Gender differences and time allocation: A comparative analysis of Egypt and Tunisia

Abstract

This paper aims at examining the gender differences in time allocation between market, care and house work in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as analyzing the determinants of time allocated to each type of work across gender. This is done through relying on the data provided by the LMPS done in Egypt (2012) and in Tunisia (2014). Then, three Tobit equations are estimated simultaneously, each equation is for one type of work, using maximum simulated likelihood (MSL). The empirical results conform with the commonly known result that females tend to spend less time on market work, while they spend more time on both care and house work, compared to males. Moreover, results show that a number of individual, household, and community variables have different effects on time allocation decisions for females and males.