Gender Roles and the Division of Unpaid Work in Spanish Households |
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Authors: | Almudena Sevilla-Sanz Jose Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal Cristina Fernández |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Economics and Centre for Time Use Research , University of Oxford , Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UQ, United Kingdom E-mail: almudena.sevilla@economics.ox.ac.uk;2. Department of Economic Analysis, Faculty of Economics , University of Zaragoza , Gran Vía 2, 50005, Zaragoza, Spain E-mail: ngimenez@unizar.es;3. Research Department , Bank of Spain , Alcalá 48, 28014, Madrid, Spain E-mail: cfvidaurreta@gmail.com |
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Abstract: | Abstract This paper examines the role of the doing-gender hypothesis versus traditional models of the household in explaining how the woman's share of home labor varies with relative earnings. The findings, using the 2002–3 Spanish Time Use Survey (STUS; Spanish Statistical Office 2003), support the doing-gender hypothesis in the case of housework: a woman's relative share of housework fails to decrease with her relative earnings beyond the point where her earnings are the same as her husband's. In contrast, a woman's share of childcare time displays a flat pattern over the distribution of her spouse's relative earnings. This last result is neither consistent with traditional theories of the household, nor with the doing-gender hypothesis. It can, however, still be interpreted in light of social norms, whereby women specialize in this type of caring activity regardless of their relative productivity or bargaining power. |
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Keywords: | Household production childcare doing-gender hypothesis social norms household specialization household bargaining |
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