Re: gender & work time
On Apr 19, 2007, at 8:06 PM, bitch@pulpculture.org wrote:
in the lit on the topic, it’s well-known that there’s a disparity
between self-reports, like this study, and observation. That is, men say
they do X hours of work, their wives report that their partners do X hours of
work, and then through third party observations and diary studies
This is based on time-diaries, not self-reports:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13000
ABSTRACT
Using time-diary data from 25 countries, we demonstrate that there is
a negative relationship between
real GDP per capita and the female-male difference in total work time
per day — the sum of work for
pay and work at home. In rich northern countries on four continents,
including the United States, there
is no difference — men and women do the same amount of total work.
This latter fact has been presented
before by several sociologists for a few rich countries; but our
survey results show that labor economists,
macroeconomists, the general public and sociologists are unaware of
it and instead believe that women
perform more total work. The facts do not arise from gender
differences in the price of time (as measured
by market wages), as women’s total work is further below men’s where
their relative wages are lower.
Additional tests using U.S. and German data show that they do not
arise from differences in marital
bargaining, as gender equality is not associated with marital status;
nor do they stem from family norms,
since most of the variance in the gender total work difference is due
to within-couple differences. We
offer a theory of social norms to explain the facts. The social-norm
explanation is better able to account
for within-education group and within-region gender differences in
total work being smaller than inter-group
differences. It is consistent with evidence using the World Values
Surveys that female total work is
relatively greater than men’s where both men and women believe that
scarce jobs should be offered
to men first.