Quantitative housework research focused on aggregate weekly hours, which are inadequate in revealing hebdomadal compensatory behaviour in housework participation because such behaviour is likely to occur on weekends when couples have more time to do housework. This article extends the existing theoretical frameworks by accounting for the hebdomadal patterns in routine and non-routine housework tasks. Employing five time-use waves of the Canadian General Social Survey, our study shows that the hebdomadal compensatory behaviour applies both to women and men. Equal-earner and breadwinner wives compensate for their low levels of weekday housework participation by doing more routine housework on weekends. Similarly, husbands also increase their time on routine housework on weekends. Therefore, compensatory behaviour is more likely to depend on hebdomadal time availability rather than on the neutralisation of gender deviance in the labour market (gender deviance neutralisation). Some evidence of the gender deviance neutralisation, however, cannot be completely ruled out.
AdamB (1990) Time and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
2.
ArtisJEPavalkoEK (2003) Explaining the decline in women’s household labor: individual change and cohort differences. Journal of Marriage and Family65(3): 746–761.
3.
BanisterD (2011) The trilogy of distance, speed and time. Journal of Transport Geography19(4): 950–959.
4.
BaxterJHewittB (2013) Negotiating domestic labor: women’s earnings and housework time in Australia. Feminist Economics19(1): 29–53.
5.
BerkSF (1985) The Gender Factory: The Apportionment of Work in American Households. New York: Plenum.
6.
BianchiSMMilkieMASayerLC, et al. (2000) Is anyone doing the housework? Trends in the gender division of household labor. Social Forces79(1): 191–228.
7.
BittmanMEnglandPSayerL, et al. (2003) When does gender trump money? Bargaining and time in household work. American Journal of Sociology109(1): 186–214.
8.
BlairSLLichterDT (1991) Measuring the division of household labor: gender segregation of housework among American couples. Journal of Family Issues12(1): 91–113.
9.
BloodROWolfeDM (1960) Husbands and Wives, the Dynamics of Married Living. New York: The Free Press.
10.
BrinesJ (1994) Economic dependency, gender, and the division of labor at home. American Journal of Sociology100(3): 652–688.
11.
CraigL (2007) How employed mothers in Australia find time for both market work and childcare. Journal of Family and Economic Issues28(1): 69–87.
12.
DeutschFM (2007) Undoing gender. Gender and Society21(1): 106–127.
13.
Esping-AndersenG (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
14.
EvertssonMNermoM (2004) Dependence within families and the division of labor: comparing Sweden and the United States. Journal of Marriage and Family66(5): 1272–1286.
15.
FerraoV (2010) Paid Work. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada.
16.
FioriniMKeaneMP (2014) How the allocation of children’s time affects cognitive and noncognitive development. Journal of Labor Economics32(4): 787–836.
17.
GlorieuxIMestdagIMinnenJ (2008) The coming of the 24-hour economy? Changing work schedules in Belgium between 1966 and 1999. Time and Society17(1): 63–83.
18.
GreensteinTN (2000) Economic dependence, gender, and the division of labor in the home: a replication and extension. Journal of Marriage and Family62(2): 322–335.
19.
GuptaS (2007) Autonomy, dependence, or display? The relationship between married women’s earnings and housework. Journal of Marriage and Family69(2): 399–417.
20.
GuptaSSayerLC (2014) Playing catch-up: partnered women’s housework on weekends versus weekdays. In: 2014 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, Boston, MA, USA, 1–3 May.
21.
HeckmanJJ (1979) Sample selection bias as a specification error. Econometrica47(1): 153–161.
22.
HertogEIwasawaM (2011) Marriage, abortion, or unwed motherhood? How women evaluate alternative solutions to premarital pregnancies in Japan and the United States. Journal of Family Issues32(12): 1674–1699.
23.
HigginsET (1987) Self-discrepancy: a theory relating self and affect. Psychological Review94(3): 319–340.
24.
HofferthSLCasperLM (2007) Handbook of Measurement Issues in Family Research. Mahwah, NJ: Routledge.
25.
HookJL (2004) Reconsidering the division of household labor: incorporating volunteer work and informal support. Journal of Marriage and Family66(1): 101–117.
26.
HookJL (2017) Women’s housework: new tests of time and money. Journal of Marriage and Family79(1): 179–198.
27.
KanMY (2008a) Does gender trump money? Housework hours of husbands and wives in Britain. Work, Employment and Society22(1): 45–66.
28.
KanMY (2008b) Measuring housework participation: the gap between ‘stylised’ questionnaire estimates and diary-based estimates. Social Indicators Research86(3): 381–400.
29.
KanMYHeG (2018) Resource bargaining and gender display in housework and care work in modern China. Chinese Sociological Review50(2): 188–230.
30.
KanMYPudneyS (2008) Measurement error in stylized and diary data on time use. Sociological Methodology38(1): 101–132.
31.
KanMYSullivanOGershunyJ (2011) Gender convergence in domestic work: discerning the effects of interactional and institutional barriers from large-scale data. Sociology45(2): 234–251.
32.
KillewaldAGoughM (2010) Money isn’t everything: wives’ earnings and housework time. Social Science Research39(6): 987–1003.
33.
KitterødRHPettersenSV (2006) Making up for mothers’ employed working hours? Housework and childcare among Norwegian fathers. Work, Employment and Society20(3): 473–492.
34.
KolpashnikovaK (2016) Housework in Canada: uneven convergence of the gender gap in domestic tasks, 1986–2010. PhD Thesis, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
35.
KolpashnikovaK (2018) American househusbands: new time use evidence of gender display, 2003–2016. Social Indicators Research140(3): 1259–1277.
36.
KolpashnikovaKKanMYShirakawaK (2019a) Marriage and housework: analyzing the effects of education using the 2011 and 2016 Japanese Survey on time use and leisure activities. IER Discussion Paper Series No. 696, 20June, 1–28.
37.
KolpashnikovaKKanMYShirakawaK (2019b) Marriage penalty: unconditional quantile regression of housework participation in Japan. IER Discussion Paper Series No. 695, 10June, 1–20.
38.
LyonetteCCromptonR (2015) Sharing the load? Partners’ relative earnings and the division of domestic labour. Work, Employment and Society29(1): 23–40.
39.
McElroyMBHorneyMJ (1981) Nash-bargained household decisions: toward a generalization of the theory of demand. International Economic Review22(2): 333–349.
40.
McLaughlinKMuldoonO (2014) Father identity, involvement and work–family balance: an in-depth interview study. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology24(5): 439–452.
41.
MthombeniPCaseyME (2019) The division of household labour by lesbian families residing in the northeast of England. Journal of GLBT Family Studies. Epub ahead of print 1 March. DOI: 10.1080/1550428X.2019.1570414.
42.
PresserHB (1994) Employment schedules among dual-earner spouses and the division of household labor by gender. American Sociological Review59(3): 348–364.
43.
RuppannerLTreasJ (2015) Working weekends: changing European time regimes and gender inequality in household labor. Journal of Family Issues36(13): 1782–1809.
44.
SorokinPAMertonRK (1937) Social time: a methodological and functional analysis. American Journal of Sociology42(5): 615–629.
45.
Statistics Canada (2011) General Social Survey. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada.
46.
Statistics Canada (2015) Marriages and Crude Marriage Rates, Canada, Provinces and Territories, 1981 to 2008. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada.
47.
Statistics Canada (2016) Annual Average Unemployment Rate in Canada and Provinces, 1976–2015. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada.
48.
SullivanO (2011) An end to gender display through the performance of housework? A review and reassessment of the quantitative literature using insights from the qualitative literature. Journal of Family Theory & Review3(1): 1–13.
49.
SykesGMMatzaD (1957) Techniques of neutralization: a theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review22(6): 664–670.
50.
WestCZimmermanDH (1987) Doing gender. Gender and Society1(2): 125–151.
51.
ZhouMWuXHeG (2017) Marriage in an immigrant society: education and the transition to first marriage in Hong Kong. Demographic Research37(18): 567–598.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
