The Great Convergence? Gender and Unpaid Work in Europe and the United States

Ariane Pailhé (), Anne Solaz and Maria Stanfors

No 2020-1, Working Papers from French Institute for Demographic Studies

Abstract: Over the past decades, men’s and women’s time use has changed dramatically suggesting a gender revolution across industrialized nations. Women increased their time in paid work and reduced time in unpaid activities. Men increased their time in unpaid work, but not enough to compensate. Thus, women still perform more unpaid work irrespective of context. We investigate developments regarding men’s and women’s unpaid work across Europe and the United States, using time diary data from the mid-1980s and onwards. We find evidence for gender convergence in unpaid work over time, but different trends for housework and childcare. Gender convergence in housework was primarily a result from women reducing their time, whereas childcare time increased for both genders only supporting convergence in contexts where men changed more than women. Decomposition analyses show that trends in housework and childcare are generally explained by changes in behaviour rather than compositional changes in population characteristics.

Keywords: gender; time use; housework; childcare; unpaid work; international comparison; Europe; United States of America; EMPLOI DU TEMPS / TIME USE; DIVISION SEXUELLE DU TRAVAIL / SEXUAL DIVISION OF LABOUR; ETATS-UNIS / UNITED STATES; EUROPE / EUROPE; DIFFERENCE ENTRE SEXES / SEX DIFFERENTIALS; TRAVAIL DOMESTIQUE / DOMESTIC WORK (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 1-48
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-his
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Journal Article: The Great Convergence: Gender and Unpaid Work in Europe and the United States (2021)
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