelyn Nakano Glenn's work on citizenship to consider how trans athletes’ experiences of belonging are influenced by both formal rules imposed by organizations as well as informal social interactions with members of their sporting communities. Inclusion is not synonymous with membership. Trans athletes render visible the ways in which this system functions to contain the diversity of humanity's gender expression.     

The Effects of Work and Community Resources and Demands on Family Integration

This paper uses interviews with 1,156 married dual-earner parents of children aged 10–17 from the 1992–1994 National Survey of Families and Households to examine relationships between work and community resources and demands and two aspects of family integration: activities with adolescents and family cohesion. The results indicate that mothers' shorter paid work hours and fathers' lower participation in community-professional organizations and moderate and high levels of informal helping are positively related to activities with adolescents, whereas moderate and high levels of participation in organized youth activities are positively related to family integration. Community-based subjective resources are positively related to family integration, whereas work-based subjective demands are negatively related to family cohesion. The findings generally are similar for mothers and fathers.     

‘If I Had a Family,There Is No Way That I Could Afford to Work Here’: Juggling Paid and Unpaid Care Work in Social Services

Drawing on three case studies in each of Australia, New Zealand and Scotland, this article explores how care workers employed in the social services sector negotiate their unpaid care responsibilities in the context of lean work organization and low pay. For younger workers, the unrelenting demands of service provision and low pay made any long‐term commitment to working in social services unrealistic, while many female workers experienced significant stress as they bent their unpaid care responsibilities to the demands of their paid work. However, male workers, less likely to have primary caring responsibilities, appeared less troubled by the prioritizing of paid over unpaid care work and less likely to self‐exploit for the job. At the same time, there is a widespread acceptance across different national and organizational contexts that the work/family juggle is a personal responsibility rather than a structural problem caused by the demands of underfunded and overstretched organizations.     

Work Hard,Play Hard?: A Comparison of Male and Female Lawyers' Time in Paid and Unpaid Work and Participation in Leisure Activities

Les auteures tentent de déterminer le temps que les professionnels, hommes et femmes, passent à effectuer du travail rémunéré ou non, et la façon dont cela influe sur leur participation à différentes activités de loisirs. Elles se fondent sur des données provenant d'avocats professant dans différents milieux juridiques. Elles constatent que les hommes rapportent consacrer plus de temps au travail rémunéré et aux loisirs, alors que les femmes accordent plus de temps aux travaux ménagers ainsi qu'aux soins des enfants. Les résultats semblent démontrer que les occasions dans l'ensemble plus importantes de loisirs chez les hommes comparées à celles des femmes seraient attribuables à des relations inattendues entre la participation des hommes aux travaux domestiques et aux soins des enfants, et leurs activités de loisirs. Les auteures présentent différentes explications à ces résultats. There has been a considerable amount of research that documents how women and men spend their time in different work and home tasks. We examine how much time professional women and men spend in paid and unpaid work and how this relates to their participation in different leisure activities. We also explore whether time in paid and unpaid work has gender‐specific effects on leisure participation. In examining these issues, we rely on data from lawyers working in different legal settings. Our results show that, as hypothesized, men report more time in paid work and leisure whereas women devote more time to housework and childcare. An unexpected finding is that the time men spend in housework or childcare is either unrelated or positively related to their leisure participation. These results suggest that men's greater overall opportunities for leisure compared with women's appear to stem from the unanticipated relationships between men's involvement in housework and childcare and their leisure activities. We raise several possible explanations for these findings.     

Productive engagement among older Americans: prevalence, patterns, and implications for public policy

This study estimates the prevalence of productive engagement among adults aged 60 and over residing in the United States over a nine-year period. We analyze three waves of data from the Americans' Changing Lives Study, which allows the findings to describe the non-institutionalized older American population. Focusing upon five activities--formal paid employment, irregular paid work, unpaid volunteerism, caregiving, and informal assistance to others--we identify changes in the engagement rates, examine the extent to which engagement occurs through single or multiple concurrent activities, and document intra-individual patterns of engagement within and across forms of productive activity, including the continuity, initiation, and cessation of involvement. The findings reveal that late-life productive engagement is widespread, with the majority of older individuals involved in multiple forms of activity concurrently. Non-market-based activities such as caregiving, informal assistance, and volunteering are most prevalent. Initiation and cessation of activities are common and yield more complex patterns and lower rates of non-participation than are revealed in cross-sectional analyses. Time spent in productive engagement is highly variable and exhibits an overall decline across time. We conclude by highlighting policy strategies to increase the availability and quality of opportunities for productive engagement and promote planning for engagement in late life.