Parenthood Without Penalty: Time-use and public policy in Australia and Finland

Abstract

After many decades of struggle throughout the "developed" world, unpaid domestic labor remains stubbornly segregated by gender. Despite demands for domestic equality, housework and childcare continue to be, in practice, primarily "women's work." A critical determinant of the distribution of unpaid work is responsibility for the care of young children, as the earliest works of second~wave feminism make clear (Firestone 1970). This chapter reviews evidence from time~use surveys in Australia and Finland to examine the prospects for the most frequently suggested solutions to adjusting the distribution of domestic labor between the genders: (1) renegotiation of domestic division of labor, (2) substituting market provision for unpaid labor, and (3) public provision of key services. This analysis shows the limits of private renegotiation, and suggests that institutions beyond the walls of the family home - the market and the state - are more effective levers, in the short term, for achieving greater gender equality in domestic labor.