Housework, food shopping, taking care of children
How have domestic tasks and activities been divided up between men and women since the 1998 French reform legalizing and generalizing the 35-hour work week?
By freeing up time, the 35-hour work week reform impacted the ways in which men’s and women’s household activities are organized in terms of duration, task or activity types, and how tasks and activities are distributed between the weekdays and the weekend. Drawing on the latest survey on how French people use their time (INSEE 2010), INED researchers Ariane Pailhé and Anne Solaz together with Arthur Solétie conducted one of the few studies that can be used to assess the effects of the reform in the private sphere. Whereas the time freed up by the reform does not vary, the way it is used differs by sex. Women continue to assume repetitive daily household tasks while men take on tasks that are more flexible timewise, thereby managing to have more flexible schedules than women.
The reform has reinforced initial male-female task asymmetry
With social characteristics controlled for, men who work a 35-hour week devote much more time to their domestic activities than do their 39-hour week counterparts: an average of 12 minutes more per day. They spend more weekdays time on DIY house repairs and garden work, administrative formalities, and “recreational” child care, thereby freeing up their weekend time, while on the weekends they spend less time on those tasks. For women, working a 35-hour week does not lead to spending more time on household tasks but rather with their children, mostly taking care of them in one way or another. Regardless of whether they work 35 or 39 hours a week, women seldom do DIY (89% do not) whereas men seldom iron (86%). On the other hand, a majority of women do the cooking, dishes, and housework every day. Contrary to these basic, repetitive chores, done by women, men do more time-flexible tasks which in turn gives them greater flexibility in organizing their weekday and weekend time.
Task distribution is more gendered during the week and when the results of the tasks in questions are more likely to be visible to people outside the family
Men’s and women’s specific uses of the same amount of additional time show that the distribution of household tasks between the sexes is not merely a question of having time: it is also profoundly “gendered.” The ways that additional time gets reallocated corresponds to traditional gender stereotypes and norms. Men’s and women’s weekend behaviors offer a particularly clear illustration of this phenomenon. Both men and women overinvest in socially stereotyped tasks (DIY and garden work for men, childcare for women) while men underinvest in housework (particularly cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry).
Women are more often in charge of taking care of the children
Women on a 35-hour work week devote much of the additional time to their children rather than housework, a finding consistent with the growing tendency to spend more time on parenting activities observed in developed countries. This type of time reallocation confirms that change in parenting norms: children currently receive more time and attention from their parents because parental investment in them is now considered a necessity—a change potentially beneficial to children’s emotional development.
Sources: "How Do Women and Men Use Extra Time? Housework and Childcare after the French 35-Hour Workweek Regulation", European Sociological Review 35: 807–824.
Contact: Ariane Pailhé, Anne Solaz (INED)
Online: January 2020
