Housework Tasks Research Articles

Housework and Wages

Gender differences in labor market outcomes are often attributed to gender differences in household responsibilities, and substantial empirical evidence documents the direct negative impact of housework time on wages, particularly for married women. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we find that housework has a negative effect on wages regardless of marital status. Furthermore, this relation is strongest for housework tasks such as cooking and cleaning that constitute a daily routine. Because women spend substantially more time on housework, controlling for housework time increases the explained component of the gender wage gap by 14 percentage points.

Housework and Wages

Gender differences in labor market outcomes are often attributed to gender differences in household responsibilities, and substantial empirical evidence documents the direct negative impact of housework time on wages, particularly for married women. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we find that housework has a negative effect on wages regardless of marital status. Furthermore, this relation is strongest for housework tasks such as cooking and cleaning that constitute a daily routine. Since women spend substantially more time on housework, controlling for housework time increases the explained component of the gender wage gap by 14 percentage points.

Gender, High- and Low-Schedule-Control Housework Tasks, and Psychological Distress

In this analysis, with data collected from a random sample of 265 employed dual-earner couples, we estimated the association between time spent on housework tasks on one hand and psychological distress on the other. Based on the literature relating job control to mental health outcomes, we hypothesized that hours spent in low-schedule-control tasks, but not total hours spent in housework tasks or hours spent in high-schedule-control tasks, would be associated with psychological distress. Further, we hypothesized that absolute but not proportional time in low-schedule-control tasks would be related to distress. After controlling for age, gender, education, occupational prestige, number of children, preschool children, gender role ideology, marital role quality, and total number of hours in paid employment, all hypotheses were supported. Finally, as hypothesized these relationships were not moderated by gender.

Remarriage, Stepparenting, and Household Labor

Using data from a nationally representative sample, this research investigated husbands' contributions to household labor in four types of families: first-married couples with biological children, remarried couples with biological children only, remarried couples with stepchildren only, and remarried couples with biological and stepchildren. Absolute and relative contributions to total household labor did not differ significantly across family types, but husbands in remarried families contributed significantly more to the five housework tasks of cooking, meal cleanup, shopping, laundry, and housecleaning. Multiple regression analysis confirmed that the influence of family type on the sharing of gender-typed housework is significant after controlling for the impact of relative resources, ideology, time availability, and household work load. The authors suggest that the “incomplete institutionalization” of remarriage may contribute to a weakening of the gender-based segregation of household labor.

Household production time by sex and employment status: a cross‐national comparison between Finland and the U.S.A.

Two time‐budget studies, from Finland and the U.S.A., were examined across nations and across sexes with regard to household production time in two parent, two‐child households. Time‐use difference in various household activity categories (basic housework, child‐ and member‐care, maintenance, and shopping and management) were analysed according to respondents' employment status. Three‐way analysis of variance revealed that all three variables, nationality, sex and employment status made a significant difference in the time‐use mean scores. Part‐time employed Finnish men allocated more time to household production than other Finnish men. The equality ratios confirmed that women in both countries carry the heaviest burden in the house‐hold work, especially in traditionally female basic housework tasks. In Finnish households the equality ratios were consistently smaller than in the U.S. households indicating a more egalitarian division of household work. Implications for future cross‐national time‐use research including gender issues are discussed.

Measuring the activity of severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped adults in ordinary housing

Earlier work on the quality of care in settings for severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped adults raised the question whether any useful purpose is served by promoting the extensive use of simple recreational materials to occupy people. Data were collected by direct observation on the activity of 6 adults living in a staffed house organized to promote engagement in household activities. Observations were taken over 5 weekdays from 07.00 to 10.00 and 15.00 to 23.00hr. The results showed that Ss spent between 22 and 67% of available time in purposeful activity. Between 27 and 65% of purposeful activity was engagement in domestic or housework tasks. Even the most handicapped people spent more time engaged in housework than in leisure and recreational tasks. The implications of these data are commented on and measurement issues which arise in ordinary housing as opposed to institutional settings are discussed.

The allocation of domestic tasks by white married couples

Abstract This article describes the allocation of housework, gardening and car maintenance tasks by a sample of white married couples. The issues explored concern the impact of a wife's employment status and the employment of domestic service on the division of tasks between wives and husbands. The findings show that gender symmetry exists, wives perform ‘women's tasks’ and husbands perform ‘men's tasks’. Wives were, however, responsible for performing a greater number of tasks that needed to be performed more often and were time consuming. Dual-erner couples more commonly shared tasks and couples who did not employ domestic service were more likely to share tasks. Not all tasks were equally likely to be shared or re-allocated to a domestic worker to perform. Housework tasks were more often shared and routine tasks were more likely to be re-allocated. Overall, dual-earner couples had more flexible patterns of allocating domestic tasks.