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Gender imbalance in housework allocation: a question of time?

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Abstract

Using the 2002–2003 and 2009–2010 Spanish Time Use Surveys, this paper analyzes whether increases in nonworking time help dual-earner couples to reduce gender imbalance in housework allocation. Our empirical strategy exploits the fact that interviewed partners complete the survey on the same randomly assigned day, which may be a working day or a nonworking day for each spouse. This survey design allows us to compare the housework allocation decisions of dual-earner couples that are similar in key observable characteristics but differ in their work schedules during the interview day. We find that own nonworking days are associated with increases in men’s and women’s own contribution to housework and with decreases in the time their spouses spend on such activities. Yet the resulting imbalance in housework allocation differs depending on whether it is the wife or the husband with a day off. Thus, a husband’s nonworking day leads to an (almost) equal distribution of housework, whereas a wife’s nonworking day leads the partners to approach full specialization—with the wife performing most of the household tasks.

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Notes

  1. For example, in Spain, the ratio of women’s to men’s mean time of unpaid labor is 1.98; this value reflects a more egalitarian gender balance than in Portugal (3.4), Greece (2.4), Italy (2.3), and Ireland (2.3) but a less egalitarian gender balance than in Germany (1.6), France (1.66), and Denmark (1.3). See the OECD Statistics website (http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=54757).

  2. For example, the recent Directive 2019/1158 of the European Parliament and of the Council on work-life balance for parents and carers promotes men’s take-up of family-related time off work. The Directive acknowledges that improving the gender-balanced design of parental leave, carers’ leave, time off from work on grounds of force majeur and flexible working arrangements for caring purposes can help to rebalance the distribution of unpaid work within the household.

  3. In 1998, the French socialist government mandated a reduction of the legal workweek (at constant earnings), from 39 to 35 h. Goux et al. (2014) evaluate the effect of this measure by exploiting the fact not all firms implemented the shorter workweek before the interruption of the reform that was approved by the conservative party in 2002.

  4. Literature on preference formation states that individual preferences are acquired through genetic evolution or through learning and other forms of social interactions (see, for instance, Bowles 1998 and Bisin and Verdier 2011). Empirical studies on gender differences in intra-household time allocation have mainly emphasized the role of social norms and cultural transmission of gender attitudes in shaping male and female preferences (e.g., Fernández et al. 2004; Sevilla-Sanz et al. 2010; Burda et al. 2013; Campaña et al. 2018). The ‘nature’ explanation for preference formation—which is linked to evolutionary psychology and biology—has been less analyzed in this setting, with a few exceptions. For example, Alger and Cox (2013) suggest the presence of an evolutionary basis for maternal-paternal disparities in altruism toward children and, therefore, for gender differences in childcare. In contrast, Cochard et al. (2018) find, using a controlled experiment, that men and women do not have a different intrinsic preference for investing in a household public good.

  5. Other distribution factors considered in empirical literature include age and education differences between partners (Browning et al. 1994), the ratio of men to women in a given age interval and legislation on divorce (Chiappori et al. 2002) or gender role attitudes (Couprie 2007), among others.

  6. According to Chiappori (1997), the household decision can be interpreted as a two-stage process. In the first step, partners agree on some efficient production of the household good—bounded on spouses’ available times—\(\left[ {0,T - \overline {t_m} } \right] \times \left[ {0,T - \overline {t_f} } \right]\)—and a distribution of non-labor income. At this stage, partners maximize in hm and hf the profit or net value of domestic production: \(\pi = H - w_mh_m - w_fh_f\). In the second step, each partner freely chooses leisure time and private consumption levels subject to their individual income that includes individual wage and the corresponding share of non-labor market income (see, for instance, Rapoport et al. 2011).

  7. Respondents can delay filling out the questionnaire, but even in this case the information must refer to the original randomly assigned day.

  8. Using the sample of cohabiting men and women interviewed in the STUS 2009–10, Vivas et al. (2014) find positive gender differentials (female vs. male) in participation rates in laundry and clothing activities (38.2 pp), housecleaning (38.2 pp) and cooking (40 pp). In contrast, gender differentials are negative in gardening and pets (−8.4 pp), repairing (−5.4 pp) and management activities (−0.8 pp).

  9. The Spanish Labor Force Survey requests information on the reason why interviewees worked less hours than usual during the previous week. In 2002 and 2009 (our periods of analysis) less than 5% of them reported “personal reasons or family responsibilities” as the main reason.

  10. Time use variables recorded for short reference periods (e.g., one day) usually exhibit a high proportion of zeros. In our setting, this is observed with respect to husbands’ time but not to wives’ time, which reflects the lower men’s housework engagement relative to women’s. These circumstances suggest using a Tobit model; however, such a specification assumes that zeros indicate nonparticipation in housework, which might not be the case. Foster and Kalenkoski (2013) show that, in this setting, a Tobit specification is highly sensitive to the percentage of zeros that do not correspond to nonparticipation. In contrast, OLS results are more robust to this misclassification of zeros and hence to the resulting measurement error.

  11. Giménez-Nadal and Sevilla (2014) show that, during the period 2002–2003 to 2009–2010, Spanish women increased, on average, time spent on market work by 8 h per week and reduced nonmarket work and leisure by 6 and 2 fewer hours per week, respectively. In the same period, Spanish men reduced time spent on market work by 8.5 h per week but increased time spent on nonmarket work and leisure by about 4 and 4.6 h per week, respectively.

  12. According to the European Social Survey, between 2004 and 2010, the percentage of Spanish respondents who agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “Women should be prepared to cut down on paid work for the sake of family” decreased from 55.4% to 45.1. Along the same period, the percentage of those who agreed or strongly agreed with “Men should have more right to a job than women when jobs are scarce” decreased from 30.7 to 25%.

  13. We compute this change by adding up the estimated average husband’s share of female-typed housework on usual working days in couples where the wife earns more than the husband (0.278 + 0.058), and the estimated change on a wife’s nonworking day for the same type of couples (−0.188 + 0.135). See Table 6.

  14. This restriction leaves us with 812 couples from which 678 were interviewed on a working day for both partners, 62 on a nonworking day for the husband and 72 on a working day for the wife.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and FEDER (RTI2018-099403-B-I00) and from ECOBAS is gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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Correspondence to Begoña Álvarez.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table A8 Distribution of households by day of week in the STUS and in our sample (%)
Table A9 Baseline regression models: OLS coefficient estimates

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Álvarez, B., Miles-Touya, D. Gender imbalance in housework allocation: a question of time?. Rev Econ Household 17, 1257–1287 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-019-09467-w

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