"In most families today, childcare remains divided unequally between fathers and mothers. Scholars argue that persistence of the gendered division of childcare is due to multiple causes, including ...values about gender and family, disparities in paid work, class, and social context. It is likely that all of these factors interact, but to date researchers have not explored such interactions. To address this gap, we analyze nationally representative time-use data from Australia, Denmark, France, and Italy. These countries have different employment patterns, social and family policies, and cultural attitudes toward parenting and gender equality. Using data from matched married couples, we conduct a cross-national study of mothers' and fathers' relative time in childcare, divided along dimensions of task (i.e., routine versus non-routine activities) and co-presence (i.e., caring for children together as a couple versus caring solo). Results show that mothers' and fathers' work arrangements and education relate modestly to shares of childcare, and this relationship differs across countries. We find cross-national variation in whether more equal shares result from the behavior of mothers, fathers, or both spouses. Results illustrate the relevance of social context in accentuating or minimizing the impact of individual- and household-level characteristics." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku). Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch; Querschnitt. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1999 bis 2008.
We examine the effects of transitions in marital and parenthood status on 1,091 men's and women's housework hours using two waves of data from an Australian panel survey titled Negotiating the Life ...Course. We examine transitions between cohabitation and marriage, and from cohabitation or marriage to separation, as well as transitions to first and higher-order births. We find extraordinary stability in men's housework time across most transitions but considerable change for women in relation to transitions in parenthood. Our results suggest that the transition to parenthood is a critical moment in the development of an unequal gap in time spent on routine household labor.
This paper proposes a simple theory of international trade with endogenous productivity differences across countries. The core of our analysis lies in the determinants of the division of labor. We ...consider a world economy comprising two large countries, with a continuum of goods and one factor of production, labor. Each good is characterized by its complexity, defined as the number of tasks that must be performed to produce one unit. There are increasing returns to scale in the performance of each task, which creates gains from specialization, and uncertainty in the enforcement of each contract, which create transaction costs. The trade-off between these two forces pins down the size of productive teams across sectors in each country. Under free trade, the country where teams are larger specializes in the more complex goods. In our model, it is the country where the product of institutional quality and human per worker capital is larger. Hence, better institutions and more educated workers are complementary sources of comparative advantage in the more complex industries.
This article explores the family organization of work in small-scale dairy farms in Mexico. By drawing attention to the division of labour by sex, the paper explores how gender norms and tradition ...interplay with economic interests of profitability in defining who is able and accountable to perform each task. The article builds on ethnographic research in family dairy farms in Los Altos de Jalisco (Jalisco Highlands), Mexico. Based on qualitative data collected by in-depth interviews, focus groups and observation, the analysis focused on the division of labour by sex and age in the dairy, the fields, and the house. Findings suggest that family well-being emerges as a significant criterion in the allocation of tasks. The production of goods and services and the production of life convey in a unified process that overlap functions of the farm, containing productive activities, and the house, as the realm of the reproduction of life. Welfare emerges as a legitimate element for the analysis of the family economy, downplaying profit maximization and self-interest as the sole elements in decision making.
•The division of labour in family dairy farms is influenced by global economics.•The dairy economy in Western Mexico relies on unpaid work for its survivance.•The division of labour in family dairy farms remains gender-specific and hierarchical.•The family organisation of labour blends productive and reproductive domains.•Self and collective well-being is an axis element in economic decision making.
The Covid-19 pandemic turned daily lives upside down. Lockdowns and physical distancing meant hundreds of thousands of people switched to working from home, significantly blurring the temporal and ...spatial boundaries between paid work, domestic labour and caring for others. This article explores gender relations, and the division of employment, domestic labour and care, drawing on early results from an online survey, Work and Care in the Time of Covid-19, carried out between 7 May and 4 June 2020.
A theoretical account of the genesis and internal spatial structure of cities is given. The essence of the urbanisation process is described in terms of the following main developmental phases: (a) ...the emergence of relationships based on specialisation and interdependence in society; (b) the pre-eminent role of the division of labour within these relationships and its recomposition in dense spatial nodes of human activity; and (c) the concomitant formation of the networked intra-urban spaces of the city. These phases are then contextualised within three intertwined dimensions of urban materiality, namely, an internal dimension (the internal organisation and spatial dynamics of the city), a socially ambient dimension (the relational structure of society at large) and an exogenous dimension (the geographic outside of the city). In light of this account, an evaluative review of what I designate ‘the new critical urban theory’ is carried out, with special reference to planetary urbanisation, postcolonial urban theory and comparativist methodologies. I argue that while every individual city represents a uniquely complex combination of social conjunctures, there are nonetheless definite senses in which urban phenomena are susceptible to investigation at the highest levels of theoretical generality.
In a context of a new transnational division of labour, temporary international labour mobility is on the rise in Europe. In particular, recent decades have seen considerably more women seeking work ...experience abroad. Observers have been concerned with how such mobility is related to individualization, and in particular how it may challenge collective institutions, communities and families. The aim of this study is to explore such issues among women and men with international work experience. Using data from European Social Survey, the paper investigates previously mobile workers in terms of their current working and living conditions. Across genders, we consider different forms of individualization that may be associated with transnational labour mobility. While both women and men with transnational work experience generally feature strong strategic individualization, this is most pronounced among men. Hence, men's mobility is among other things associated with increased autonomy in working life, while - in contrast to women - it does not seem to hamper their integration in the sphere of social reproduction.
The functioning of biological systems relies on the cooperation of specialized components and understanding the processes that produce such specialization is a major challenge in biology. Here, we ...study the ontogeny of biological systems at a new phenotypic level: the superorganisms (i.e. insect societies with specialized individuals).
We investigate how founding queens, the earliest developmental stage of ant colonies, transition from expressing behavioural pluripotency to becoming strictly specialized in egg production.
We demonstrate that the presence of workers both initiates and maintains this queen specialization, and propose that such a social control of queen behaviour is common in ants and regulated by ancestral mechanisms.
These findings contradict the traditional view of social insect queens as being intrinsically specialized in egg production and may reshape our understanding of the division of labour in insect societies.
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While women continue to do the lion's share of foodwork and other housework, they and their families appear to perceive this division of labour as fair. Much of the research in this area has focused ...on families of European origin, and on the perceptions of women. Here we report findings of a qualitative study based on interviewing multiple family members from three ethno-cultural groups in Canada. Women, men and children employed similar rationales for why women did most of the foodwork, though explanations differed somewhat by ethno-cultural group. Explicitly naming foodwork as women's work was uncommon, except in one ethno-cultural group. Yet more individualized, apparently gender-neutral rationales such as time availability, schedules, concern for family health, foodwork standards, and the desire to reduce family conflict were grounded in unspoken assumptions about gender roles. Such implicit gender assumptions may be more difficult to challenge.
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