Gender differences in time-use over the life-course. A comparative analysis of France, Italy, Sweden and the United States

The main objective of this paper is to analyse how men and women in France, Italy, Sweden and United States use their time over the life cycle and the extent to which the societal and institutional contexts influence the gender division of labour. Our central hypothesis is that contextual factors play a crucial role in shaping men’s and women’s time allocation across the life course. Countries that diverge significantly in terms of welfare state regime, employment and working time systems, family policy and social norms are selected in order to test this hypothesis . Using most recent Time Use National Surveys and appropriate regression techniques, we find large gender discrepancies in time use in all countries at any stage of the life course, but usually smaller at the two ends of the age distribution, and larger with parenthood. Despite these similarities, different institutional contexts, in particular the design of family policies and employment regimes, do shape gender roles in different ways. Thanks to its active gender and work-family balance policies, Sweden displays the lowest gender gap in time allocation across the life course