Total Work, Gender and Social Norms

By Michael C. Burda, Daniel S. Hamermesh, Philippe Weil. Social Science Research Network, 2007

166 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ce037862fdf299cb6032456d3216667e441e3801

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Citations in the corpus

Job Satisfaction and Family Happiness: The Part-Time Work Puzzle (2008, unknown): “Ceteris paribus, those who are in full-time work or part-time work should be as happy as those who are not in the labour force, since individuals have made their choices optimally.(6)”
Total work and gender: facts and possible explanations (2012, background): “11For a detailed and formal exposition of this point, see Burda et al. (2007). that the clusters are defined by gender-neutral characteristics.12 In such models the greater the number of clusters or interacting groups, the more likely that iso-work can obtain.”
The incremental time costs of children: An analysis of children's impact on adult time use in Australia (2008, background): “Hamermesh, and Philippe Weil 2007 ; Suzanne Bianchi, John P.”
The Unpaid Care Work–Paid Work Connection (2008, unknown): “12 Working Paper No. 86 Burda, Hamermesh, and Weil (2007) argue that this is not the case for many European countries, the exceptions being Italy, France, and Spain.”
Parental Leisure Time: A Gender Comparison in Five Countries (2013, background): “Studies have found that in most western countries, if market work and unpaid domestic labor and care are summed together, men and women spend similar amounts of time in this “total work” (Gershuny and Sullivan 2003; Burda et al. 2007).”