The Third Shift: Gender and Care Work Outside the Home

Caregiving remains women's work far more than men's. Although women and men often attribute this difference to nature, this paper argues for the importance of structure, especially in employment. At least to some extent, women's employment—especially in jobs similar to men's—reduces the care work they do for kin, if not for friends. Examining the different amount and meanings that women and men—like Euro-Americans and African Americans—ascribe to care work, I suggest we view such care work as a survival strategy as well as a demanding labor of love. In this context, recent social policies should be seen as not only privatizing care but also producing growing inequality as well as a vacuum of care.