Judith Treas Christine Hilgeman University of California, Irvine
In the context of growing female labor force participation, family policies and work hour regulations have received significant attention. Family-friendly policies, such as parental leave and child care, are argued to help reconcile labor force participation with family responsibilities and the limitation of work hours prevents employment from encroaching too much on family time. While the effects of these policies have clear implications for individual work hours, these policies have not been assessed for their potential to generate or ameliorate inequality in paid work hours between spouses. The objective of this research is to examine this gap in paid work hours between spouses across countries. Data for 21 countries are available from the 2002 Family and Changing Gender Roles module of the International Social Survey Programme while macro level data on work hour regulations and family policies are obtained from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The project will include additional data and analyses undertaken at Utrecht University.
This research offers the first cross-national and multi-level study of the gap in work hours between spouses -- a dimension of gender inequality correlated with a person's wages, employment benefits (including health care and retirement benefits), opportunities for advancement and promotion, and household bargaining power. Furthermore, the research provides important direction to policy-makers interested in reducing gender inequality by highlighting the types of policies (child care accessibility, parental leave, or work hour limitations) that would be most effective in reducing work hour inequalities and how these may, in turn, reduce other types of inequality between men and women, such as the wage gap and occupational segregation.
