The Gender Gaps in Time-Use Within Italian Households During 2002–2014

Abstract

How are Italian parents sharing family duties when they are both working full-time? We estimate gender gaps in the allocation of time by young Italian couples with children and document their trends over the years 2002–2014, disentangling time use on weekdays and weekend days. We show that the gaps in time devoted to Market work and Household work have narrowed over the years 2002–2014, while the gap in Basic childcare and Leisure remained almost constant. But the negative gap (females-males) in Market work shrunk much more than the positive gap in Household work (46% against 25%) The best-case scenario for gender parity is the one in which partners share similar work responsibilities and are relatively young; however, we show that family duties remain heavily unbalanced across gender in this sample. In 2014, full-time working mothers devote to Total work (paid and unpaid) 11 h per week more and to Leisure 9.7 h per week less than their partners. On the positive side, the gender gap in Quality childcare exhibits a reversed sign, which is driven by fathers’ engagement on weekend days.