Democracy in America | Heavy lifting

Americans want equality at work; less so at home

One is dependent upon the other

By C.K. | WASHINGTON, DC

A RECENT analysis of earnings trends in America suggested that women earned 49 cents for every dollar earned by men between 2001 and 2015, thanks both to lower participation in the labour force and lower pay. The gap contrasts with widespread support for workplace equality. New research might help explain the inconsistency, which may be caused less by attitudes towards women at work than views about what goes on at home.

Most Americans want equality in the workforce. The proportion of Americans who say that when jobs are scarce a man should have more right to one than a woman fell from 19% in 1995 to 6% in 2011, according to the World Values Survey. Gallup data, meanwhile, shows that 23% of respondents say they would prefer a male boss while 21% would prefer a woman; 56% express no preference. Among men, only 19% prefer the idea of a male boss—down from 63% in 1975.

But surveys asking about responsibilities at home suggest that domestic norms may be harder to shift. Barbara Risman at the University of Illinois at Chicago looked at data from the General Social Survey covering views on both the workplace and home since the 1970s. While finding that Americans increasingly profess a strong commitment to gender equality in public life, she also discovered that that about 28% of the population still supports traditional gender roles at home—a group that is concentrated amongst older men.

Even younger Americans often revert to traditional attitudes and roles when they have a family. Gallup polled parents with children under the age of 18 to ask, if they were free to choose, whether they prefer to work outside the home or take care of the house and family. Only 39% of mothers preferred the idea of working outside the home compared to 72% of fathers. Looking at adults overall, 53% of women would rather have a job outside compared to 73% of men. Both proportions are the same as they were in 2001. And according to Pew data from 2012, only 12% of Americans say the ideal situation for women with young children is working full time—this compares to 70% who say that is the ideal for men with young children.

The survey data is matched by time-use studies. Suzanne Bianchi of UCLA and colleagues looked at trends in housework and child care over the past half-century. While they found a convergence between the household burdens of men and women since the 1960s, they also estimated that, in 2010, married fathers spent 52% of the time on housework that married mothers did. US Census Bureau analysis suggests the unsurprising result: the earnings gap between husbands and wives doubles in the three years around the birth of a child, and continues to grow after that. Women are leaving the workforce or working fewer hours in order to shoulder an unequal burden of unpaid work at home.

Greater equality in the workplace would require a reduction of that burden. Evidence from several countries suggests one effective way to do this is to outsource child care. Countries which spend more on early childhood education and child-care support have more working women. But one thing that might not change even then is the gender of who looks after the kids. Some 35,000 men are employed full time in child care in America compared to 413,000 women, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. The idea that looking after the next generation should be either free or poorly paid women’s work may be the hardest attitude of all to shift.

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