Overall workload is shared equally between men and women

By DOUG STEVENS*

Over the past few decades, as more and more women have entered the paid workforce, a popular notion has arisen that women's share of the workload has become increasingly unequal.

The concept of the "double shift", where women spend their days in paid employment and then come home to look after the family, has become firmly embedded in our thinking. The natural conclusion is that men do not pull their weight and work as hard. Therefore they must be lazy.

Yet the Time Use Survey carried out in 1998-99 by Statistics New Zealand, in partnership with the Ministry of Women's Affairs, showed this to be a myth. Announcing the results of this major study in May last year, Statistics New Zealand stated: "Men and women spend about the same amount of time working, on average seven hours a day or 49 hours a week".

It went on to explain that "females spent two hours a day more than males on unpaid work, while males spent two hours a day more than females on paid work".

Despite this well-researched evidence, the concept of gender inequality in time spent working continues. And the perception of a difference in working time between men and women is not confined to this country.

Recently I presented a paper at an international conference in Canada on time use. I had taken the data from the Time Use Survey and had looked at the time that men and women who were in relationships spent working at various stages of family life. My conclusion was that, when we collated both paid and unpaid work, the amount of time that men and women spent in work, at all stages of the family life cycle, was generally equal.

As changes within the family took place, such as the birth of the first child, both partners adjusted their work patterns. The result was that the workload remained equally shared.

This finding went against the prevailing ideas and certainly was not what the conference organisers had expected. They had difficulty finding a logical place or theme that encompassed my research. Consequently I presented my paper under the theme "The Gender Inequality of Work".

So why is there such a disparity between the findings of the Time Use Survey and the prevailing popular perception of workload sharing by men and women in our society?

The answer lies in what work we have considered when making the comparisons. Often when we have looked at the sharing of the workload between men and women, we have looked only at certain aspects of work within the home.

The opening article on "Women in New Zealand" in the Weekend Herald provided a good example of this. The statistical snapshot stated that women did 62 minutes of food and drink preparation a day, compared to 29 minutes by men, and that women spent 61 minutes cleaning to men's 15 minutes.

Yet if we were to choose lawn mowing, car maintenance or other outside work as the only basis for comparison, the figures would be unfairly biased towards men.

To get an accurate picture of who does what work we must look at all forms of work across the spectrum and not get carried away with comparisons about who does the washing or who cleans the car. It seems that men in our society are too often seen as a large, slow-moving target and so it is tempting to take a pot-shot at them.

On receiving Statistics New Zealand's finding that the workload between men and women was evenly shared, the Herald ran a story that stated, "Survey confirms what women already know. A woman's work is never done" and that "women spent twice the amount of time on cooking, cleaning and laundry than men".

While it is undoubtedly true that women do more housework, this selective reporting of the findings of the survey could only reinforce the public perception that women in this country work harder and longer than their male counterparts.

The Herald's front-page article made very little of the fact that men carried an equal workload and that, while they might not do as much housework, they spent considerably more time than women in other work-related activities.

So the myth of the lazy male was perpetuated.

What really happens? As an example, the birth of the first child in a family leads to the work patterns of both the mother and the father changing dramatically. The time spent working by both genders increases as they add the care of the child to their workloads.

The time spent by women in paid employment drops, while the time she spends in unpaid work rises. But the pattern of male work also changes. The male takes on slightly more paid work, as well as considerably more unpaid work within the home.

Yet despite this major change in their lives, with the consequent need for both partners to radically adjust their work habits, the survey showed that the time men and women spent working remained evenly shared.

Therefore, based on the evidence of the most comprehensive time use study ever done in this country, it is not true to say that women work longer hours than men.

While we can all point to couples where such disparity does exist, and we may even feel that this is the case in our own lives, this study shows that there is an amazing equality of time spent in work by both men and women.

Maybe it is time that we jettison one of our cherished myths and admit there is a fair sharing of the load - and that men and women make an equal, though different, contribution to the wealth and well-being of our society.

* Doug Stevens, formerly the head of social sciences at the Manukau Institute of Technology, is the executive assistant to the Vice-Chancellor at the Auckland University of Technology.

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