Household tasks and employment in Japan and the U.S.

This study examines the gender division of housework among families in Japan and the US. Factors influencing the total work done by husbands wives and other persons include employment hours of work gender role attitudes and couples resources. Data are obtained from the 1994 Japanese National Survey on Work and Family Life and the 1987-88 US National Survey of Families and Households. The study samples include 1837 currently married Japanese men and women aged 20-59 years and 3667 currently married non-Hispanic US White men and women aged 20-59 years. Time spent on housework includes time spent cleaning house doing laundry cooking cleaning up after meals and grocery shopping by each spouse. Workload includes total hours spent by both partners on housework per week and usual hours spent per week on employment. The average number of hours of housework per week among wives was 33.5 hours in Japan and 32.4 hours in the US. Husbands spent 2.5 hours per week on female housework in Japan (7% of total housework time) and almost 8 hours per week in the US (21% of total housework time). Average employment hours were 48 hours/week in Japan and 41 hours/week in the US. Japanese wives were more likely to stay at home or work part-time. When womens employment hours increased their total workload increased. Full-time employed wives worked about 68-75 hours/week in Japan and 65-77 hours/week in the US. Gender equity was greater among nonworking wives. Coresidence with parents reduced housework time of all members by similar degrees. Living with male parents increased wives housework. Grandparents housework time increased in households with preschool children. Multivariate analysis reveals that husbands share of housework increased as wives employment hours increased. Japanese husbands housework increased only when wives worked full-time. Wives with higher income did less housework. The effect of educational level on hours of housework was insignificant in Japan. The gender role attitudes hypothesis was supported mostly in the US.