Gender and time use in a global context the economics of employment and unpaid labor

Gender, Socioeconomic Status, Time Useof Married and Cohabiting Opposite-Sex Parents, Ebru Kongar and Mark Price Rania Antonopoulos, Valeria Esquivel, Thomas Masterson and Ajit Zacharias

Gender and Time Use in a Global

Context

Rachel Connelly • Ebru Kongar

Rachel Connelly

Bowdoin College Dept of Economics

Brunswick, Maine, USA

Ebru Kongar Dickinson College Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA

ISBN 978-1-137-56836-6 ISBN 978-1-137-56837-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56837-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017945087

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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To our families and to caregivers everywhere

We acknowledge with gratitude the constructive feedback we havereceived on the contents of this book from Günseli Berik, Diane Elson,

thank Elizabeth Weston for the extraordinary administrative support sheprovided in pulling the chapters together to make them a book Earlierversions of seven chapters in this book were presented at the 25thInternational Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) conference

and attendees for their helpful feedback

vii

Rachel Connelly and Ebru Kongar

PART I Gender, Time Use, and the Macroeconomy

Unpaid Work in Macroeconomics:

İpek İlkkaracan

The Challenge of Austerity for Gender Equality in Europe:

A Consideration of Eight Countries at the Center

Maria Karamessini and Jill Rubery

Challenge of Gender Austerity for Equality: A Consideration

Gender, Socioeconomic Status, Time Use

of Married and Cohabiting Opposite-Sex Parents,

Ebru Kongar and Mark Price

Rania Antonopoulos, Valeria Esquivel, Thomas Masterson

and Ajit Zacharias

The Dual Problem of Unemployment

and Time Poverty in South Africa: Understanding Their

Abhilasha Srivastava and Maria Sagrario Floro

Women and the Urban Economy in India: Insights from the

Smriti Rao

PART II The Microeconomics of Gendered Time

Labor Market Work, and Housework

Double Shift, Double Balance: Housework in the Presence

Deborah S DeGraff and Rebecca M Centanni

x CONTENTS

How Do Caregiving Responsibilities Shape the Time Use

Margaret Maurer-Fazio and Rachel Connelly

Environmental Chores, Household Time Use, and Gender

Deborah S DeGraff, Deborah Levison

and Esther W Dungumaro

Gender Divisions in the Real Time of the Elderly

Is It Just Too Hard? Gender Time Symmetry in Market and

Nonmarket Work and Subjective Time Pressure in Australia,

Lyn Craig, Judith E Brown, Lyndall Strazdins and Jiweon Jun

CONTENTS xi

LIST OF FIGURES

Paid and Unpaid Work Time by Labor Force Status of Prime Age Women and Men in Canada: The Great Recession and Gender Inequality

in Work Time

common-law) women with a partner who is unemployed or

Gender, Socioeconomic Status, Time Use of Married and Cohabiting

Opposite-Sex Parents, and the Great Recession in the USA

and ethnicity (See notes to Fig 1 Fig 2 matches the

notes to Fig 1 Fig 3 shows the predicted mean minutes

spent in secondary childcare activities, and matches quadratic

xiii

Fig 4 Solo time with children by race and ethnicity (See notes to

Fig 1 Fig 4 shows the predicted mean minutes spent alone

Fig 5 shows the predicted mean minutes spent as a family,

shows the predicted mean minutes spent as a family, and

Time and Income Poverty in the City of Buenos Aires

The Dual Problem of Unemployment and Time Poverty

in South Africa: Understanding Their Linkages

Gendered Patterns of Time Use over the Life Cycle in Turkey

Gender Divisions in the Real Time of the Elderly in South Africa

xiv LIST OF FIGURES

Is It Just Too Hard? Gender Time Symmetry in Market

and Nonmarket Work and Subjective Time Pressure in Australia,

Finland, and Korea

sym-metrical compared to non-symsym-metrical households for men

LIST OF FIGURES xv

LIST OF TABLES

The Challenge of Austerity for Gender Equality in Europe: A Consideration

of Eight Countries at the Center of the Crisis

Paid and Unpaid Work Time by Labor Force Status of Prime Age

Women and Men in Canada: The Great Recession and Gender Inequality

in Work Time

by labor force status, women and men (15 years and

participa-tion rate (%), populaparticipa-tion 15 years and older, 1992 and

xvii

Gender, Socioeconomic Status, Time Use

of Married and Cohabiting Opposite-Sex Parents,

and the Great Recession in the USA

Time and Income Poverty in the City of Buenos Aires

incidence, by type of household according to employment

The Dual Problem of Unemployment and Time Poverty

in South Africa: Understanding Their Linkages

xviii LIST OF TABLES

Table 2 Mean time spent by women and men in primary

time-squeezed (working more than 50 hours per week), by

time-squeezed (working more than 63 hours per week),

LIST OF TABLES xix

Table 11 Logistic Regression Analysis: Likelihood of economic,

follower and marriage migration for urban, working age,

married women (state dummies included but not reported,

economic, follower and marriage migration for urban,

working age, married women with spousal characteristics

included (state dummies included but not reported,

Caregiving by Older Adults in the United States: Gender

Differences in Well-being

Double Shift, Double Balance: Housework in the Presence

of Children in the United States

on proportional division of home production time, women

How Do Caregiving Responsibilities Shape the Time Use of Women

and Men in Rural China?

xx LIST OF TABLES

Table 4 Mean hours of work per day by sex, age category,

of the numbers of children and elders in the household on

of the numbers of migrants by age and gender on hours

of other working-age household members on hours of

of other working-age household members on hours

Gendered Patterns of Time Use over the Life Cycle in Turkey

work (marginal effects evaluated at sample mean)

work (marginal effects evaluated at sample mean)

(paid and unpaid) work (marginal effects evaluated

LIST OF TABLES xxi

Environmental Chores, Household Time Use, and Gender

in Rural Tanzania

of an age group who collects wood and who fetches water,

African women, marginal effects from multinomial logit

African men, marginal effects from multinomial logit

xxii LIST OF TABLES

Is It Just Too Hard? Gender Time Symmetry in Market and Nonmarket

Work and Subjective Time Pressure in Australia, Finland, and Korea

LIST OF TABLES xxiii

Feminist Approaches to Time Use

Rachel Connelly and Ebru Kongar

studies, economics, and other social sciences While all but one of thecontributions in this volume are by economists, they nonethelessrepresent a range of approaches to economics as well as feminism.What all of the studies in this book have in common, however, is thebelief that gender is an important analytical category in scholarshipabout the ultimate economic question, the scarcity of time and thechoices we make in how we use our time

Feminist inquiry into time use and which activities are or should beconsidered as work dates back to the 1930s, when Margaret Reid

prin-ciple, an activity is considered work, if a third person can be paid to

perform that activity Work can be paid or unpaid, and many of thestudies in this volume focus on unpaid work As unpaid work is per-formed disproportionately by women, its inclusion in microeconomicand macroeconomic analyses has been one of the main contributions offeminist scholarship to economic inquiry In particular, feminist scho-lars have argued against the conceptualization of unpaid household

housewife as a dependent of the (male) income-earner in the household

in microeconomic analyses With the entry of more women into the

labor supply decisions as a trade-off between utility foregone fromleisure in return for wages have been problematized, as within thisframework, unpaid labor, which neither yielded utility nor income,

“while economists and census takers have waffled back and forth on

whether child caregiving should be considered work or leisure

a viewpoint which has historically predominated systems of national

While feminist scholarship has transformed economic thought sincethe 1970s, the undervaluation of unpaid work and invisibility ofgender as a category of analysis in economic analyses and policy

as if they should take a backseat to the traditionally male issues of

While a rose is a rose is a rose, the insights of feminist thinkershave taught us that, time is not time is not time The importance of

a central focus of feminist scholarship This time tends to be highly

2 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

valued by both the caregiver and the receiver – in fact, a matter of

ensure that things that need to get done are done In addition, thefeminist approach reminds us that individuals interact with the market

as members of families with strong and deep senses of obligationand gendered expectations which are slow to change even in situa-tions where the economy is changing rapidly The authors of thestudies in this volume contribute to the feminist understanding ofgender as a socially constructed concept, which takes on differentmeanings in different institutional contexts and over time Interactingwith other social categories, gender shapes our experiences, disadvanta-ging some groups while privileging others, particularly, in the sharing of

Overlapping advantages or disadvantages due to gender, race, ethnicity,

we use our time, as they intertwine in our complex and changingeconomies/societies

With time use such a large and important topic, no single volumecan cover everything Instead we have sought to provide a breath ofboth topics and geographical contexts in order to expose the reader tothe type of issues that can and should be considered in a feministapproach to the economics of time use By bringing together these

differences in time use, as well as expand our understanding in thefactors that affect these differences Most of the chapters include newcutting-edge research In addition, each chapter includes fuller litera-ture reviews than are usually included in journal articles These litera-ture reviews put the original scholarship of our authors in context andserve as an introduction to the landscape of feminist explorations oftime use

We have divided the volume into two parts Part I includes eight studiesthat introduce and analyze the two-way relationships between genderinequalities and norms on the one hand and macroeconomic phenomenaand policies on the other Four of these chapters focus on the GreatRecession and the subsequent policy responses along with their genderedoutcomes Part II encompasses topics that focus on individual and familydecision making (broadly conceived) on time use (also broadly con-ceived) Of the nine micro-oriented chapters, eight of them are empirical

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 3

studies of time use around the globe focusing on age groups fromchildren to elders Studies in this section include topics that range from

an expanded view of time as multidimensional as opposed to simplyadding up minutes over a day, a week, or a year, to time trades amongfamily members and the subjective well-being of experienced time In therest of this chapter, we introduce these studies, placing them in therespective literatures to which they contribute Our discussion isintended to both introduce the chapters of this volume, but also provide

a stand-alone structure for all of us as we consider the workings of an

2 MACROECONOMIC TOPICS INTIMEUSE ANDGENDERThe macroeconomic chapters included in this volume review and expand

gender as a category into analysis of macroeconomic phenomena andpolicies The results of this line of inquiry are inclusion of householdproduction of goods and services in system of national accounts, andmodels that incorporate household production as well as its gendereddistribution into macroeconomic models These feminist models rejectthe representative agent formulation since representative agents are gen-derless, ageless, raceless, etc The second topic explored by the authors is

work and macroeconomic developments and policies The third andrelated area of macroeconomic inquiry explored in this volume is theanalysis of the effect of the Great Recession on unpaid housework andcare work The fourth topic is poverty, which is conceptualized as both nothaving enough income and also not having enough time, and also as

macroeconomic experience of rural versus urban area as it interacts withgender and class inequalities and affects migration patterns We explore

İlkkaracan (this volume) reviews the gender and macroeconomics ture, with emphasis on its four main contributions: making unpaid carework visible in national accounts; identifying gendered outcomes on

litera-4 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

unpaid work burden of macroeconomic developments (e.g economiccrises) and policies (e.g structural adjustment programs and austeritymeasures); incorporating unpaid care work and gender into macroeco-nomic models; and envisioning a feminist approach to sustainable eco-nomic development.

While most of the gender and macroeconomics literature has developedsince the 1990s, that women can be affected differently by economic

labor as a factor in determining the gendered outcomes of development

importance of incorporating unpaid work and gender division of laborinto the analysis of development processes and policies, and also theimportance of bringing a critical lens to development processes and poli-cies For instance, as early as 1981, feminist scholars have argued thatdevelopment outcomes should be evaluated from the perspective of poor

feminist scholarship has critically examined the gendered outcomes ofneoliberal policies (structural adjustment programs) in the Global South,and also how gender norms and inequalities shaped growth and develop-ment outcomes Extensive feminist scholarship that has developed since

Development (GAD) approach, and examines the two-way relationshipsbetween gender (norms and inequalities) and development (processes and

The capabilities approach developed since the 1980s by Amartya Sen

neolib-eral development policies and is more consistent with feminist approachesthat view the goal of economic policy and inquiry as improvements in well-

United Nations Development Programme in 1990 through the creation

of the Human Development Index (HDI) The 1990 HumanDevelopment Report begins with the following statement:

People are the real wealth of a nation The basic objective of development is

to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives This may appear to be a simple truth But it is often forgotten

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 5

in the immediate concern with the accumulation of commodities and cial wealth Technical considerations of the means to achieve human devel- opment have at times obscured the fact that the primary objective of development is to benefit people (UNDP 1990, p 9)

foundations for human development are to live a long, healthy and creativelife, to be knowledgeable, and to have access to resources needed for a decent

Argentina, Australia, Canada, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy,

“Very High Human Development.” China and Turkey are in the next

210) However, when within-country inequalities in life expectancy, cation, and income are taken into account, the ranking of some of thesecountries changes considerably For instance, two highly unequal econo-mies, the US and South Africa, move down the ranks by 20 and 15countries, respectively, while some countries do not experience a change

edu-in their rankedu-ing (e.g Turkey), and others such as Tanzania and Hungary

indica-tors are taken into account, some of the countries studied in this book that

example, the US, Ireland, and the UK end up in the second tier in terms ofgender development, and others such as Turkey fall further down to the

political representation and labor force participation vary considerablyacross countries, including among the countries in each group (UNDP

more of the unpaid work burden, and women have less discretionary

6 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

As pointed out by Benería (this volume) and others (Esquivel 2016;

transformation of power relations by gender, race, class, ethnicity, as

frame-works, which provide alternatives to neoliberal policies, such as thecapabilities approach, have been criticized for having had limited success

in challenging the structures that produce and reproduce inequalities

approach by UNDP discussed above, and policies that have emphasized

“inclusive growth” (e.g by the EU), or “sustainable development” (e.g

by the World Bank), which have been helpful in terms of thinking aboutreformulating development policy, in implementation have morphed intoapproaches that do not challenge the structures that produce and repro-

The Great Recession has brought renewed critical attention to

Within this context, another universal normative framework that provides

an alternative to neoliberal policies has emerged: the human rightsapproach, which evaluates macroeconomic policies through the lens of

human rights convention can be held accountable (Balakrishnan and

and social rights, which, among others include the right to an adequatestandard of living, and satisfaction of basic needs of food, clothing, and

approaches that have provided alternatives to neoliberal policies are notmutually exclusive or contradictory For instance, macroeconomic policy

However, the human development framework has been argued to have

adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015

17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets includingending poverty in all its forms everywhere (Goal 1); ensuring healthylives and promoting well-being of all at all ages (Goal 3); ensuring inclu-sive and quality education for all and promoting lifelong learning (Goal 4);

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 7

and achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls (Goal5); promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employmentand decent work for all (Goal 8); reducing inequality within and among

for meeting Goal 5 include recognizing and valuing unpaid care and

long argued that development problems are not limited to economies inthe Global South, and studies included in this book provide furtherevidence of development problems in economies of the Global Norththrough a gender lens Nor is development a unidimensional or a linearprocess For instance, the US has yet to mandate paid parental leave, whileother countries ranked lower than the US, including in terms of level ofhuman development, have long had provisions for paid parental leave

Economic Crises and the Subsequent Policy Responses

longer than the average recession in the post-World War II era, and the

4 percent decline in US output was unprecedented in any recession during

North, the crisis spread to the rest of the world in a global economy

recession and the subsequent policy measures varied greatly in differenteconomies around the globe In the US, Canada, and Europe, immediatejob losses came disproportionately for men who predominate in manufac-turing and construction employment, leading to the characterization of

unemployment rate increased more also in the Central and SouthCentral Europe and East Asia, as well as in Latin America and the

and in Southeast and South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, women and

In the aftermath of the recession, women lost more public sector jobsdue to state budget cuts in the US and austerity measures in Canada and inthe eight EU countries Karamessini and Rubery examine (Karamessini andRubery, this volume; Kongar and Price, this volume; MacPhail, thisvolume) In the US, Canada, and the UK, men recovered jobs faster than

8 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

women, initially suggesting a“he-covery,” but women have recovered allthe jobs they have lost and more in the US by the end of 2014 (Hartmann

more than men after 2011 (Karamessini and Rubery, this volume) While in

increased in absolute terms, during the crisis the narrowing of the genderemployment gap was primarily through downward harmonization, that is,

Narrowing of the gender employment gap due to disproportionate joblosses for men and to some extent also due to women being pushed intothe workforce is not a desirable mechanism for gender convergence from afeminist perspective, which sets the goal of economic activity and inquiry associal provisioning of needs and expansion of capabilities Moreover, in all

of the EU economies examined by Karamessini and Rubery, the share ofinvoluntary part-time work increased for both women and men, and evi-dence from the US shows an increase in non-standard work schedules forwomen with less than a college education during the recession, and alsoamong African-American mothers, white mothers, and Hispanic fathers(Kongar and Price, this volume) In the Global South, there is evidence of

an increase in precarious forms of employment and in unpaid family labor

care and other policies that promote gender equality seems to have beenhalted and even reversed in the austerity period (Karamessini and Rubery,this volume) Of all institutional changes in the eight EU countries exam-ined by Karamessini and Rubery (this volume), one constant is the con-

landscape (Benería this volume)

Great Recession are in stark contrast to gender-sensitive responses toeconomic crises that have been advocated by feminist scholars.Investment in care sectors rather than physical infrastructure, for instance,leads to more poverty reduction, faster recovery from the recession, and

gender-sensitive countercyclical policy responses protect women from more adverseoutcomes of the recession and the policy responses in its aftermath (Ghosh

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 9

maintained in the aftermath of the recession, along with the welfare grams that both created public employment for women and protected themfrom the adverse effects of the recession in terms of unpaid work burdenwere maintained and even expanded due to emphasis on employmentprograms In Argentina, similarly, social inclusion and protection policies

However, even in Argentina, the counter-cyclical measures after the mostrecent recession, such as expenditures on large public works projects have

policy agendas

A full account of the gendered outcomes of the recession requires tions of its impact on the reproductive sphere, as well as for health and well-being of women and men and children Economic crises are hypothesized

burden

Increasing economic hardship in households has long-term well-beingeffects, including for children, through its impact on food security, educa-

spend caring for their children, and the time families spend together

children under the age 19 spend less time together when the state ployment rate is between 8 and 10 percent, and that this is likely due to an

unem-ployment rates Kongar and Price (this volume) show that the burden ofhousehold adjustment during the crisis is a phenomenon that describes theexperiences of low-SES households, as well as African-American andHispanic households, compared to their respective counterparts Their

analysis of the recession through a gender lens For instance, Kongar and

10 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

when the unemployment rate rises above 6 percent, however, this is more

African-American mothers, African-American fathers, and Hispanic fathers

a picture of increased hardship during the recession, especially in householdsmost affected by the recession in terms of labor market outcomes

as Capability DeprivationWhile each country around the globe sets its own poverty line belowwhich a person is considered to be poor, a global measure of incomepoverty was also introduced by the World Bank in the 1990 World

received particular attention in poverty discussions since the 1995

assess whether there is a global trend of feminization of income poverty are

However, a growing body of evidence indicates that women are poorerthan men in other aspects, namely in terms of capabilities and also in terms

stay above the poverty threshold, households need a minimum amount of

conducted since the 1960s in some industrialized economies, and in mostcountries by the end of the 1990s, allow researchers to calculate the

Feminist scholarship on time poverty has adjusted its measurement to theindividual, rather than the household level, allowing for assessment ofgender differences in time poverty due to gender disparities in paid and

has contributed to our understanding of the gender dimensions of time

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 11

poverty in the Global North (Hochschild and Machung1989; Kalenkoski

poverty in developing country contexts show that women are more likely

Other studies have focused on the impact on well-being of paid andunpaid work activities For instance, exploring this question for Canada,

eldercare and housework, increase time stress for women, while unpaidwork activities are rarely associated with time stress for men, possiblybecause men participate in more enjoyable forms of caregiving (p 90).(Also see Craig et al, this volume; Kalenkoski, this volume)

thereof Floro and Srivastava (this volume) take on this question in theSouth African context, using data from the 2000 South African Time UseSurvey They examine the unemployed and the underemployed, a group

utilizes their skills and abilities At the same time, they work long hours,albeit primarily in unpaid work activities, and have very little time for rest

this double-bind are women, as gender interacts with constraints at thehousehold level (lack of wealth), and institutional constraints such asinadequate access to public infrastructures and basic services such as safewater, health centers, and public transportation They argue that to breakthe cycle of time and income poverty requires both creation of decentemployment opportunities for women as well as men, and also the provi-sioning of affordable care services to relieve women of care responsibilities

As Floro and Srivastava argue, these policies would be the opposite of thesupply-side policies pursued since 1994 that have led to jobless growth

12 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

emerges in measuring the extent of the“dual burden” of time poverty and

both income poverty and time poverty The Levy Institute Measure of

Antonopoulos et al (this volume) apply LIMTIP to the analysis of 2005Buenos Aires Time-Use Survey data They identify 11 percent for house-holds, 16 percent of individuals, and 28 percent of children under the age

estimates of 6 percent of households and 9 percent of individuals, and

necessary for unpaid (care and domestic) work, and cannot afford topurchase market substitutes without falling below the poverty line The

the unemployed, as well as among low-wage workers, and interact withgender inequalities in the unpaid work burden Like Floro and Srivastava(this volume), Antonopoulos et al call for a combination of gender-sensitive labor market and care policies While job creation reduces incomepoverty among the unemployed and the underemployed, low-wageemployment, only pushes women and men into time poverty and withoutlifting them out of income poverty As emphasized by Karamessini andRubery (this volume), absent public provision of affordable good quality

“either some form of exploitation of the labor of other women or in a care

over-arching theme across the studies of Turkey, South Africa, Tanzania,Buenos Aires, EU countries, and the US

Inequalities Affecting Migration Patterns

Smriti Rao (this volume) brings a gender lens to rural-urban and urban migration in India She and others have argued that India is anexample of a macroeconomic context that has not generated employmentopportunities in urban areas for less well-educated workers Instead

migrating for economic reasons remains limited to a small group of

well-FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 13

educated and well-off married women, or women without a male winner Comparing these results to trends observed in China, SouthKorea, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Mexico, where growth of large,labor-intensive manufacturing sector in urban areas has pulled less well-

economic migrant women are, for the most part, truly absent in India,that is, their absence is not simply a problem with the data collection Buttaking a broader view of migration, substantial numbers of women in

of their migrating husbands The prevalence of marriage migration cates that in the absence of employment opportunities, marriage to anurban dweller remains a way to secure a livelihood for large numbers ofless-privileged and less well-educated rural women Whether access toemployment opportunities empowers women requires a careful analysis, aswhile it may be a source of empowerment and poverty reduction (Kabeer

3 MICROECONOMICTOPICS OFTIMEUSE ANDGENDER

linear By unitary, we mean that every minute of time is devoted to one useand one use only Unitary time could be added up; this is what we mean bylinear time If time is unitary, we can add up time spent each minute and itwill add up to 24 hours a day We say women work 9 hours on homeproduction and 4 hours on paid work, have 3 hours of leisure time, andthey sleep 8 hours a day Men work 3 hours on home production, 8.5 onpaid work, have 4.5 hours of leisure, and sleep 8 hours a day The activitiesthus aggregated are not always done all together The leisure may comesome in the morning and some in the evening, but we add it together andconsider only the total While most time use studies and survey instru-ments think about time as linear and unitary, there are many problemswith this approach which must be explored through a gendered lens Theextensions beyond the unitary and linear characterization of time are: what

we are doing with our time matters; we often do two or more activities atthe same time; when we do what we do matters; family members tradetime among themselves; and how we feel while we are doing somethingmatters as well as what is produced with that time Each of these extensions

is explored by one or more of the authors in this volume

14 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

3.1 The Purpose to Which We Devout Our Time MattersThe chapters in the micro section are mostly empirical studies of time use

in a variety of global contexts They begin, however, with a conceptualpiece by Julie Nelson urging us to reconsider what we mean by care work

If care work and gender differences in the time spent providing care aremeasured, then various forms of care work and measures of the differences

mostly performed by women) to include both direct care work and

direct care work is done with caring as the motivation However, all work

non-caring behaviors in the household (even behavior that is abusive and

doing more than one task at a time Sometimes doing two things at thesame time makes both activities better, like a good conversation accom-panied by a nice meal, but much of the time the two activities are intension with one another, making the time spent in this joint endeavor less

think about trying to cook dinner and soothe the baby at the same time.Either way, doing two things at the same time is not the same as doing

x minutes of activity A and T-x minutes of activity B The implications ofthis insight is that total time in all activities can add up to more than

24 hours a day, but that we have to consider time doing two (or three)things at once as different from solo activity time

Deborah DeGraff and Rebecca Centanni explore this aspect of time use

and Centanni explore differences in the way employed and not employed

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 15

women do housework The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) assumesunitary time use: only the primary activity is recorded with the respondentexpected to choose which activity is the primary activity But the ATUSdoes ask who is present in the room while the activity is taking place.Doing housework with children present in the room can be thought of astwo activities, doing housework and watching children Are employedwomen more likely to do housework in the presence of children in order

to seek out more time in the day with their children or are they less likely

to do housework in the presence of children as they have much morelimited time in which to accomplish a set of household tasks and they need

to get through them as quickly as possible? Notice that under bothscenarios doing two things at the same way is not equal to adding upsome minutes of housework and the rest of the time as child caregiver, but

it is unclear whether the joint time is more than the sum of its parts or less

mothers, with employed mothers doing less of their housework in thepresence of children

Another issue in (Micro) Time Use 2.0 is that time of day and sequencingmatters The linear model simply adds up time spent throughout the day

different from having an hour of leisure all together Sometimes havingtime disaggregated into small pieces is a good thing, but mostly biggerchunks of time are better, until the chunks get too big We can have not

context of elderly South African and the presence of a social pension.Using the 2010 South Africa Time Use Survey they use a creative optimal

a substantial amount of time in the middle of day on housework, whileanother spends a substantial amount of time on employment The thirdand fourth group spend most of their time in leisure activities, but differ inwhether the modal activity is mass media consumption versus social

16 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

activities Finally, the last group spends most of his or her time on personalcare which includes sleeping, eating, and health activities The proportion

of men and women in these groups is quite different and the patterns oftime are also different between men and women Receiving a social pen-sion makes one more likely to be in the groups dominated by leisureactivities

Posel and Graspa also report fascinating results on the question ofwhether the South African elderly have too much time, not enoughtime, or the right amount of time to complete what they want to accom-plish in a day Not surprisingly many of the elderly report having too much

for each of the clusters Only some of those in the employed clusterreported having not enough time

One aspect of time that is lost when we concentrate on the individual 24 hourconstraint is that time is tradeable, meaning any individual can ultimately havemore or less than 24 hours available on any given day If I do your laundrywhich would have taken you an hour, I have just given you an hour Tradingtime happens every day within families The chapters by Esther Rothblum;Margaret Maurer-Fazio and Rachel Connelly; Deborah DeGraff, Deborah

focus on how family members trade-off time among themselves

Tradeoffs among household labor, as well as, tradeoffs within the couplebetween specializations in market work versus housework are considered

in this thorough literature review While the topic is interesting for its ownsake, increasing our understanding of time use among a growing segment

of the coupled population in developed countries, researchers also studysame-sex couples in an attempt to separate gender effects from sexuality

that they are role-conforming women, would predict that the division oflabor within a couple would be more shared in same-sex couples alreadynot-conforming to heterosexual norms of behavior Other theories ofhuman behavior have also been employed to predict differences in thedivision of labor between same-sex couples versus different-sex couples

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 17

psychology There is agreement among the empirical studies produced byresearchers from each of these disciplines that same-sex couples do dividehousework and child caregiving tasks more equally than different-sexcouples Controlling for the gender of couple members, income differen-tials are found to have less predictive power in the division of labor within

neoclassical genderless model of economic decision making

Maurer-Fazio and Connelly also consider time tradeoffs, but in thecontext of larger extended family households of rural China Their studyfocuses on the effect of household composition and ethnicity on the timeuse of adults in rural China They divide adults into four age groups: youngadults, prime-age adults, mature adults, and older adults because individuals

in these age groups often play very different roles within the household,with the youngest ones sometimes still in school, the prime-age onestending to their own young children and establishing their economic pre-sence, the mature adults maintaining their rural home and farm and alsocaring for young grandchildren, and the older adults winding down theirinvolvement with income-generating work and perhaps needing some dailycare The analysis also separates men from women as time use is expected to

be gendered and separates the rural population into Muslim minority

that controlling for age and ethnicity, the group most affected by thepresence of others in the household is the mature adults who seem toserve as the safety value, performing extra work when prime-age adults arenot around or when elders and young children are present in the household,reducing their work effort when younger adults are available

Because rural to urban migration is quite common in the areas of Chinafrom which the data for this study is drawn, Maurer-Fazio and Connellyalso consider the relationship between the time use of rural householdmembers and the absence of migrating household members Again,mature adults are most affected in their time use pattern, adding time inboth the unpaid and the income-generating categories Young adultwomen are affected by the absence of young adult men, adding unpaidwork time, while prime-age women are affected by the absence ofyoung adult women, adding income-generating work time, but reducingsomewhat their unpaid work time

Our gaze shifts from rural China to rural Tanzania with the analysis byDeGraff, Levison, and Dungumaro of a unique data set focused on timespent collecting wood and carrying water These essential tasks of everyday

18 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

life in the poorest areas of the world require a tremendous amount of timeand physical effort which can be reduced by the presence of a village welland the availability of alternative cooking fuels Boys and girls aged 10 to

17 are analyzed separately, though both spend large amounts of timegathering wood and carrying water Interestingly, differences betweenthe boys and girls depend on who is the informant When the youth isthe informant, boys spend more time than girls; when their mother is theinformant, girls spend more time than boys Almost every mother sampledparticipates in both of these time-consuming tasks in addition to manyother household and agricultural tasks

Tradeoff between children and mothers is evident in the study, but

so is the tradeoff between carrying water and purifying the water Inthe village which has a public water tap, mothers spend more timepurifying water than in the village where the water needs to be carriedlonger distances Thus, the simple infrastructure of a village well canboth save the time of carrying and increase the health of villageresidents as they use some of their saved time to make the watersafer to drink The lesson here is that time used on one task affectsthe amount of time used in other tasks, but time use also affects well-being more generally

Overall, rural residence across the world increases the demand fortime devoted to unpaid work and is an important determinant of

such as Turkey (Kongar and Memis, this volume) and India (Rao, thisvolume) In addition, the extra demands on time that come fromreduced levels of infrastructure have the effect of making time poverty

is more severe in rural areas compared to urban areas Certainly inTanzania adult women have no time left for leisure given the highdemands on their time from all that they do In rural China, Maurer-Fazio and Connelly (this volume) argued that prime-age women andmen did not respond much to the absence of household members awaybecause of migration in part because they were already working all thepossible hours of a day

care and paid parental leave policies, shape gender division of paid andunpaid work within the household Previous studies have shown that theimpact of parenthood on the gender employment gap is smaller in EU

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 19

Time-Use Survey, Kongar and Memiş (this volume) find a similar result

pre-dominates among married and cohabiting couples, and parenthood

par-ental leave policy that creates a clear disincentive to hire women and tothe limited public provision of affordable quality child care services inTurkey

by Our Time UseDifferences in how we use our time depends on our own preferences forthe commodities we produce with our time inputs and other ingredients(market purchased goods, public goods, intermediate home-producedgoods, etc.) and the demands of others in our households (a crying child,

an elder in need of assistance, a husband demanding an ironed shirt,etc.) These demands are affected by many things including genderedexpectations (see Rothblum, this volume) In addition, we must considerhow we feel while engaging in any particular time use If we like thecreative activity of cooking, we are more likely to engage in this activitygiven the same level of preference for good food and demands of familymembers than if we dislike the messy and stressful activity of cooking

time use, the rest of the utility comes from the consumption of thecommodity produced Process utility is certainly not a new idea, but wehave only recently have sustained and comprehensive data collectionefforts devoted to collecting information aimed at measuring processutility

Measuring process utility is complicated by the fact that individualsdiffer in general levels of reported well-being In other words, some peopleare either by nature or by self-report generally happy and upbeat andothers are less so Because of these differences in levels, one needs to becareful considering the individual response to an individual time useactivity as a measure of the process utility of that time use activity andgroup averages are also subject to systematic differences in levels that arenot necessarily informative While a dollar is a dollar and a minute is aminute, a reported happy moment for one person is quite different from a

20 R CONNELLY AND E KONGAR

reported happy moment for another person In a sense, this insight goes

assess utility across individuals

New data collection efforts provide some insight into the well-being

contribution to this area of time use research by using the PanelStudy of Income Dynamics (PSID), which includes a global well-being measure and several well-being measures of individual activities.Most other data sources provide one or the other For example, theATUS 2010 contain subjective well-being modules which collect emo-

well-being level in her analysis of activity-level feelings among older marriedadults in the US

men report that caregiving activities for their wives have lower levels oftiredness and pain than other activities Caregiving activities of olderwomen do not elicit differences in any measured emotions in caregivingfor their husbands compared to other activities Kalenkoski notes thoughthat even with the PSID data, we cannot distinguish fully between theprocess utility and the utility that comes from having completed a task thatneeded completing, in other words, between process utility and totalutility

The chapter by Lyn Craig, Judith Brown, Lyndall Strazdins, andJiweon Jun also considers the effect of time use on well-being, butfocuses particularly on the reduction of well-being caused by stress.The analysis focuses on time spent on market work versus unpaid work.Households where men and women each divide their time fairly evenlybetween market work and unpaid work are labeled equal sharing house-holds as opposed to gender specialized households, where women domost of the unpaid work and men do most of the paid work The authors

of this chapter compare stress levels reported by men and women inequal sharing households versus specialized households This compari-son is made across three countries with very different work/policy

FEMINIST APPROACHES TO TIME USE 21