GENDER ROLES AND THE DIVISION OF UNPAID WORK IN SPANISH HOUSEHOLDS

This paper examines the role of the doing-gender hypothesis versus traditional models of the household in explaining how the woman's share of home labor varies with relative earnings. The findings, using the 2002-3 Spanish Time Use Survey (STUS; Spanish Statistical Office 2003), support the doing-gender hypothesis in the case of housework: a woman's relative share of housework fails to decrease with her relative earnings beyond the point where her earnings are the same as her husband's. In contrast, a woman's share of childcare time displays a flat pattern over the distribution of her spouse's relative earnings. This last result is neither consistent with traditional theories of the household, nor with the doing-gender hypothesis. It can, however, still be interpreted in light of social norms, whereby women specialize in this type of caring activity regardless of their relative productivity or bargaining power.