Husbands’ and wives’ time spent on housework: A comparison of measures

This study compares a series of estimates of the time spent on housework from survey responses and time‐use estimates from the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) obtained from husbands and wives in the Sloan 500 Family Study. These include estimates from husband's and wife's answers to questions about own time and spouse's time on household tasks, and time‐use estimates from the ESM. The three ESM estimates include primary activity only, primary plus secondary activity, and primary and secondary activity plus time spent thinking about household tasks. We find that estimates of hours spent on housework differ substantially and significantly across various measures, as does the absolute size of the gap between hours spent by husbands and wives. Share of housework done by husbands differs somewhat less.     

Autonomy,Dependence, or Display? The Relationship Between Married Women’s Earnings and Housework

I argue that both the dominant models of the relationship between earnings and housework, economic dependence and gender display, have fundamental defects. They focus on the effect of women’s earnings compared to their husbands’ on their housework and ignore the possibility of an independent relationship between women’s own earnings and their time spent on housework. Using a sample of 914 married women employed full time from the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, I show that women’s housework is affected only by their own earnings, not by their husbands’, and not by their earnings compared to their husbands’. Further, I show that findings suggestive of dependence and display in earlier research are more simply explained in terms of women’s absolute rather than relative earnings. These results invalidate the dependence and display models of the relationship between earnings and housework time and suggest that married women have a substantial degree of economic autonomy in the areas of domestic life for which they are normatively responsible.     

The Effect of Housework on Wages: A Study of Migrants and Native-Born Individuals in Germany

To increase labour market participation among migrants, an increase in female labour market participation is important, with wages being a significant incentive. In research on the gender wage gap, the consideration of housework has been a milestone. Gender differences in housework time have always been much greater among migrants than among native-born individuals. Based on data obtained from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1995 to 2017, this study questioned whether housework affects the wages of migrant full-time workers differently than those of their native-born counterparts. To consider the possible endogeneity of housework in the wage equation, the analysis estimated, in addition to an OLS model, a hybrid model to estimate within effects. Significant negative effects of housework on wages resulted for migrant women and native-born individuals. The effects for migrant men were significantly smaller or insignificant, which could not be explained by threshold effects. The greater amount of time spent on housework by migrant women than by native-born women will in general lead to a larger wage decrease due to housework for migrant women than for native-born women. The results further showed that the observed variables explained very little of the migrants’ gender wage gap, in contrast to the gap of native-born individuals. Human capital returns, including education and work experiences, were much lower for migrant women than for native-born women, whereas differences in housework equally contributed to the explained share of the gap for both groups, indicating the greater relevance of housework for migrants’ wage gap.

     

“Doing Gender”

Abstract

Through thinking about and empirically analyzing lesbigay domestic arrangements in Sweden, this paper aims at broadening the understanding of gender and further developing the “doing gender” perspective as applied to housework division. It begins with a review of empirical findings of and the application of the “doing gender” approach to housework division, identifying problems associated with a focus on heterosexual units in a context where gender norms are seemingly homogeneous and conventional. To make full use of the perspective, it is necessary to allow for contradictions in and resistance against normative expectations of gender. Empirically, this translates to exploring domestic arrangements in a variety of settings with different normative expectations of gender. This paper takes a small step in this direction through undertaking an empirical study of the division of housework in lesbigay households in Sweden and finds a strong pattern of egalitarianism that consists less in a 50% split between the couple in all household tasks but in the fluidity, complexity, and deliberateness in which housework is shared, especially among lesbian couples. The analysis further underscores the importance of gender in lesbigay households.     

Life Course Transitions and Housework: Marriage,Parenthood, and Time on Housework

We examine the effects of transitions in marital and parenthood status on 1,091 men’s and women’s housework hours using two waves of data from an Australian panel survey titled Negotiating the Life Course. We examine transitions between cohabitation and marriage, and from cohabitation or marriage to separation, as well as transitions to first and higher‐order births. We find extraordinary stability in men’s housework time across most transitions but considerable change for women in relation to transitions in parenthood. Our results suggest that the transition to parenthood is a critical moment in the development of an unequal gap in time spent on routine household labor.     

Productivity or Gender? The Impact of Domestic Tasks Across the Wage Distribution

This article assesses the wage impact of domestic tasks across women's and men's wage distributions given the cross‐distribution variation in unpaid work time. The productivity–volume versus the gender–class normative argument developed here suggests competing hypotheses. Analyses of pooled 2010–2015 waves of the American Time Use Survey using unconditional quantile regression revealed that an increase in the lesser time women at the top of the wage distribution spent doing routine housework predicted a smaller wage penalty than at the bottom of women's wage distribution. Conversely, men at the top of their wage distribution spent the least time doing routine tasks, but incurred the largest penalty for an increase in that time. Increases in nonroutine housework or child‐care time did not negatively affect the wage distributions of women or most men. Results supported the volume–productivity argument for routine housework among women, but a gender–class normative argument for men.     

Working Hard and Hardly Working: Domestic Labor and Marital Satisfaction Among Dual‐Earner Couples

This article examines the effect of domestic labor, gender ideology, work status, and economic dependency on marital satisfaction using data obtained from self‐administered questionnaires for 156 dual‐earner couples. Analytic distinctions were drawn among three aspects of domestic labor: household tasks, emotion work, and status enhancement. The effects of each of these elements of the division of domestic labor on marital satisfaction were tested. We also tested the effects of a respondent's satisfaction with the couple's division of domestic labor on marital satisfaction. Finally, we tested the effects of gender ideology, hours spent in paid work each week, and economic dependency on marital satisfaction. For women, satisfaction with the division of household tasks and emotion work and their contributions to household and status‐enhancement tasks were the most significant predictors of marital satisfaction. Satisfaction with the division of labor around both emotion work and housework were significant predictors for men's marital satisfaction. Partner's status‐enhancement work was also predictive for men. Economic dependency, paid work hours, gender ideology, partner's hours spent on housework, contributions to emotion work, and number of children and preschool‐age children had only indirect effects on women's marital satisfaction. For men, hours spent on housework, contributions to emotion work, partner's emotion work, hours spent in the paid labor force, and number of preschool children had an indirect effect on marital satisfaction.     

Exploring the relationship between parents’ and children’s housework time in Spain

Intergenerational transmission has been successfully employed in economic research to explain the persistence of certain economic behaviors across generations. This paper evaluates the relevance of this transmission process in the formation of gender roles during childhood. In particular, we analyze the relationship between parents?? and children??s housework allocation patterns. We propose a simple theoretical model that predicts that parents with a strong adherence to gender to traditional gender norms??as proxied by their division of household labor??are more likely to allocate housework to children in a way that reflects stereotypes of men??s and women??s domestic tasks. The empirical application is carried out with data from the 2002?C2003 Spanish Time Use Survey. The sample restricts to two-parent households with at least one child aged 10?C17?years. We find a significant positive correlation between a more egalitarian parents?? allocation of housework and a less asymmetrical distribution of domestic chores between sons and daughters.     

The Impact of Domestic Work on Men's and Women's Wages

Past research has consistently found that the negative relationship between housework and wages is stronger for women than for men. This article tests a potential explanation for this difference by focusing on the fact that men and women typically perform different types of household chores. Traditionally “feminine” and “masculine” task types are likely to interfere with work differently, because they vary as to when and how often they must be performed. Based on longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and Households, fixed‐effects regression results show that only time spent in female housework chores has a negative effect on wages. Furthermore, gender differences in the effect of housework disappear upon disaggregating housework into task types. This research suggests that a more equitable distribution of not only the amount, but also the type, of housework performed by men and women in the home may lead to a narrowing of the gender gap in wages.     

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.     

English households and routine food practices: a research note

This paper reports some findings from a study of households in the region of Greater Manchester. As part of a wider study of divisions of labour within households, information was collected about food preparation, the place of food in domestic routines and aspects of food preferences. The results are compared with Charles and Kerr's (1988) account of British domestic food practices.     

Signs of Change? At‐Home and Breadwinner Parents' Housework and Child‐Care Time

The authors analyze American Time Use Survey data to examine patterns in domestic work among at‐home and breadwinner parents to gauge how time availability, relative earnings, and gender shape time use in couples with extreme differences in earnings and work hours. They find that involvement in female‐typed housework is an important driver of overall housework time. It is counternormative housework behavior by at‐home fathers that shapes conclusions about how time availability, relative resources, and gender influence parents' housework. Although time availability appears to shape child care in comparable ways across parents, mothers are more engaged in child care than similarly situated fathers. Overall, comparisons point to the importance of distinguishing among gender‐normative housework tasks and accounting for differences in engagement on work and nonwork days. The results provide a basis for assessing the social significance of growing numbers of parents in work–family roles that are not gender normative.     

Household structure and housework: assessing the contributions of all household members,with a focus on children and youths

Most research into the division of household domestic labor focuses on couple households, treating other household members such as children/youths and other adults as independent variables affecting the domestic work of husbands and wives. We present an integrated analysis of variance/variance decomposition that summarizes the determinants of the housework contributions of, and the housework burden imposed by, all the individuals in four common household types, with a focus on the contributions of older children and youths. We demonstrate the importance of statistical interactions between the contributions of different household members (distinguished by partnership status, gender, and the ages and genders of children/youths), in particular for those households containing children/youths. We conclude that in order to analyze the contributions of all household members jointly, it is necessary to distinguish different household compositions for separate analysis.     

Renegotiating the domestic division of labour? A study of dual career households in north east and south east England

This paper is concerned with extending debate on the renegotiation of the domestic division of labour within the context of contemporary economic restructuring. Our focus is on a form of household which is becoming increasingly common in Britain in the 1990s. This is the dual career household, in which both partners are in full time professional/managerial employment. A sample of 71 households drawn from the North east and South east, forms the basis for the study. The paper is divided into three main sections. In the first we establish a typology of forms of the domestic division of labour, as well as a means of allocating individual households to particular forms of the domestic division of labour. Then we move on to discuss the degree of variation in particular forms of the domestic division of labour found within our sample households and illustrate these with reference to five case studies. In our final section we consider the implications of our findings for the respective arguments of Lydia Morris and Jane Wheelock; point to the significance of gender identities to an understanding of between household variation in form of the domestic division of labour; and suggest how our finding shed light on the debate over women and social class.     

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.     

On the Question of the Feminization of Production on Part-time Farms: Evidence from Norway1

Abstract The argument that production on part-time farms has been feminized is evaluated using longitudinal and indepth interview data sets from communities throughout Norway. Time-series data suggest that traditional part-time farms are not being reproduced in Norway. Rather, there is a shift toward modern forms of part-time farming; in its most common form, women juggle off-farm, farm, and household work while men farm or combine farming with an off-farm job. As some women shift or reduce their labor input to the farm, others opt to become independent female farmers. What has emerged is an increasing number of two-career households with male and, less frequently, female farmers whose working spouses contribute some labor to die farm. In all cases, women continue to do most, if not all, of the domestic housework.     

Work and Family: How Does the (Gender) Balance Change as Children Grow?

This article investigates how work–family balance and the gender division of labour differ according to whether children are in early childhood, middle childhood or the early teen years. It uses measures of both behaviour and attitudes, drawing on two nationally representative Australian data sets, the Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey and the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia. Women have more responsibility for care than men, but with older children there is greater gender equity in the division of labour, a less pressing domestic burden and less maternal time stress. This occurs because women recalibrate their commitments to work and home, not because domestic labour is redistributed between mothers and fathers. Further, it does not hold if women replace unpaid with paid labour; mothers who work full time have high total workloads and high stress levels regardless of the age of children. Fathers are more satisfied with their work–family balance the more they participate in childcare and the more they feel supported by their workplace to access family‐friendly work policies.     

On the sociology of women's unemployment,its neglect and significance

Although there is an extensive and varied literature on the nature and consequences of unemployment very little has been written about the experiences of jobless women. This is unfortunate since there are good sociological reasons why the reactions to job loss among women may be different from those of men. Empirical data tend to support this expectation although more research is needed and called for. Sociological studies of unemployed women could contribute to the development of theories about wage-work, family life and domestic labour. Women's unemployment also has a broader significance in that it bears directly upon theories of social stratification and social order that are central to sociological study as a whole.     

Shared or separate? Money management and changing norms of gender equality among Norwegian couples

Over the last generation the male breadwinner/housewife family has gradually become outdated as the dominant normative model for family households. The new ideal has become the adult worker family model, where gender equality defined as economic independence and sharing of household work and childcare between spouses/partners is the norm. The Nordic countries are the frontrunners of this development, and the Nordic welfare model is assumed to be well adapted to this new ideal. However, this ideal does not hold clear norms of how money should be managed and shared in family households, and Nordic families have to establish their own systems. Norwegian survey data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in 1994 and 2002 are used to analyse patterns of money management in family households. Our study indicates that, even if sharing of economic resources and responsibility remains the most common pattern, a greater number of families are choosing separate and independent systems of financial allocation. This increase in divided systems of money management may lead to new gender inequalities because of the lack of recognition of the value of domestic labour and family care as part of the common provision.