Differential convergence in twenty-first-century gender gaps in home tasks
During the highly gender-specialized time of the 1960’s, “married women did 7 times more housework and 4 times more childcare than their husbands.” However, the economy changed, and it increased the demand for women’s labor. In addition, gender dynamics changed, with the gender gap in married couples’ housework decreasing in the mid 90’s. While it has stabilized since then, women are still doing about twice as much childcare and housework as men. Faculty Associate Liana Sayer, along with colleagues Hope Xu Yan, Melissa Milkie, and Kei Nomaguchi, conducted a study to acquire understanding into gender inequalities in contemporary home life. Sayer and colleagues argued that gaining such insight would be most promising through using differential convergence, as it can identify which types of housework tasks are progressing quicker or slower towards gender inequality. Furthermore, differential convergence also allows for the assessment on which gender’s housework time changes and why.
In this study, Sayer and colleagues investigated how domestic labor time has changed for married men and women in the US from the early twenty-first century to present, including the COVID-19 pandemic years. Nationally representative time diary data from the 2003-2023 American Time Use Survey was used to assess the time married men and women spent on:
-
Total housework, including: core and traditionally “feminine” tasks such as cooking and cleaning, and occasional and traditionally “masculine” tasks such as repairs and yard work
-
Shopping
-
Childcare
Decomposition analyses of housework time was also done to assess whether changes in men’s and women’s domestic task times can be linked to population compositional changes or behavioral and/or normative shifts. From the differential convergence perspective, prior research was extended to reveal complex changes in the gendered division of domestic labor in the most recent era.
The findings for married individuals indicated that the “historically large gender gap in total housework time narrowed further this century, from a women-to-men ratio of 1.8:1 in 2003-2005 to 1.6:1 in 2022-2023.” The decrease of the gender gap was concentrated in traditionally “feminine” housework, such as house cleaning and laundry. The gender difference in shopping time also narrowed, nearing parity. Decomposition analyses indicate that women’s reduced housework time was explained mainly by population compositional changes, while men’s increased core housework time likely reflected behavioral or normative changes. Sayer and colleagues concluded that the “gendered norms associated with different forms of unpaid labor may be becoming redefined,” with men taking on more “feminine” domestic activities.
Future research on this topic could look at differential convergence in paid work hours and in different types of childcare.
Milkie, M. A., Sayer, L. C., Nomaguchi, K., & Yan, H. X. (2025). Who’s Doing the Housework and Childcare in America Now? Differential Convergence in Twenty-First-Century Gender Gaps in Home Tasks. Socius, 11. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231251314667
