Title: Week 5 HT08
1Sociology of Industrial Societies
The gender division of labour at home and at work
Week 5 HT08
2The 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
3The 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
4Explaining 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
5Explaining 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
6Explaining 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
7The 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
8Explaining 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
9Explaining 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
10Explaining 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
11The 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