Routledge Divided Time: Gender, Paid Employment and Domestic Labour (Routledge Revivals)

Published in 1999. Housework and child care are a major part of most peoples lives. The growth of part time work amongst women is just one example of the way our economy is structured to accommodate this fact. Yet very little research has been done on this subject in Britain and what little has been done tends to be small scale and impressionistic. This book examines how couples divide their time between domestic and paid work and the effect that tensions between the two can have. It provides valuable evidence on how domestic work is organized and why, when women are more likely to be employed than not, men have not increased their share of domestic work. Representative evidence is combined with previous small scale research to show how private troubles are related to massive social and economic changes in British society. Evidence of this sort has never been presented before in the British context. Review ’...breaks new ground...’ Lydia Morris, University of Exeter, UK ’...a very informative and insightful study of the division of labour.’ Journal of Family Studies ’As well as providing a layered and absorbing set of interrogations of a large empirical data-set, Layte also offers a detailed and thought-provoking critique of the existing literature and research on domestic divisions of labour...a very significant book that makes a crucial and well-grounded contribution to the literature on work patterns in heterosexual couple households. It would be a valuable resource not only in courses where gender work patterns are examined but also for research methods courses in showing how different types of data each have an important role to play in accounting for attitudes and actions.’ Sociological Research Online