Divided Time Gender, Paid Employment and Domestic Labour

Published in 1999. Housework and child care are a major part of most peoples lives. The growth of part time work amongst women is just one example of the way our economy is structured to accommodate this fact. Yet very little research has been done on this subject in Britain and what little has been done tends to be small scale and impressionistic. This book examines how couples divide their time between domestic and paid work and the effect that tensions between the two can have. It provides valuable evidence on how domestic work is organized and why, when women are more likely to be employed than not, men have not increased their share of domestic work. Representative evidence is combined with previous small scale research to show how private troubles are related to massive social and economic changes in British society. Evidence of this sort has never been presented before in the British context.

1. The Theoretical Context: In Search of a Usable Framework 2. Measuring the Household Division of Labour 3. A Preliminary Model of Partners’ Time Contributions to Household Labour 4. Establishing the Pattern of Attitudes Toward Men’s and Women’s Work Roles 5. The Relationship Between Attitudes Toward Gender Roles and Domestic Work Practices 6. The Effects of Life and Work History on Gender Attitudes and Domestic Work Practices 7. Partners’ Satisfaction With and Conflict Over the Domestic Division of Labour 8. Conclusions.