Gender, work and family (1)

In the United States, women’s labor force participation increased dramatically over the second half of the twentieth century. Yet women’s occupational attainment and earnings lag behind men’s, in part because of continued inequality in family responsibilities. This paper uses nationally representative data on secondary school students from the Education Longitudinal Study: 2002 to examine whether gender differences in adult work-family configurations have antecedents in adolescents’ goals for work and family achievement. We compare the value placed on work and family achievement by high school girls and boys, using latent class analysis to identify distinct configurations of work and family goals. Results show high ambitions for both work and family goals among both boys and girls and minimal gender differences. Although girls are more likely than boys to report that marriage and family relationships are very important to them, differences are relatively small, and girls are also more likely to value success at work and getting a good job. Neither boys nor girls show a pattern of placing high value on family and low value on work.

Labor force participation of Mexican women has shown an accelerated and constant increase in recent decades. However, women often face limited opportunities and differentiated entry into the labor market because they need to combine work and family obligations. This paper will examine the role of the household workload, as an approach to family obligations, in a double selectivity process (the decision to work and if this job could be or not as a salaried worker) that could be present in the Mexican labor market. We use data from the National Survey of Occupation and Employment, 2009 (ENOE) a national representative sample of the women population aged 15 to 75 years old. We fit a bivariate probit model with sample selection. The results indicate that there is a double selection process in the labor market. Household workload has an important role in this process. Its effects are noticeably stronger in the labor market participation. For those women who cross the barrier imposed by household workload their participation in salaried work could be incentivized.

In developed countries, there has been large progress towards gender equality in many fields, in particular employment. However, gender inequalities are still huge in the domestic sphere. In particular women still perform the bulk of domestic and parental tasks in spite of the dramatic increase in the number of dual-earner couples. The aim of this study is twofold. First it intends to describe the long term evolution of male and female involvement in housework and parenting. Second, it aims at disentangle factors that plays in favor of an increasing or a decreasing of gender gap in housework, i.e. technical progress, changes in family structure, social changes and changes of norms. The three last French time-use surveys provide a unique tool to analyze the evolution and the determinants of gender gap in housework during the last 25 years. We show that male involvement evolves extremely slowly while that of women decreases. Using Oaxaca decomposition techniques, we conclude that changes in family structure, the level of female education and labor market participation and in domestic equipment explain the decrease of gender gap in housework but the persistence of traditional roles of men and women acts as a brake on these changes.

Most research findings agree that women have higher levels of depression or anomia than men. These conclusions are derived from general population samples in industrialized western countries. However, contemporary Chinese society is undergoing two major structural changes: gender imbalance and population migration. This paper studies the factors that determine anomia and its gender difference among rural migrant worker in the context of gender imbalance and large scale population migration in China.
Multivariate analyses of data from a survey of rural migrant workers in X city, Fujian province, which was conducted in 2009, show that gender, marital status, social role and characteristics related to family support have significant influences on anomia among rural migrant workers; men have higher levels of anomia than women; unmarried people, especially older unmarried people, have higher levels of anomia than married people, but there is little gender difference in the influence of marital status on anomia. There are gender differences in the influence of social role and characteristics related to family support on anomia.

It is well known that married people have better physical and mental health than their non-married counterparts. But Korean demographic trends in women’s marriage are additional evidence that might address that single life of women is becoming less disadvantaged. The proportion of the population aged 29~34 and never-married has dramatically increased for women, and most of never-married women become better educated and make progress achieving socioeconomic independence (Statistics Korea, 1975~2010 Census). With higher rate of women’s non-marriage, the norm of 'proper age' at marriage and the meaning of never-married has dramatically changed, and even social stigma used to be attached to single women aged over the 'proper age' has notably diminished (Yoon, 1994; Kim, 2005). These changes suggest that non-married women in Korea now becoming more and more selective, which may affect the health of this population as compared to those married counterparts.Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate not only the relationship between marital status and the health status, but also the health differentials in women by marital status and employment status to assess the meaning of the changes among Korean women.

This study analyses some demographic variables influencing the participation of rural women in the informal sector of Imo State, Nigeria. It collects data from a survey in nine Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Imo State. Using multistage sampling it selects two thousand, three hundred and forty women. The selection of nine LGAs constitutes the first stage and the selection of eighteen communities constitutes the second stage. After selection in theses villages/communities, the study chooses some households from these selected villages. In the fourth stage, it selects the wife of head of household or the head of household (if female). Result shows that rural informal economic activities by women are likely to be affected by the following demographic variables; age, household size, number of children, marital status, place of residence and place of work in their attempt to improve the living standard of the rural women. The result also reveals that demographic variables within rural areas can be dynamic in terms of space. Since the women’s activities relies heavily on family labour, the implication is the absence of a social welfare scheme, the presence of child labour, and little or no observance of the minimum wage requirement. Government policies should be formulated in this regard.

Female accounted for more than 50% of the world population and workforce. However women are not treated equally as man. There is an actual situation that the phenomenon of women being beaten, abused...is still common nowadays. While gender development index of Vietnam was 0.7 ranking 94 out of 155 countries but gender disparities remained in several areas and among vulnerable population. This paper will focus on status of gender inequality in income and education special in ethnic minorities (EM) group in Thai Nguyen mountainous province of Vietnam and explore associated factors. This study uses data from a population-based survey conducted by the Institute of Population, Health and Development in collaboration with The Population Council in Thai Nguyen. 2,695 individuals in 2,490 households who have completed the interviews were used in analyses. Weights were applied and svy procedures in STATA were used in analysis to deal with the complex design. The results of study show that female have income lower than male. From this survey we also explore that male have higher education than female and Kinh woman also have higher education than EM woman. But female have health better than male in both groups. This study will make recommendations for building appropriate intervention programs for the gender equality for the EM in Vietnam

Becoming a father is a major event, marking a great turn around in the life of a man by shifting his social identity from being fatherless to becoming a father. Conventionally, the new role often requires a man to adjust his everyday life activity to include a new job—parenting—a gendered project and a form of family practice (Coltrane & Adams, 2008). As a chapter of a PhD thesis, this paper examines the meanings of being a father and men’s parenting experiences, which reflected their ideas of fatherhood and masculinity among young, adult, married Vietnamese men. Using a qualitative methodology, 20 men aged from 26 to 38 were purposively recruited in 2009 for semi-structured interviews. Interview data were then thematically analysed in relation to the mentioned theme.

I use a novel experiment to study intra-household allocation of resources in rural northern Ghana. In an experiment that provided subsidies towards the purchase of health insurance, the total value of the subsidies were not enough to enroll all household members. 200 households were randomly assigned to receive no subsidy vouchers, subsidy vouchers that specified a subsidy amount for each household member or a subsidy voucher that allowed households to decide which members to enroll to allocate. Comparison of enrollment patterns under the two types of vouchers shows that when allowed to allocate subsidy amounts, households enroll more boys than girls by 11.7 percentage points. This gender differential is concentrated in children aged 7-17 years. I find suggestive evidence that differential labor market participation rates is one explanation for this allocation pattern: among children aged 7-17 years, boys are 3.7 percentages points more likely to participate in the labor market as farm workers. These results suggest that households may be investing more in boys because of their contributions to household farm output.

The proportion of female migrants working in manufacture is higher than male migrants in the city of Batam. This study investigates whether this phenomenon implies better equality in labor market or whether it still has gender-biased conditions. Using the 2010 Census, three indicators used to assess gender bias: marital status and living arrangement, the percentage of under-five and the percentage of adults. Female migrants with higher probability to work in manufacture are the ones who are not married while male migrants with higher probability to work in manufacture are the ones who are married. The percentage of under-five is negatively related with female migrants’ probability to work in manufacture while positively related with male migrants’ probability to work in manufacture. The percentage of adults positively affect the probability to work for both male and female migrants, but for female migrants the effect is much steeper. These findings indicate that the opportunity of womens’ time may be still highly connected with household production much more than of men’s. Thus, female migrants may be more likely to work in manufacture than male migrants, but under certain gender bias conditions, their probabilities to work in manufacture may be declining.