The effect of gender on the division of labour and earnings

Higher earnings provide incentives for women’s labour market return and allow them to reduce
household labour, probably by outsourcing some of it. The largest difference is between low earners and
all other women, pointing to a threshold effect. Holding all other controls constant, women who earn
wages in the lowest quartile increase their housework time by approximately 4 hours more and reduce
their paid work by 7 hours more than women in the middle 50 per cent of the wage distribution.
Women’s egalitarian gender role attitudes are negatively associated with the change in women’s
housework hours and lower the reduction in paid work hours(Schober, 2013).

Traditionalizing effect of parenthood on gender-role attitudes

Research conducted in Australia reveals that attitudes changed toward more egalitarian viewpoints:
mothers with daughters became less likely to agree that working mothers care less about their children
than stay-home mothers, while mothers with sons become more strongly supportive that a working
mother can bond with their children as much as a stay-home mother(Jarallah, Perales and Baxter, 2016).

Educational outcomes
The statistical figures of DHS 2005 clearly show that, regarding literacy, sharp disparity is
indicated among women and men even though it is low for both sexes. The proportion of
illiterate women (who cannot read a whole sentence) was as high as 76.8 % whereas for men it
was 53.3 %. By contrast men are more than twice as likely to be literate compared to women,
45.1 % and 21.5 % for men and women, respectively. The difference is found to be statistically
significant.
With regard to educational attainment similar significant inequality is indicated. Educational
attainment of women is by far lower than that of men according to the data. The majority of
women (65.9%) and 42.9 % of men had no education. During the same year, 19.8 % of men had
attained secondary and higher level of education. The percentage was, however, only 11.9% for
women. Again the gap is found to be significant(Central Statistical Agency and ORC Macro,
2006).
Higher education
Another study conducted in Ethiopia suggests that the reason why very few women make it to
the higher academic ranks (such as associate professor or professor) is because they are not
serious as they should be, or as their male counterparts are, about academic work. The apparent
misconception here is that men tend to ignore the impact of gendered division of labor that eats
up a considerable chunk of women’s time which could otherwise be spent on research and
publication activities which hold the key be it to academic promotion or assuming leadership
positions. Seen from this vantage point, women do not seem to share a level playing field with
men to justify the fairness of any such comparisons. Thus, it is not surprising if women lag
behind men in terms of publication outputs given the constraint imposed by the gendered
division of labor(Semela, Bekele and Abraham, 2020)

Effect on Division of Labor and Workload

The study conducted in Afar region of Ethiopia show that younger and older women from Afar
take on significantly more unpaid in-house and external duties and responsibilities as compared
to younger and older men. Most domestic responsibilities in the community are executed by
women(Dessalegn et al., 2020)

Decision-making on Health services and FGM practices

In Afar, parents generally have the decision-making power about whether their daughter
undergoes FGM; particularly the father and male relatives. It is practised at an early age before
celebrating the first anniversary of the child. A woman cannot use any contraception without the
knowledge and agreement of her husband(Dessalegn et al., 2020).