Work hard, play hard?: A comparison of male and female lawyers' time in paid and unpaid work and participation in leisure activities.
There has been a considerable amount of research that documents how women and men spend their time in different work and home tasks. We examine how much time professional women and men spend in paid and unpaid work and how this relates to their participation in different leisure activities. We also explore whether time in paid and unpaid work has gender-specific effects on leisure participation. In examining these issues, we rely on data from lawyers working in different legal settings. Our results show that, as hypothesized, men report more time in paid work and leisure whereas women devote more time to housework and childcare. An unexpected finding is that the time men spend in housework or childcare is either unrelated or positively related to their leisure participation. These results suggest that men's greater overall opportunities for leisure compared with women's appear to stem from the unanticipated relationships between men's involvement in housework and childcare and their leisure activities. We raise several possible explanations for these findings.
Wallace
Jean E
JE
Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive, N.W., Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 1N4. jwallace@ucalgary.ca
Young
Marisa C
MC
D000416:Alberta; D002648:Child; D002654:Child Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003625:Data Collection; D004651:Employment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006796:Household Work / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D033241:Lawyers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D007899:Leisure Activities; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D012737:Sex Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors; D014937:Work / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*