Gendered Social Norms and Microenterprise Efficiency: Evidence from Workspace Choice and Household Dynamics in Mexico

Across many countries, girls perform more unpaid work than boys. This article shows how the time young women and girls spend in unpaid household work contributes to the gender pay gap that is already evident by age 22. The study analyzes employment participation, type of employment, and wages using five waves of the Young Lives longitudinal survey for Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. Spending longer hours in unpaid household work in adolescence positively predicts later employment participation but has a scarring effect in negatively predicting job quality (that is a job with a private or public organization) and hourly earnings, particularly for women. Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions of the gender wage gap show young women’s penalty for past household work is due to longer hours of such work rather than a higher penalty for women for a given amount of unpaid work. HIGHLIGHTS Participation in unpaid household work and paid work is gendered from a young age. Time in unpaid household work as children impacts young adults’ employment. Time in household work in adolescence is linked to lower job quality in adulthood. Girls’ longer hours in household work contribute to the gender wage gap. Girls spend less time than boys in play or leisure at all ages.

This chapter addresses the crucial issues of gender and rural–urban differences in the time spent on unpaid household work in India. These are particularly pressing issues given the wide disparities between these groups. Women are largely under-represented in the workforce in India. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report on gender parity, women in India are almost ten times more likely to be engaged in unpaid work such as cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children and older members of the family than are men. This compares with a global average of roughly three times the amount of time spent by men. The findings that women spend more time than men in unpaid household activities related to management and maintenance and care of children, sick, elderly and disabled household members provide clear evidence that there is gender division of unproductive and productive activities which is induced by prevailing sociocultural norms and practices.

Since the 1960s women in most countries have increased the time they spend in the labour market, while little change has been seen in their time spent on unpaid household work. Men, however, have decreased their labour market participation and increased their time used on unpaid household work. This trend also holds true for Denmark, albeit reduced by standardization for the demographic distribution. The most robust result is a continued convergence in women and men's time use. When making a linear projection of the trends in women and men's time use, we have to go to the year 2033 before Danish women and men spend an equal amount of time in paid employment. However, for household work, gender equality will arrive as early as 2023.

This study examines unpaid work in the household in Guatemala using data from a national 2000 household survey (ENCOVI 2000), which included a time-use module. The contribution highlights the importance of unpaid work in Guatemalan households in economic terms and concludes that in 2000, its value was equivalent to approximately 30 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for that year. The value of unpaid work is estimated using an opportunity cost approach applying market wages as well as different measures of replacement costs. The study then explores the nature of time poverty in Guatemala and examines the determinants of being both time and income poor, concluding that women are more likely to experience this condition. The study also finds that investment in small infrastructure and ownership of an electric or gas stove has the potential to reduce time and income poverty in Guatemala, primarily by alleviating women's time burdens and making their unpaid household work more efficient.

We compare selected European countries using an economic dependency ratio which emphasizes the role of age-specific levels of production and consumption. Our analysis reveals large differences in the age- and gender-specific level and type of production activities across selected European countries and identifies possible strategies to adjust age-specific economic behaviour to an ageing population. The cross-country differences in economic dependency of children and elderly persons are largely determined by the age at which people enter, respectively exit, the labour market. The ability of the working age population to support children and elderly persons in turn is strongly influenced by the participation of women in paid work. We also provide a measure for the age-specific production and consumption in form of unpaid household work. The inclusion of unpaid household work leads to a decrease of the gender differences in production activities and indicates that the working age population supports children and elderly persons not only through monetary transfers but also through services produced by unpaid work (e.g. childcare, cooking, cleaning…). Given the available data, we cannot distinguish the age profile of consumption by gender and have to assume – in case of unpaid work - that each member of the household consumes the same. Hence, our results have to be regarded as a first approximation only. Our paper aims to argue that a reform of the welfare system needs to take into account not only public transfers but also private transfers, in particular the transfers in form of goods and services produced through unpaid household work.

This article explores two policy pathways – parental leave and flexible work –as complementary policy interventions aimed at promoting gender equality in unpaid care and household work. Drawing on Canadian data from the 2021 International Familydemic Survey, we examine the relationship between fathers’ previous use of parental leave, and current use of flexible work arrangements (flextime and remote work), and their involvement in unpaid care work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings support the following three arguments: First, in numerous countries, including Canada, where socially exclusive policy designs can limit fathers’ take up of parental leave, flexible work arrangements can provide additional opportunities to increase fathering involvement beyond the early months of parenting. Second, our data indicate that unpaid care work sharing is enhanced by fathers’ parental leaves and flexible working; however, fathers who have taken parental leave report dividing a wider set of household work and care tasks with their partners. Third, although their policy designs, aims, and legislation architectures differ in Canada, we maintain that parental leaves and flexible work arrangements are both more than employment policies; they are care/work policies that enact ‘social care’ and ‘democratic care’, and support gender equality and work-family justice goals.

Is strain due to household and family work associated with a subjective need for rehabilitation among employees? A cross-sectional study

Previous research suggests that women in Sub-Saharan African and other low- and middle-income countries are more time-poor than men. There is also contrary evidence that highlights differences in women's employment rates and access to basic infrastructure. This study examines gender differences in the length of the working day and time poverty in Ghana's Greater Accra Region. The analysis uses a unique primary dataset that includes time spent commuting to and from work and time in paid and unpaid work. Time spent commuting is salient in the Greater Accra Region; commute times can be long and public transport, mainly by trotro, is often uncomfortable. The analysis shows that, when time commuting and in household work are included, women's working days are longer and they are more time-poor than men. Women's greater reliance on trotros for commuting and higher rates of small scale self-employment also contribute to their longer working days. HIGHLIGHTS Time poverty limits time for leisure, sleep, and personal care, impacting life quality. In the Greater Accra Region, working days are long, averaging over twelve hours and commuting times add on average two hours to the working day. Women’s working days are 0.8 h longer, and they are more likely to be time poor. Women's time poverty reflects longer hours in unpaid household work. Self-employed women with no employees are among the most time poor.

This article presents and seeks to make visible what could be an alarming scenario. There is, we believe, a widespread and growing depletion of the capacities and resources for social reproduction ...

According to a 2019 UN report on women’s progress, women generally spend an average of 4.1 hours/day on unpaid household and care work compared to 1.7 hours/day for men. Such pre-pandemic statistics saw an exponential rise as COVID-19 swept the globe starting in early 2020. The situation is no different in the Philippines where the pandemic magnified not only the unpaid household and care work experienced by women but also exacerbated gender-based violence. This paper discusses how working women in the Philippines are burdened not only by the so-called second shift (Hochschild, 1989) but also by a more nuanced third shift (Kramarae, 2001) as they juggle the demands of work-from-home arrangements with their family responsibilities while navigating online education for themselves and their children in the midst of the pandemic.

This study examines time use and the incentives to retire that include both the value of paid and domestic work. This is accomplished by documenting the time used in unpaid household work in a group of EU countries. An economic value is assigned to this time, which is then used to calculate the income replacement rates and the option values for retirement. The study concludes that unpaid work and the possibilities for combining work and domestic life are very important in retirement decisions. The marginal value of non-paid work time has the highest impact in the retirement decision of men, especially among those in good health. Women in good health exhibit continuity of lifetime patterns and their domestic work supply does not increase substantially after retirement. Women in poor health are faced with a dual burden of work, which can explain their withdrawal from the workplace. The combination of these factors (i.e. the dual burden of work) encourages retirement. The policy implication is that economic incentives aimed at postponing retirement may fall short of expectations unless trends in time-use are properly taken into account.

This paper examines gender differences in discretionary time in Türkiye. Discretionary time, which is defined as the time remaining after one has done what is necessary in paid work, unpaid household work and personal care, is an indicator of freedom or, more broadly, of well-being. Using the 2014–2015 time use survey of the Turkish Statistical Institute, this study has found that in general, women have less discretionary time than men. There is also a remarkable difference between how men and women use their discretionary time: women spend less of it on leisure, volunteer work and personal care and more on unpaid work than men. This study also conducted simulations to examine the effects of childcare subsidies and increases in earnings of women. The simulations showed that childcare subsidies partially narrow the discretionary time gap between men and women. Surprisingly, increases in women's earnings reduce their discretionary time, increasing time disparity in dual-earner couples. This is because increase in women's earnings increase their shares in total household paid work time, but their share of unpaid labor time remains stable. As a result, these measures should be supplemented with family-support programs that promote equality within households.

New household economics (Becker 1993; Cigno 1991) draws attention to the fact that an individual's allocation of time to the market and unpaid work in the home can be best understood within the context of the family, taking the interdependence of family members into account. A core feature of this model is that spouses tend to specialize within the marriage because specialization is the most efficient productive strategy and maximizes the utility for the household as a whole. The economic theory of the family predicts that specialization of a husband and a wife towards either market or unpaid household work will follow the principle of comparative or relative efficiency.

This study investigated perceptions of recently graduated health-care professionals towards healthcare work, preferences for future careers, work organisation and management. In addition, it scrutinised the impact of unpaid household work on work satisfaction using a gender theoretical analysis. A questionnaire was distributed to 1035 nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists who graduated in the semester of spring 1999 in Sweden. The response rate was 81% and the respondents represent 3338 graduates. When estimating proportions and means, sampling weights reflecting the sampling design were used. Among both men and women, there was a high satisfaction with work in general, but a great dissatisfaction with work management and organisation. Multiple logistic regression analyses revealed a significant association between dissatisfaction with the work organisation and age groups and type of employment among the women. Younger women were more dissatisfied than older, and public employees were more dissatisfied than private employees. The women in the study did more unpaid household work than the men did. The data suggest that this can be of importance for the dissatisfaction at work, although this was not statistically significant. Working conditions and career preferences differ between the three professions as well as among men and women in the same profession. Geriatrics was not a preferred area for future work, although it is an area with predicted increasing personnel needs in the future. The results are discussed in relation to future needs for health-care personnel, gender and organisation theory. Because of the predicted scarcity of health-care personnel in Sweden, it is of importance that healthcare organisations address the issues of work satisfaction as well as possible competence drain. Gender equality in terms of working conditions is another important aspect that needs to be highlighted.

Although the last decade of research on families has contributed enormously to our understanding of diversity in family structures and the relationship of family units to various other aspects of social life, it has, it seems to me, generally failed to identify and address sources of conflict within family life. Thus, the usefulness of this research for understanding women's situation has been particularly limited. The persistence and resilience of family forms in the midst of general social change, often forcefully documented in this research, have certainly helped to goad us, as feminists, to consider what women's interests may be in the mainte-