Women's time: Women in the light of contemporary time-budget research

Responses to a multinational project that compared people's time-budgets from 12 different regions, plus similar additional survey research, give unambiguous and dramatic insights into the social reality of the sexual division of labour. Restrictive laws against women have generally been eliminated and labour-saving devices in the home widely adopted, but wives, employed or not, are still the victims of old-fashioned attitudes, and work far longer hours than men. Changes in attitudes by men and women, combined with educational and economic improvements, are necessary to accelerate the movement towards the symmetrical family where equivalent duties and rewards are shared.