Beyond the time bind: Gender inequality and the tempo of life in 87 countries

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between gender inequality and the tempo of life around the world. By directly situating tempo in sociological theory, I develop a more consistent, embodied, precise and generalizable measure for the tempo of public life, with gender on the forefront. To do so, I draw on the largest dataset to-date collected on the tempo of life around the world. This allows me to isolate how macro- and micro-level gender inequality matters in different contexts. Contrary to existing literature from the biosciences, my ordinary least squares regression results show that in countries with high levels of gender inequality, women often walk faster than men in public places. Monte Carlo cross-validation tests and parametric bootstrap analyses test the predictive accuracy of the full model. My results illustrate that the tempo of public life cannot be solely reduced to previously-explored economic, cultural and environmental differences between the northern and the southern hemispheres. The consideration of gender is imperative for understanding between-country and within-country differences in tempo. In addition to shedding light on the tempo of public life, my work serves as an important first step toward standardizing the tempo measure, allowing for meaningful comparisons in markedly different contexts.