Do Better-Educated Couples Share Domestic Work More Equitably in Japan? It Depends on the Day of the Week

Abstract

This paper investigates the gendered division of labor in different types of domestic work within married couples in contemporary Japan. We analyze routine housework such as cleaning and cooking, non-routine housework such as home repairs, and care work by using the 2016 Survey of Time Use and Leisure Activities (Japan’s national time diary survey). Our core analysis is done using ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions on total domestic work time, routine housework time, non-routine housework time, and care time. We find that women’s domestic work time dwarfs men’s, and there is some variation by day of the week and education. On weekdays domestic work is almost exclusively the domain of women. On weekends we find evidence of compensatory behaviors for both men and women. Men, especially those with university education, catch up on all types of unpaid work while women, especially those with tertiary education, catch up on unpaid work mostly by spending more time caring for children. Looking at the family balance in sharing domestic labor we find that men increase their time on unpaid work on weekends proportionately more than women do. Consequently, within couples, wives’ share of all types of unpaid work is around 10% smaller on weekends compared to weekdays. In couples where wives have tertiary education, there is an additional reduction by several percentage points in their weekend share of domestic work time compared to weekdays. Our findings suggest that Japanese men’s long work hours contribute to gender inequality in domestic work participation. We also find that university education is associated with more equal sharing of domestic workload, indicating that socialization may play a role in bringing about greater egalitarianism in the domestic sphere in the future.

How do Older Adults Spend Their Time? Gender Gaps and Educational Gradients in Time Use in East Asian and Western Countries

“…Prior research suggests that people report their time use rather accurately in time use diaries at old ages (Sayer et al, 2016), and that age is not associated with systematic error in time use data (Kan 2008;Kan and Pudney 2008). Therefore, in line with previous time use research (Adjei et al, 2017;Anxo et al, 2011;Hertog et al 2021;Kan et. al.…”

“…Documenting time-use inequalities across socio-demographic groups can help address larger societal issues like inequalities in pay, physical and mental health, life expectancy and happiness (Bianchi et al, 2014;Musick et al, 2020;Nomaguchi et al, 2005;Sayer et al, 2009). Previous comparative time-use studies have focused predominantly on working age adults (Hertog et al, 2021;Kan et al, 2011;Sullivan & Gershuny, 2001;Sullivan et al, 2018), and we know little about time-use patterns later in the lifecourse (for notable exceptions see Adjei & Brand, 2018;Anxo et al 2011). Given demographic trends in population aging (i.e., the share of older adults is growing compared to younger people; Bloom et al, 2011;He et al, 2016), it is imperative for scholars to study the time-use budgets of older populations.…”

Married Adults Coresiding with Older Parents: Implications for Paid Work and Domestic Workloads

“…In 2018, Japan ranked 110 th out of 149 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report, a testament to its low levels of gender equality. Japanese wives continue to be responsible for virtually all housework and care work in married couples (Hertog et al, 2021) so the work-family conflict primarily affects them. Norms about gender roles have shown limited change among Japanese men and women born after the 1950ies (Piotrowski, Yoshida, Johnson, & Wolford, 2019).…”

Three-Stage Transitional Theory: Egalitarian Gender Attitudes and Housework Share in 24 Countries

“…Gender revolution in the labour market incites changes at home and vice versa. Although nowadays women still undertake more housework than men (e.g., Gershuny, 2000 ; Heisig, 2011 ; Hook, 2006 ; Hook, 2010 ; Kan, 2008a ; Kan and He, 2018 ; Kan and Laurie, 2018 ; Kan et al, 2011 ; Kolpashnikova, 2018 ; Kolpashnikova and Kan, 2020 ), they are less confined to the traditional roles of the gendered housework division than before as revealed in the gradual reduction in their domestic work time over the years ( Gershuny, 2000 ; Heisig, 2011 ; Hertog et al, 2021 ; Hook, 2006 ; Hook, 2010 ; Sullivan et al, 2018 ). Recent research generated more evidence that the housework share of women and men in heterosexual couples was converging in the industrial countries, albeit only slowly and intermittently ( Altintas and Sullivan, 2017 ; Kan et al, 2011 ; Sullivan et al, 2018 ).…”