Women’s Employment Trajectory and Housework

• In Event: 3523 - Family Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 6: Household Division of Labor

Abstract

This study examines the impact of women’s employment on housework in Japan, particularly the effect of stability and the direction of change in women’s employment. Research on housework in Japan revealed that married women perform the lion’s share of housework, regardless of their employment status. Previous studies, however, mostly focused on the impact of women’s current employment status on housework, overlooking the trajectory of impact of women’s employment on housework across the course of their lives. Thus, this study focuses on whether and how women’s employment stability and the direction of change affect how frequently women do housework using data from Wave 1 (2007) to Wave 12 (2018) of the Japanese Life Course Panel Surveys. The preliminary results suggest that the impact of continuous, regular employment on reducing the frequency of women’s housework diminishes over time. In contrast, the impact of maintaining non-regular employment increases over time. The results also revealed that, while women do housework to a larger degree when they move to a less committed employment status, the degree of reduction in their housework is less significant when they move to a more committed employment status. This provides support for the asymmetric effect hypothesis. Implications for these findings are discussed.

Author

• Makiko Fuwa, Tokyo Metropolitan University