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GENDER, CULTURE AND UNPAID WORK:

aspects of the Macedonian case

Prof.d-r Marjan Mladenovski, HEI Euro College

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“
"Women bear children; women are mothers and wives; women cook, clean, sew and
wash; care for men and women are subordinate to male authority; women are
usually excluded from occupations with high status and position that brings social
power."
These generalizations may be applied to almost every known society and it is
believed that there is no society in which women don’t have an inferior status to men.

-Haralambos and Holborn,2002”

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 Types
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style

Research on gender and unpaid work focuses on housework (1)

Childcare time (2)

Time spent doing volunteer work (3)

Housework and childcare - separately

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Housework time Master title style
and the division of household labor

Time diaries for a 24-hour period (Marini & Sheiton, 1993).

Gender is related to the distribution of housework.

Women continue to spend significantly more time on housework than do

men and this pattern is true whether or not women are employed
(Berardo, Shehan, Leslie, 1987; Marini & Sheiton, 1993; Presser, 1994).

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 Cultural differences in household labor
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• In the United States, women do between 65% and 80% of household labor. National Survey of
Families and Households - women spend approximately 37 hours per week on housework, men
spend 18 hours per week (Greenstein,1996).
• In other countries women do the majority of household labor, the magnitude of the gender gap
varies (Gershuny & Robinson, 1988).
• Gustafsson and Kjulin (1994) report that Swedish men do approximately 35% of the housework
and childcare.
• Kamo (1994) finds that Japanese men do about 25% of the housework, whereas Juster and
Stafford (1991) report that Japanese men spend only 10% as much time as women on
housework.
• Sanchez (1994) has studied men's participation in household labor in Java, Sudanese Indonesia,
the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and the United States. The range is from 60% for Korea to
17% for Sudanese Indonesia.
• Juster and Stafford (1991), using time estimates, report that women in rural Botswana and Nepal 5 5
spend significantly more time and men less time on housework than in industrialized countries.
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 Key gender
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• Most of the studies of housework are based on samples of married women and
men
• Remarried men appear to spend more time on housework

• Household tasks are highly segregated:

• different household tasks
• scheduled for convenience
• leisure or semileisure
• simultaneity of tasks
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 Child
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• Men have increased their time spent on childcare more than is the case for
housework (Darling-Fisher & Tiedje, 1990; Pleck, 1985; Presser, 1988).
• This usually means interaction with children rather than care of infants and
toddlers (Goldscheider & Waite, 1991; Pleck, 1985).
• Coverman and Sheley's (1986) examination of the changes in men's
childcare time from 1965 to 1975 found that despite wives' increasing labor
force participation, men's childcare contributions did not change
significantly.
• Men spend more time playing with children than caring for them. (Lamb et
al.1988)
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Click to edit Master title Volunteer
style work

• An important but often neglected type of unpaid work.

• 18.8% of women performed unpaid volunteer work for school
or other educational institutions, compared to 10.5% of men.
(Hayghe 1991)
• Women were more likely to participate in religious
organizations.

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 Click to edit Master titleMacedonian
style case

Who cleans the house Who cooks for the Who cares for the
in your family? family ? children in your family?
Wife 81,0 86,0 30,5
Husband ,8 ,8 1,5
Both of them 12,8 9,3 65,8
Others 5,3 3,8 2,2
Total 100,0 100,0 100,0
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 CONCLUSIONS
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Gender remains strongly associated with women's and men's patterns of unpaid work.

The amount of time invested in unpaid work, the distribution of unpaid work time among specific tasks,
and the patterns of care and responsibility are all determined to a large degree by one's gender.

Women continue to spend more time than men on housework, whether they are employed or not; they
continue to do more of the work involved in caring for children and to take more responsibility for that
work; and finally, women's volunteer activities are more likely to be related to family than are men's.

These are global conclusions, but more or less are valid to our country as well.
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Thank You For Your

Attention!

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