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Week 5 HT08

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Rising rates of female labour market participation in the the last 50 years ... Women and men enact gender by doing (not doing) domestic labour ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Week 5 HT08


1
Sociology of Industrial Societies
The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
2
The gender division of labour at home and at work
  • Recent trends in gender equality
  • Rising rates of female labour market
    participation in the the last 50 years
  • At the same time, increasingly egalitarian
    gender-role attitudes
  • Raises questions about recent trends and
    contemporary patterns of gender equality
  • At home an increasingly equitable
  • division of domestic labour between the
    genders?
  • At work a reduction in the degree of
    occupational segregation (and unequal pay) by
    sex?

reporting conservative gender-role attitudes
Source Brewster and Padavic 2000
The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
3
The changing gender division of domestic labour
  • Growing equity in the gender division of domestic
    labour over time
  • Convergence between genders in
  • time spent on domestic work
  • Womens domestic work hours six times
  • that of men in 1965 two times by 1995
  • Due mainly to reduction in womens
  • domestic work hours
  • Much of mens increasing contribution
  • entails non-core domestic work
  • More recently a tailing-off of mens
  • contribution to domestic work
  • Why are women still doing the bulk
  • of the domestic work?

Source Bianchi et al 2000
The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
4
Explaining the gender division of domestic labour
  • Sociological accounts of the gender division of
    domestic labour
  • The time availability hypothesis
  • Less time spent in paid work means more
  • time for domestic work
  • More equitable DDOL with declining
  • gender difference in time spent in paid work
  • The relative resources hypothesis
  • Disparities in human capital earnings
  • creates power imbalance between
  • provider and dependent
  • More equitable DDOL with declining gender
    differences in earnings
  • The gender-symbolism hypothesis
  • Women and men enact gender by doing (not doing)
    domestic labour

The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
5
Explaining the gender division of domestic labour
  • Effect of time availability on domestic work time
    of a different magnitude for women as compared to
    men (Bianchi et al 2000)
  • As womens hours in paid work increase from 0 to
    36 hours, substantial decrease in time spent on
    domestic work of about 6 hours (and increase for
    men of 1 ¾ hours)
  • For men, much smaller decrease of 2 ¼ hours (made
    up for by 2 hour increase in womens domestic
    work time)
  • Likewise gender differences in effects of
    part-time work and short- and long-term
    unemployment (Brines 1994)
  • For women, all three increase time spent on
    domestic work
  • For men, only short-term unemployment makes a
    significant difference
  • However, counting all work (domestic and paid),
    gender balance consistently about 5050 over time
    (Sullivan 2000)

The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
6
Explaining the gender division of domestic labour
  • Relative resources hypothesis holds for women
    domestic work hours decline as move from
    dependency to providership
  • Gender-symbolism hypothesis holds better for men
    domestic work hours lowest at extremes of
    dependency/providership

Source Brines 1994
The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
7
The changing gender division of labour in paid
work
  • Limited equalization of gender division of labour
    in paid work
  • Growing gender equity within
  • professional occupations
  • Elsewhere sex segregation has
  • declined little, with men/women
  • continuing to dominate
  • Managerial roles
  • Administrative work
  • Skilled trades
  • Personal service
  • Sales/Customer service
  • Plant and machinery work
  • High degree of sex segregation
  • Vertically women more often in

Source Dex et al 2006
The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
8
Explaining the gender division of labour in paid
work
  • Sociological accounts of the sex segregation of
    occupations
  • Gender differences in job choices
  • Women prefer jobs that fit well with family
    commitments
  • Alternatively, womens job choices constrained by
    family
  • Sex segregation along family-friendly/unfriendly
    dimension
  • Gender differences in human capital
  • Work experience lower and human capital
    depreciation
  • greater for women b/c family-related career
    interruptions
  • Sex segregation based on human capital of
    individuals
  • Gender discrimination in hiring practices
  • Employers exercise tastes for (gender)
    discrimination re certain occupational roles
  • Employers practice statistical discrimination
    against women, applying aggregate level gender
    distinctions to hiring decisions a the level of
    the individual
  • Sex segregation based on human capital
    requirements of occupations

The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
9
Explaining the gender division of labour in paid
work
  • Gender differences in job choices
  • Preference theory (Hakim 1995)
  • Sizable proportion of women are family-focused
    rather than career-focused
  • Rate convenience of jobs over pay and prospects
  • More weakly committed to paid work than men
  • More likely to choose part-time work, even if no
    dependent children
  • Higher job turnover, shorter job tenure
  • Not preferences but constraints, due especially
    to household and childcare commitments (Ginn et
    al 1996)

Source Hakim 1995
The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
10
Explaining the gender division of labour in paid
work
  • Human capital differences by sex
  • Gender pay gap
  • Explained little by education diffs between
    genders (c.5)
  • But substantially by gender diffs in work
    experience (20-25)
  • Pay gap further linked to feminine human
    capital
  • Womens specialization in jobs requiring
    nurturant skill (3-5)
  • Womens concentration in particular occupations
    (7-12)
  • See Kilbourne et al 1994
  • Statistical discrimination by sex
  • Sex segregation by job title
  • Substantial between firms (60)
  • But greater still within firms (96)
  • In (few) firms with mixed sex jobs
  • Much more sex segregation than job
    characteristics would predict
  • Women most severely under-represented in jobs
    with high specialization and training time
    employers reserve jobs with higher replacement
    costs for men
  • See Bielby and Baron 1986

The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
11
The gender division of labour at home and at work
  • Increasingly equitable gender division of
    domestic labour
  • But mainly due to women doing less domestic work
    only partly due to mens increasing contribution
  • Time spent doing domestic work affected by time
    availability more so for women than for men
  • Relative resources predict time women spend doing
    domestic work men seem more affected by
    gender-symbolism of domestic work
  • Largely persistent gender division of labour in
    market work
  • Much to do with womens (constrained) job choices
  • Partly to do with human capital differences
    between the genders but also human capital
    requirements of jobs implying statistical
    discrimination
  • Substantial trade-off between domestic and market
    work a trade-off that continues to be felt more
    strongly by women than by men

The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
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