Is It Just Too Hard? Gender Time Symmetry in Market and Nonmarket Work and Subjective Time Pressure in Australia, Finland, and Korea

Abstract

Gender equality in time spent in market work and in housework and family care is widely seen as desirable, potentially enhancing women’s financial security and allowing men to participate more fully in family life, but does gendered time equality engender higher subjective time stress than gender specialization? This chapter uses time use data from Australia, Finland, and Korea to compare the reported time stress of men and women in time use equality households versus those in more gender specialized households. The findings provide evidence of a complex interplay among social norms, policy regimes, average weekly employment hours, and time stress from equality of time use. Time stress of equality is lowest in Finland where average hours of employment are low for men.