alexander szalai on women's time, 1975

8/2/2019 Alexander Szalai on Women's Time, 1975

1/15

W omens Time 385

WOMENS TIME

Women in the light of contemporary

time-budget research

Alexander Szalai

Respon ses to a mu ltinational project that compared peop lestime-bud gets from 12 d ifferent regions, plu s similar ad d itionalsurvey research, give un am biguou s and -d ram atic insights intothe social reality of the sexu al d ivision of labour. Restrictivelaws against w omen h ave generally been eliminated and labour-saving d evices in the home widely adopted , but w ives, emp loyedor not, are still the victims of old-fashioned attitud es, and w orkfar longer hours than men. Changes in attitud es by men andwom en, combined with edu cational and economic imp rovements,are necessary to accelerate the mov ement tow ard s the symm etricalfamily w here equivalent du ties and rewards are shared.

ARISTOTLE defined time as a measu re of mov emen ts. Transferred to thehu man sphere, we may sp eak of time as a measure of activities. In our modernur ban indu strial civilisation we hard ly think an y mor e of the extent to wh ichour daily activities have become regulated by the clock. We wak e up atsix-thirty in the mor ning; we say good bye to the childr en at seven-thirty wh enthey hav e to leave for school; we catch the seven-fifty bu s; we wor k from halfpast eight to five in the afternoon with a lunch break of an hour at noon; wewat ch the seven oclock TV new s before having dinn er; and so forth. We evengot accusto med to wear a mechanical device on our bod y, a timepiece or awr ist-wat ch, in ord er to coordinate our activities with the great clockwork ofsociety.

It is, how ever, by no mean s natu ral to use even-flowing ph ysical time as ameasu re and regulator of hu man activities. In fact, this kind of measu remen tand regulation is a relatively new invention which came with the mod ernera of manu facture and ind ustry, with fixed working hour s, hourly wages,clocks in the chur ch steeples, and wailing factory sirens.

Physical time attained its pr esent social imp ortan ce only wh en the wor king

Dr Szalai is Professor of Sociology, Karl Marx University of Economi c Sciences, Bud apest, Hu ngary.A version of this article w as distributed as an official document to the delegations of the UN Inter-na tion al Wome ns Year Con feren ce, Mexico City, 19 Jun e-2 July 1975.

FUTURES October 1975


2/15

386 Womms Time

place got separated from the home and the farmstead, wh en breadwinningceased to be a dom estic activity shared by all mem bers of the family cap able ofwork, when the sharp split between working time and free time began. Until

then the seasonally changing length of the day light, the tasks to be carriedou t in the fields, the ph ysiological needs of family m embers and of dom esticanimals to be cared for, and oth er m ore or less spon taneou s factors of this kinddetermined in the main the daily rhythm of life.

Even today we, wh o live in the midst of urban industrial surroun dings, tendto evade the tyranny of the clock in our more p rivate mom ents. We lose ourfeeling for the passing of ph ysical time when w e are absorbed in reading aninteresting book or in playing with our childr en; we do nt check th e timewh ile making love. When engaged in such private or leisurely activities, wetake a look at the watch only if we have some other business to perform in thegreat society that sets the exact time and d uration of our occup ations by thehour and the minute.l

Whatever natu ral and cultu ral retreats we may still be able to mainta in,ur banisation and indu strialisation have irrevocably introd uced ph ysical timeas a measu ring and regulating device into the life of hu man ity. Even wh eretrad itional rur al and agricultural conditions still pr evail, th e diffusion ofcontemporary cprogramm ed prod uction techniques an d the penetration ofthe mod ern worldwide transport and comm un ication system are beginning toset the clock.

The old adage time is money was once a youn g and rather revolutionaryinsight into the wor kings of the new ind ustrial society. As time became mor e

precious, so employers became more interested in the way the worker spenthis time at the workplace. At first it seemed enough to stretch the workd ayas long as possible, and to check wh ether the worker was not idling du ring thepaid hou rs. How ever, as more and more comp lex p rodu ction techniquesand machineries were introdu ced, the employers found it necessary to com-mission expert (time and motion studies in order to find ou t how mu ch timethe worker spend s on every single movement in the course of his prod uctivework an d to set time norm s, expressed in minu tes and second s, for all his opera-tions. As time was thu s bud geted by the employers, the workers retaliatedwith their own time bu dget. In their fight for a shorter and less exhaustingwor kd ay, they proclaimed in the late 1880s the famou s slogan of 3 x 8 , mean-

ing 8 hour s of wor k, 8 hou rs of free time, 8 hou rs o f sleep. Notw ithstand inglegal regu lations concerning the length of the official (p aid) w orkd ay, thehu man dem and formulated in this slogan remains unfulfilled almost everywherewith respect to the overwhelming majority of the working pop ulation-andmost of all with respect to employed wom en bearing the burden of a dailysecond shift in their own household.

By the mid dle of the last century , economists stud ying the living cond itionsof working people and certain laws of consump tion, found it useful to establishand to evaluate so-called family bud gets. How mu ch income do workingpeoples h ouseholds have from various sources and in wh at propor tion are theavailable fund s spen t on various commod ities and services? As such investiga-tions pr odu ced rather interesting insights into general social conditions, socio-logists began to ask themselves wh ether a stud y of the ways in which people



3/15

Womens Time 387

spend their time could not lead to still mor e valuable insights into peoples way sof life. After all, not every kind of hu ma n activity is reflected in items of incomeor expenditure but un dou btedly every hu man activity costs time and the time

it costs can be, in principle, measu red and registered. A compa rison of timebud gets m ight be even simpler than that of money bud gets because peoplesincomes are subject to considerable variations wh ile everybod y has exactly24 hour s or 1440 minu tes per d ay at his disposal to spend .

The real situation proved to be mu ch more complex than the originators ofthe idea of time b ud gets sup posed . It is, for instance, not at all easy to observeand register wh at a person does in the course of a day, how mu ch time he orshe spen ds on various activities, etc. People ma y also perform mor e than justone activity at a time, eg reading the newspap er while riding the bus to work,or listening to the rad io while performing hou sehold chores. But in spite of alltheoretical and pr actical difficulties involved, tim e-bud get research has becomedu ring the last decades a highly developed and mu ch app reciated tool ofemp irical social research, wid ely u sed in the stud y of peop les life, wor k andleisure, in the investigation of living and working conditions in hou seholds,factories, and commu nities, in mass-comm un ications researchs, in man pow er

TABLE 1. WHAT IS A TIME BUDGET

As the International Encyclopedia of the of the population: men and women;SocialSciencesexplains (Vol16, pp. 42-47),2 married or unmarried; self-supporting ora time budget is a log or diary of the dependent; professionals, businessmen,sequence and duration of activities in employers of higher or lower rank, tradeswhich an individual is engaged over a people, skilled and unskilled workers,specific period, most typically the 24-hour housewives, etc. All of them will showday. Time-budget research involves the typical differences in the structure of theircollection of numerous such protocols average daily time budgets which reflect,from members of a population to analyse after all, the differences in the structure ofmain trends and subgroup differences in their daily activities. Needless to say thatthe allocation of time. the as yet much less studied time budgets

While many social inquiries are con- of very young or very old people (eg, schoolcerned with the amount of time spent on a children or completely retired persons)particular kind of activity (eg, the journey will again differ from that of averageto work, daily shopping, or television adults.watching), the term time budget is Formerly, time-budget research wasgenerally reserved for an exhaustive mostly concerned with the amount of timeaccounting of a whole period of time in an allocated to various activities. Nowadaysindividuals experience, whatever the the timing of activities (at what time of thecomponent activities happen to be. Infor- day or of the week they are performed),

mation on each and every activity within their frequency (how often they occur),the given time period is registered in the and their location (where they are beingcontext of all other activities performed. performed) have become, in manyThis permits us to find out, for instance, respects, of equal interest. Considerablewhat else people who spend little time on interest is being attached also to thetelevision viewing do with the time thereby company in which people spend their timesaved, or what other activities get curtailed and perform their various activities.in the case of employed women who have For obvious reasons, the pattern ofto take care of several children at home. daily activities is rather different on work-

Time-budget data are presented mostly ing days and over the weekends. For manyin aggregated form, that is as calculated purposes separate time budgets have toaverages based on the individual time be established with reference to ordinarybudgets of a representative sample of the weekdays, Saturdays, and Sundays: inpopulation. For most purposes, it is useful general surveys a proportionate numberto go beyond general averages, that is to of observations have to be included forproduce statistical breakdowns showing every day of the week. There are also

the special characteristics of the daily seasonal changes in the activity patternactivities of various groups and strata which have to be taken into account.



4/15

388 W omens Tim

and traffic plann ing, etc. Table 1 explains som ewh at mor e about the time bud getas a research tool and gives some general characteristics of time-bud get d ata.

We shall be interested here mainly in those find ings of contemp orary time-

bud get research which throw some light on the situation of wom en in societyand on the difficulties with wh ich wom en have to cope du e to inequities anddiscriminative pr actices they meet in their social career, in society at large, an deven in their ow n household and family.

T h e s e x u a l d i v i si o n o f l a b o u r

There is pr obably no other social ph enom enon in wh ich time-bud get researchhas prod uced su ch un ambiguou s, well-docum ented, and dram atic insights intosocial r eality as the sexual division of labour.

By the sexual division of labour we mean simply the way in wh ich thevarious tasks and chores of everyda y life are divided between the two sexes.As hu man beings, m en and wom en have naturally some common physiologicalneeds to fulfil each da y: they h ave to get some sleep, they h ave to still theirthirst and hun ger, they have to devote some time to their p ersonal hygiene, etc.How ever, for all the rest of the time m en and wom en par take, to a typicallydifferent extent, in the various categories of individu al and collective activities,especially in those to wh ich we associate the notion of paid or un pa id work.

There is a wid espread tend ency to explain a great pa rt of the sexual d ivisionof labour prevailing in ou r societies by referring to differences in the natu ralendow ments, that is in the somatic and m ental make-up, in the physical

strength, etc of men and w omen. However, with a very few exceptions, suchallegedly natu ral explanations given for any specific trait of the sexual divisionof labour in contemp orary cultures is based on an ignoran ce of cultural variabi-lity or-more often-on simple prejud ice. Take the case of ph ysical strength .Women should be less able than m en to perform tasks involving great p hysicalexertion. Still, accord ing to social anth rop ological d ata from George Mu rd ocksfamou s Yale University Cross-Cultur al Sur vey,s some of the most exertingtypes of heavy work are allocated in a great nu mber of cultures to wom en.Thus, for instance, water carrying is regard ed as an exclusively feminine task in119 cultures ou t of 138 observed ; bur d en bearing is regard ed as an exclusivelyfeminine task in 59 cultures ou t of 128 observed . There are 36 know n cultures in

wh ich the building of dw ellings, six in wh ich lum bering, and a t least one inwhich mining and quarrying are left entirely to wom en. Laun dering, whichbefore the advent of washing machines was one of the most strenu ous tasks,remained un til very recently a typically feminine job allocated to the wash er-wom an or the hou sewife pr actically everywh ere in Western civilisation. Thus,extreme caution has to be app lied before attributin g the sexual division of labourto natu ral factors. 4

True, only wom en give birth to childr en, and wh ere bottle feeding h as notreplaced breast feeding, youn g mothers may be hamp ered for an app reciableperiod o f time in the perform ance of their occup ational du ties. How ever, thisexplains very little of the han dicaps and discriminations wom en hav e to copewith in their occup ational life. This is evidenced by the fact that single womenor married wom en with no children do not fare mu ch better in their occupational



5/15

Womens Time 38 9

careers than moth ers. Besides, w hat r eally count s is not so mu ch th e ph ysio-logical fact of bald-bearing but rather the ~~~~r ~~ determined sup e~~uctureof motherh ood and child care. Nothing in nature prescribes that baby food has

to be cooked and spoon fed or that d iapers have to be changed and washed bymothers; that it is the female and n ot the male p arent wh o should stay awayfrom w ork an d ta ke care of the tod dler if the child hap pen s to be ill. Nor is thewom an, of course, better equipped by natur e than the man to carry out the greatvariety of tasks allocated to the hou sewife.

The recognition of the relatively small role of natu re and of the overw helmingimp ortan ce of social and cultural factors in determ ining the effective division oflabour between the two sexes should n ot mislead us into thinking that thismakes it mu ch easier to change the situation of wom en and to ensure equ a1rights and equal chances to them.

The sexu al division of Iabour wh ich prevails in ou r societies has deep rootsin history and some of its roots even r each back to before h istorical times. It isinterwoven with many other structural and functional characteristics of ourpr esent social org anisation. It has left its imp rint on some of our most deeplyheId ideological and mor al convictions. It has become a bu ilt-in pa rt of ou rsocial organ isation; it has become ingrained in our attitud inal and behaviou ralpatt erns. It is remar kable to wh at extent w omen cherish, share, and defendso-called male prejudices about their ow n calling as mothers and house-wives, abou t their capabilities to fulfil various roles in society, abou t femini-nity, and the like.

In man y parts of the worId it may not prove to be too difficult nowad ays

to eliminate discri~nation against w omen from the texts of existing laws andregulations. The elimination of discriminative pr actices from society is qu iteanoth er matter . It requires a deep change in the aspirations, attitud es, andbehaviou ral characteristics of men and wom en alike. This d oes not pr omiseto be a quick process. How ever, no efforts should be spared to speed it up .

The prev aIent sexual division of labour is reflected by the fact that in allmor e or less indu s~ialised societies of our time the great majority of the ad ultpop ulation falls un der three distinct categories:

o Employed men, ie, emp loyed (or self-employed ) men involved in bread winn ingoccupations;

l

Employed women, ie, employed (or self-employed) wom en invohed in bread-winning occupations;

l Housewives, ie, wom en doing no paid work, or only a negligible amou nt ofit, but normally involved in a considerable amou nt of un paid houseworkand household tasks.

In developed countries and aIso in man y others w hich have not yet reached ahigh stage of s~ioecono~c d evelopmen t, norm ally only a small percentage ofthe ad ult pop ulation remains outsid e these three categories; eg, very old andcompletely retired people, economically un emp loyed mem bers of the labourforce, invalids, loafers, and th e like. (In th is context it is custom ary to includ e

among the employed people also stud ents of adu lt age wh o prepare them-selves for a bread winn ing role.)The asy mm etry of this basic categorisation is quite striking. There is no male



6/15

390 Womens Time

counterpart to the housewife, whose days are filled with unp aid work don e forthe household. Being unp aid, she is not regarded as part of the labour forceand therefore cannot be called un emp loyed, especially as she is really never

out of her 3ob. Male housewives, that is men perform ing the job of thehousewives, are so few in num ber that no separate category needs to be estab-lished for them.

Table 2 deals with the most general characteristics of the contemp orarysexual division of labour as mirrored in the time bu dget of the adult pop ulationin a nu mber of coun tries which represent various stages and forms of urbanindu strial develop men t and also a variety of political and socioeconom icsystems. Althoug h Table 2 is only a sum mar y, some sharp characteristics of the

TABLE 2. AVERAGE DAILY TIME BUDGET OF EMPLOYED MEN, EMPLOYED WOMEN,AND HOUSEWIVES IN 12 COUNTRIES (in hours)

Activities Employed men

On workdays (employed people)and weekdays housewives)

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

Paid work and ancillary 9.4tasks (work broughthome, journey to work,workplace chores, etc)

Housework and I.0household obligations(not including child care)

Child care 0.2

Sleep, meals, personal 9.9hygiene and otherpersonal needs

Free time (ie remaining 3.5disposable time)

Total (of which A-C subtotal) 24.0 (10.6)

On days off (employed people)and Sundays (housewives)

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

Paid work and ancillary 0.9tasks (work broughthome, journey to work,workplace chores, etc)

Housework and 2.3household obligations

(not including child care)Child care 0.3

Sleep, meals, personal 12.2hygiene and otherpersonal needs

Free time (ie, remaining 8.3disposable time)Total (of which A-C subtotal) 24.0 (3.5)

Employed women Housewives

7.9 0.2

3.3 7.6

0.4

9.9

I.1

11.4

2.5 4.0

24.0 (11.6) 24.0 (8.8)

0.4 0.1

5.1 5.2

0.6 0.7

11.9 11.7

6.0 6.3

24.0 (6.7) 24.0 (6.0)

Source: This table is based on thefindings of the Multinational Comparative Time-Budget ResearchProject which has been carried out recently under the aegis of the UNESCO-sponsored EuropeanCoordination Centre for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences. The project encom-passed 15 sample surveys carried out in 12 countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France,Federal Republic of Germany, German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Peru, Poland, USA,

USSR, Yugoslavia). In most countries middle-sized cities and their surroundings were includedin the survey; in some countries national survey were carried out too. Only adults aged 18 to 65were sampled, with the exclusion of the purely agricultural population, that is of households inwhich not a single member does other than agricultural work.S



7/15

W omens Tim e 391

prevailing sexual division of labour become visible :

l It is true th at em ployed wom en spend on the average less time on paid work

than emp loyed men; they are more often part-time workers than men, theytry to avoid overtime because of their du ties at hom e-also some legalregu lations intervene, etc. How ever, if we ad d paid work to unpaid work donefor the household and the family (A + B + C) then it app ears that theaverage total working time of employed wom en surpasses th at of employedmen by a full hou r on workdays (11.6 h our s against 10.6 hou rs) and by 2.6hours on days o$ (6.1 hou rs against 3.5 hou rs). The plight of the emp loyedwom an is strikingly exposed by the fact that sh e has to wor k 5.7 hours forher household and family on her d ays of rest.

l Also the lot of the housewife is noth ing to be envied. On w eekdays heraverage wor king time (A + B + C) amou nts to 8.9 hour s, ie to only 1.7hour s less than th e average total working time of employed men. How ever,on Sun days the housewife works 6 hour s, that is 2.5 hours m ore than employedmen on their days off.

l In the 12 countr ies surv eyed, generally almost h alf of the ad ult wom enliving on the sur vey sites, and in some cases a far greater par t o f them , weremem bers of the active labour force, ie, they belonged in the category ofemployed wom en. Many married wom en w ho have to care for a bigfamily or wh o have small children still pr efer to stay at hom e for at least aslong as this condition lasts; how ever, the pr opo rtion of perm anent full-timehou sewives is decreasing in all mod ern ur ban indu strial societies. Therefore,

more and more employed men have employed wom en as spouses. Undersuch circum stances it is almost shocking to see from Table 2 wh at a smallshare employed men take in housework and household obligations-andhow mu ch they leave to their sp ouses wh o are, to an ever growing extent,their equal partners in breadwinning work. On workd ays, emp loyed wom enhave 3.3 hour s to devote to housew ork and household obligations whileemp loyed men are satisfied to contribute 1.0 hou r. On day s off, emp loyedwom en spend 5.1 hour s on such tasks, employed men only 2.3 hour s. Nowond er that emp loyed men have on the average mu ch more free time attheir disposal than employed women : they have 3.5 hou rs free time on work-days and 8.3 hours of free time on days off, wh ile for employed wom en thefree time am oun ts only to 2.5 hours on workdays and 6-O hou rs on days off.

l Free time in the sense used here, th at is the disp osable time remaining afterhaving do ne all the wor k and having fulfilled ph ysiological and otherperson al needs, sh ould not be confused with leisure time. It is a telling d atu mthat among the man y thousand s of employed wom en includ ed in the surveysamp les of the Multinational Time-Bud get Project, 10% repor ted no leisuretime activities wh atsoever on a typical workd ay, althou gh virtually allemp loyed men rep orted at least a little. As far as hou sewives are concerned,mu ch of their free time activities and even of their typ ical leisure activitiestend to revolve aroun d the family an d the household (needlework,emb roid ery, kn itting, floricultu re, receiving visits, etc). The inord inatelysmall amou nt of free time at the disposal of employed wom en and theconstraints pu t on the hou sewives life are two factors that b ear a heavy



8/15

392 Womens T im e

respon sibility for wom ens r edu ced par ticipation in civic life, in pr ofessionaltraining, and edu cation, etc. The imp ~cations for wom ens social ad vance-men t and professional career are qu ite obvious.

M en a n d w o m e n i n t h e h o u s e h o ld

Those w ho have an interest in minimising the household burd en on wom ensshoulders often pu t forward th e argum ent that technical development, eg, theever growing sup ply of various h ousehold app liances, of pre-cooked or half-pr epared canned and frozen food , etc, will soon liberate wom en fromhou sehold chores, or at least will redu ce their pr oblem to a man ageable size.

Unfortunately, current time-bud get data give little sup port to such optimism.In Table 3 we compa re the situation pr evailing on a nu mber of sur vey siteswh ich d iffer widely in the availability of labour-saving hou sehold technology.

There can be hard ly any dou bt t hat th ere is a wid e variation in the technicalequip men t of the hou seholds at the six ur ban surv ey sites covered by Table 3.For examp le, at the time of the surveys, in the mid 196Os, mor e th an half ofthe households in Kragujevac and surround ings had as yet no run ning waterand even in the old industrial city of Olomouc one household out of six waswithout run ning water. And yet the employed married wom en in Jackson,Michigan spend only O-2 hour s less daily on their household than their counter-parts in Olomouc. In Osnabrtick, wh ich is in a very mod ern med ium -sizedur ban ind ustrial centre of the Federal Republic of German y, the emp loyedmarried wom en actually spend more time on their households than in any of

the three of the Eastern Europ ean prov incial tow ns show n in Table 3.

TABLE 3. AVERAGE TIME SPENT DAILY ON HOUSEHOLD TASKS BY MARRIED PEOPLEIN DIFFERENT URBAN SURROUNDINGS (in hours, ail days of the week included)

GroupKragu jevac , Torun , Olomouc , Osnabr i i ch , S ix c i t i e s , Ja& on ,Yugoslav ia Poland Czechos lovak ia W. Germany France

Employed men 0.4 0.7 0.9 0.3 0.5 0.5Employed

women 4.3 4.2 3.8 3.6Housewives 6.8 7.4 7.3 ;:; ;:9 5.4

Source: Multinational Time-Budget Project (see Table 1).

The main explanation for the fact that labour -saving technology has led tolittle comp arable time savings in the hou sehold pr obably lies in the fact thatpop ular deman ds on the quality and quantity of household services have risentogether with the development of this technology and with general livingstandard s. For examp le, un der more modest circum stances of the past, the busyhousewife often cooked a hu ge pot of food at once and this was then warm ed uprepeated ly to serve for several consecutive family dinners. Now ad ays the familyexpects more variety and although the cooking time involved in the prep arationof read y-mad e canned or deep -frozen dishes may be minima l, the time involvedin their pu rchase, storage, and serving according to the daily changing indivi-

du al tastes of the family members may am oun t to mu ch more than the timeneeded to cook once and to warm up on several consecutive days mothersfavourite ~~~-~u-~u.



9/15

In the USA and in the USSRhistory to permit us to examinehousework over several d ecades.

Womens Time 393

time-bud get research has a sufficiently longthe trends in the development of wom ens

As we see from Table 4, in certain typ es of hou sehold wor k, esp ecially inkitchen activities and in the han dling of clothes and linen, some not too d ram a-tic time savings h ave been achieved over the last few decad es.

TABLE 4. TIME USED FOR HOUSEHOLD WORK BY URBAN HOMEMAKERS1 IN USA(in hours, average of all days of the week)

Full-time homemakersypes of activitie@ 1926-27 1952 1967-66 EmQed hog$akars

All work connected with preparingand serving food 2.8 2.6 2.3 1.9 1.6

Care of the house 2-6Care of clothes, laundry, etc. ::I ::; 00:; ;:9

%&ping and record keeping 0.4.1 0.5.3 ::;,2 o-38 0.8.5

Nofes: Homemaker is a typical American euphemism intended to lend some professionaldignity to womens work in the household. A full-time homemaker is simply a housewife, while anemployed homemaker is an employed woman with household duties.* Child care and other care of family members are not included in this tabulation.Source: Kathryn E. Walker, Homemaking Still Takes Time, ~ourna/ o~ffome Economics, Vol 61,No 8, October 1989.

On the other h and , care of the house, shop ping, and record keeping seem todem and more time now than American wom en used to devote to such activities.Paid hou sehold help, repairmen s services an d the like have become a rare

commod ity in the USA: most of the work involved in the care of the house mu stnow be accomp lished on a do-it-yourself basis. The increased dem and forsophisticated foodstuffs and all kinds of other pr odu cts needed in mod ernhou sekeeping can be easily satisfied in American sup erma rkets, bu t gettingthere and d oing all the shopp ing takes time.

Table 5 reports on similar developments in the household work of employedwom en in various ur ban areas of the USSR. The 1924 surv ey was carried ou tin Moscow and Leningrad , the 1959 surv ey in ur ban indu strial centres ofSiberia, the 1965 surv ey in Pskov and surrou nd ings.

In man y respects the trends show n by Table 5 are very similar to those shownby Table 4. The time spen t in the kitchen has decreased over the years. Thischange is even more mar ked in the Soviet Union than in the USA because inthe early 192Os, even in Moscow and Leningrad , man y k itchens were notsupp lied with running water, gas and electricity, not to speak of mod ernkitchen app liances which are now prod uced in great quantity by Sovietindu stry. Shopp ing times seem to have gone u p in the USSR as mu ch as in theUSA-the corner grocery store has vanished there too and there is now mu chmore to buy for the household. The total time Soviet employed wom en spendon their hou sehold does not seem to have gone down significantly from 1959to 1965; comp ared to 1924 the change is mor e d ram atic-bu t at that time,just after the end of the civil war and foreign intervention, hou sekeeping was

really a difficult task. We may ad d here th at th etotal work load

of urban employedwom en in the USA and in the USSR cannot be comp ared directly on the basisof TabIes 4 and 5 because these do not report hour s ofpaid work.

FUTURES October 1975 cc


10/15

394 W omens Time

TABLE 5. TIME USED FOR HOUSEHOLD WORK BY URBANEMPLOYED WOMEN IN THE USSR (in hours, average of all days

of the week)

Types of activitiesAll work connected with

preparing and serving foodShopping and time spent

in queuingAll other household workTOfill

Employed women1924 1959 1965

2.56 l-41 1.60

0.20 0.65 0.501.71 I.81 I-504.47 3.37 3.60

Notes: Child care and other care of family members are notincluded in this tabulation.Source: V. D. Patrushev and V. G. Kolpakov, eds, Byudzhet vremenigorodoskogo naseleniya, Sfafisfika, Moscow, 1972; and S. G.Strumilin, Problemy svobodnogo vremeni, in ~~era~fc~ee VremyaTfudyashch~~sya (Novosibirsk, lzdatelstvo Sibirkskogo Otdeleniya

AN SSSR, 1961).

This extensive argum ent clearly shows that whatever hopes we set on thefuture development of labour-saving household technology, it does not prom iseto provide a patent solution to our problem- at least not w ithin the foreseeablefuture. The g ap between the small share men tend to take at present in house-hold tasks and th e burd en wom en have to bear in the household is far too greatand n o technology is in sight which could redu ce the burden on wom en to asubstantial extent.

On w hat should we set our hopes if technological progress, does not promiseto relieve wom en of the un equitable workload they bear in the household?Does contemporary time-bud get research provide any clues to the answer ofthis question ?

At t i t u d e s t o s h a r i n g h o u s e w o r k

Many findings of time-bud get studies make it quite clear that m uch could be~on~ ibuted to a satisfactory solution by 1726% f they wou ld on ly change theirattitudes.

By wh at means could these attitud es be changed in order to make th emready to accept a more equitable share in household tasks? Can it be hop ed thatpersuasion and enlightenment wou ld have such an effect? Time-budget researchcan certainly not pr ovide a direct answ er to this kind of qu estion. Generalexperience might prom pt us to say that persuasion and enlightenme~~t do seemto have a pow erful effect on peoples attitud es bu t it takes in most cases a ratherlong time to change basic attitudes by persuasion and enlightenment alone.And in this case very basic attitud es, nam ely men s attitu des to wom en, tofamily affairs, to wor k and leisure, etc are involved.

How ever, there are mor e indirect social influen ces on wh ich so me hop es canbe set. And in this respect som e find ings of contemp orary time-bud get researchseem to be pertinent.

In Hun gary, for instance, a fairly large samp le of ur ban families w as surv eyed

in 1974 with regar d to the trad itional or non -traditional character of thedivision of labour in the hou sehold. Traditional division of labour in thehousehold was defined as a situation in which, out of six main household tasks



11/15

Wom ens T im e 395

TABLE 6. TRADITIONAL DIVISION OF LABOUR IN URBAN FAMILY HOUSEHOLDSIN PRESENT-DAY HUNGARY

Head of the familyProfessional or executiveUpper white-collar workerLower white-collar worker, technicianSkilled blue-collar workerSemiskilled blue-collar workerUnskilled blue-collar worker

Households with a traditional

division of labour (yO)

;:42

:;57

Source: Judit H. Sas, Report on the Survey of 20 to 50 Years Old Family Membersin fheUrban Population, (Budapest, Sociological Institute of the Hungarian Academy ofSciences, 1974), in manuscript.

(cooking, dishw ashing, hou se cleaning, lau nd ering, ironing, and shop pin g) atleast five are reg~~~r~ performed by the wife, and th e hu sband only ~cc~~o~~~~lends a han d in hou se cleaning or shop ping . By non -traditional division oflabour an increased participation of the hu sband in housework was meant.Table 6 show s to wh at extent the trad itional division of labour in the hou se-hold w as found to be dep endent on the socioeconomic status of the head of thefamily.

The p ictur e pr esented by Table 6 is qu ite clear: the higher the socioeconomicstatu s and the edu cational level, the mor e infrequent the trad itional division oflabour becomes in the household. Because u rban indu strial developmenttend s to raise the average edu cational level and the welfare of the pop ula-tion, just as it also increases the pr opor tion of skilled Iabour , of wh ite-collar

work ers, of technicians and of pr ofessionals in the labour force, there is reasonto hop e th at this in itself will help to reduce the nu mber of hou seholds inwh ich the trad itional division of labour still preva ils.

Even mor e can be expected from the increased par ticipation of wom en in theactive labou r force. Having a wife do ing full-time or even par t-time paid wor kpu ts the husban d un der a certain moral and practical pressure to accept a moreequal share in housew ork and household obligations. The pressure is not aseffective as one might expect bu t it is still there. As evidence, we pr esent inTable 7 some recent da ta from the Lond on region, England .

As we see from Table 7, the fact th at the wife joins the husb and in bread-winning activities (emp loyment) tends to prod uce more symmetry also in the~~~~e~oZd ct~~~t~es f the mar ried coup le. Several stud ies have taken note of the

TABLE 7. HUSBANDS HELP IN HOME BY EMPLOYMENT STATUS OF WIFE (in theLondon region)

Help by the husband atleast once a week

No help (%IDishwashing only (%)Other household tasks(cleaning, cooking,child care, etc) with;;t;yhout dishwashing (%)

Wife not working Wife working(housewife) part-time

!?2 17

:4 2

100 100

Wife workingfull-time

9

:z

100

Source: Michael Young and Peter Willmott, The Symmetrical family: A Study of Work and Leisurein the London Region (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).



12/15

396 Womens Tim

fact that in contemporary urban indu strial societies a trend toward s a sym-metrical family seems to develop. How long such a development may take andto what extent such a symmetry may become realised is an open question. But

the influence of the increasing pa rticipa tion of wom en in the labour force onmens attitudes towards women and towards household obligations is a factorto be reckoned with.

For the achievemen t of a mor e equitable sexual division of labour, attitud echanges in women are as important as attitud e changes in men.

In th is context, interesting observations h ave been m ade, in a survey ofHungarian urban households, about the relationship between the educationallevel of the wife and the division of labour in the household. This surveyshow ed that 79% of hou seholds wh ere wives had up to six years of schoolingpractised a traditional division of household w ork between th e husband and w ife.This figur e comp ares w ith 63% for hou seholds with wives wh o had 7-8 yearsof schooling; 47% for those with wives wh o have h ad high-school ed ucation;and 38% for those with w ives wh o hav e had un iversity or college edu cation.4The message is clear : the more education women get, the more they become ableto achieve a n equitable sexual division of labour within the household .

Not on ly do men d evote much less time to housework and household obligationsthan women, they tend also to select those household tasks in which they arew illing to pa rticipa te. Pertinent da ta of the Mu ltinational Time-Bud get Projectshow , for instance, that there is a w idespread tend ency amon g m en to concen-

trate their con~ibution to household tasks mu ch more on shopp ing and doingerrands, gardening, outdoor cleaning, occasional repairs, and other fairlyd iversified activities wh ich do not bind them so strongly to the hou se.Such monotonou s hou sehold activities as sweeping, bed m aking, laund ering,ironing, and kitchen work tend to be left almost entirely to women.

Child care has been fairly throu ghly investigated incontemp orary time-budgetresearch, Here an interesting interplay of ma le and female preferences andprejudices becomes visible.

As we saw in Table 2, in the a reas covered by the 1 2-country MultinationalTime-Bud get Project, em ployed m en tend ed to dev ote abou t half as mu ch timeto child care as employed women. Compared with housewives, mens share ofchild care was, of course, still smaller.

One might think tha t su ch a situation is more or less natu ral. Babies havea special need for motherly care, and more than just cultural factors may beinvolved in the particularly strong mu tual attachment between mothers andtheir small children. However, not all children are babies or toddlers. Aschildren become older, practically all activities connected with their care couldequally well be performed by both parents. Does the share of men and womenin child care then become more equal as their children get older?

In ord er to pr ovide good comp arability, we calculated the overall averagetime spent on some types of child-care activities by emp loyed m en, em ployedwom en, an d housew ives in families having one child under 3 years and in hmilieshaving oze child 3years o2d or ouer wh ich were surveyed in 10 countries pa rtici-pating in the Mu ltinational Time-Bud get Project.



13/15

Womens Time 397

This indicated that, even in the case of childr en beyond the baby or todd lerage, fathers tend t o avoid any major involvement in the basic tasks of childcare. To wh atever extent th ey par ticipate in child care, they prefer to carry ou t

such mor e freewheeling and mor e pleasur able tasks as playing, talking, ortaking a walk with the child, sup ervising schoolwork, etc. In general they onlycontribute a little to the other chores. Mothers, be they full-time emp loyedwom en or housewives, have no other choice but to do all the rest.

This situation wou ld have become unbearable a long time ago, had notwom en ad ap ted themselves to it. There is a wh ole system of feminine preferencesand prejud ices wh ich has become perfectly ad justed to such a distribu tion ofpar ental tasks. Traditional ideologies of mot herh ood and of the role of the wifein family and hou sehold have neither been invented unilaterally by men for theirown benefit nor are they believed only by men. It is true that u nd er mod ernconditions of living, esp ecially un der the imp act of wom ens grow ing involvementin work aw ay from th e home, the found ations of such beliefs have becomerather shaky. But very ma ny w omen still stick to obsolete preferences andpr ejud ices abou t femininity. Those w ho have overcome such biases find it veryhard to assert their n ew attitud es because so many existing institutions andpat terns of behaviou r in social life are still geared to trad itional concepts ofwom ens aims and tasks in life.

French time-bud get researchers have foun d, for instance, that ma ny child-care establishm ents in their count ry (nurseries, kinder gartens, etc) d o not seemto have taken notice of the fact that a considerable pr opo rtion of French wom enhave become part of the labour force and h ave to go to work early in the

morning. Consequently, such institutions open their doors at traditionalhour s which are unsu itable for working wom en wh o wish to have their childrenin good care d ur ing the da y. Similar observations have been m ade in severalother countries.

We already had an opp ortun ity to allud e to the pride of housewives. Thispride may frequently be an overcomp ensation of the low status and lack ofrecognition of their services. One of the mos t curious cross-national find ingswith regard to hou sewives use of time is the fact th at they ten d to stretchtheir h ousework more or less in prop ortion to their husband s working hours.In social groups and strata where employed men work longer h ours, there is adistinct tendency for housewives to pu t more hou rs into their own daily hou se-work. l

Housewives spend , of course, an overwhelming part of their time at home.But emp loyed wom en also are mu ch m ore tied to their houses than emp loyedmen . This is a rather general find ing wh ich app lies also to conditions foun d inman y rur al agricultural commu nities of less develop ed countr ies.

The trend s shown by Table 8 cannot be satisfactorily explained merely b ynatu ral or social constraints pu t on peop les use of time. Most emp loyed peop lenaturally have to go to work on weekdays; all people need several hou rs ofsleep per day and m ost of them sleep at home. However, habits, preferencesand prejud ices also play a role in determining the amou nt of time people spend

in their hom es. In spite of the fact that housew ives, especially hou sewives withsmall children, are forced to spend most of the day at home, they also show amarked preference for staying in or around the house when they are free to spend



14/15

398 Womens Time

TABLE 8. PERCENTAGE OF DAY SPENT AT HOME BY MARRIED PEOPLE(aged 30-49, in the London region, 1970)

Population groups

Employed menEmployed womenHousewives

Weekday (%) Saturday (%) Sunday (%)

55g z

;; 82 87

Source: Michael Young and Peter Willmott, The Symmetrical Family: A Sfudy of Workand Leisure in the London Region (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).

their leisure somewh ere else. Even in the USSR wh ere employed wom ennowad ays make u p more than half the total labour force (manu al and non-manu al workers, and professionals) and where women p articipate to an extra-ord inarily large extent in civic activities, researchers have foun d wom enconsiderably more shackled to their home than men.*

It may sound surpr ising, but a similar find ing w as mad e with respect to thedifferential behaviou r of 1 O-l 2 year old boys and girls in Amsterdam . In a stud yof their free-time activities it was found that the girls spen t mu ch mor e time athome and around the doorway than the boys; both spent about equal time inthe immediate neighbourhood of their home. H owever, as far as playing andstrolling in mor e distant p laces was concerned , boys spen t mor e than 20% oftheir free time furth er awa y from hom e, wh ile girls did so only for less than 7%of their free time.*

Time-bud get research has d etected a strong bias in wom ens leisure-timeorientation towa rd s activitieswhichcorresp ond to traditional ideals of femininity

and which are therefore not well-adapted to modern societies in wh ich wom enshare mens breadwinning tasks and want to have equal rights and opportu nitiesin every other respect. As a consequen ce, it has become qu ite usu al in contem-porary time-bud get studies to investigate not only how wom en do spend theirtime but also how they w ould Z&Z o spend it, Alas, most studies of this kindshow that a very great p roportion of wom en still have their p references on thetrad itional side. Let us illustrate this with an examp le taken from a fairlyrecent (1966) Czechoslovak sur vey. The question pu t to male and femalerespon d ents was the following: Wha t occur s to you first if somebod y asksyou : wh at kind o f things are of greatest interest in you r life? Table 9 show sthe percentage distribution of the answers from male and femaIe respondents.

As we see from Table 9 the polarisation of masculine and feminineinterests is still rather strong. Many more men than w omen have the maincentre of their interest away from home. On the other hand , m ore th an half ofthe wom en pr ofess to have their main interest in family, h ome a nd children oreven directly in hou sework . As it hap pen s, these finding s were mad e in Czecho-slovakia, that is in a count ry wh ich has a long history of ur banisation andindustrialisation. Much evidence could be brough t forward to sup port thecontention that 30-40 years ago the polarisation between men s and wom ensmain interests was mu ch stronger; there is no dou bt that mu ch has been donein Czechoslovakia to provide wider and better opportu nities for wom en. But

here again we see how difIicult it is to change ingrained attitud es and trad itionalpatterns of thoug ht and behaviour.We have had am ple opp ortun ity to refer in this discussion of the find ings of

FUTURES October I675


15/15

Womens Time 399

TABLE 9. MAIN INTERESTS IN LIFE

Types of answers

Famiiy, home, and childrenProfessional work (paid work)Palitical and social eventsLiterature, arts, and cultureNatureSport, tourism, and travelHousework and other unp aid workOther answers

~~~~~swer

Source I_. Hrd;., ed, Vo/n&s Y &R (Free Time in the Czechoslovak Socialist Repub-lic; Prague, Sociologickj bstav &AV, 1969).

contemporary time-bud get research to the difIiculties o~~r np ro~n g the situationof wom en and of ensuring more equ ity to them. How ever, we were also able toshow that there are strong forces at work which are slowly but surely erodingage-old trad itions. The effectiveness of these forces can be dou btlessly enha ncedby a conscious mobilisation of society and this may speed up the wh ole process.Certainly, a long fight seems to be ahead .

But how ever long that fight may be, wom ens time is sur e to come. In somerespects it is already here.

N o t e s a n d references

1.

2.

3.

4.5

6.

7.

8.

9.

For a more detailed discussion of historical, cultural, and psy~h olo~c~l deter-minan ts of time usag e see A. Szalai, Differential Evalua tion of Time-Bud getsfor Comparative Purp oses, in R. L. Merritt and S. Rokkan, eds, ComfiaringNations (New Haven, Corm., Yale University Press, 1966).David L. SilIs, ed, Interncttianal Emy lopedia of t he Social Sciences, 17 volumes (NewYork , Free Press and Macmillan, 1968); see Philip E, Converse, TimeBudgets , Vol 16, pa ges 4;2-47.George Peter Mm-d ock and his colIeagues set up the Yale Cross-Cultur al Surveyin 1937, wh ich covered characteristic d ata and d ocum ents on hu nd red s of con-temporary cultures an d subcultures all over the world. The present Hu manArea Relations File in New Hav en, Corm ., was later d eveloped on the basis ofthe original survey.Ann Oakley, ~o~e~~ (Lond on, AIlen Lane, The Pengu in Press, 1974).AIexand er SzaIai, et al, eds , 7Xe Use of Time: l&i& Act ivi ti es of Urban and ~~b~rba~Populations in Twelve Countries (The Hague, Mouton, 1973),Judit H. Sas, Report on tha Survey of 20 t o 50 rears Old Family M embers in the UrbanPofxdation (Bud ap est, H un garian Academ y of Sciences, 1974), in man uscript.Madeleine Guilbert, Nicole Lowit, and Joseph Creusen , Les bu dg ets-temps etIetud e d es horaires de la vie qu otidienne, Rev ue Francaise de ~o~o~o~ e, ?rof 8,ApriI-June, 1967.N. Tikhom irov, L. Gord on and E. Klopov, Studies in the Way of Life of theWorking People and Some Problems of Social Plann ing, Satiety and Leisure; No 3,

1972.W. F. Heinem eijer and 15. U. de Sitter, Buurt, Jeugd en Vrije Tijd (JGghbourhoudYout h and Free Tim e> (Amsterd am, Gemeentelijk Bur eau voor de Jeugd zorg, 1964).

F U TUR E S O c t a b e r 1 9 %

alexander szalai on women's time, 1975

Documents