Cristina Carrasco

Time, Work and Gender in Spain

This article explores two related topics: the recent effects of women in Spain entering the labour market and the current transformation of time management at home and at work. There are important movements in both fields with correlating consequences. These changes will greatly affect the role of women in our society determining the quality and evolution of not only womens lives, but also of our society in general. This article discusses some basic questions about time management and its impact on peoples lives, the important changes in the culture and work of women in the last two decades and the transformations in the management of work time with specific attention given to its effects on women and domestic care.

Women, Families, and Work in Spain: Structural Changes and New Demands

This article explores the evolution of the care economy in Spain in the latter half of the twentieth century, analyzing the time use of family members, womens entrance into paid employment, and welfare state policies. Our historical account suggests that efforts to strengthen womens position in the labor market must go hand in hand with policies that encourage more equitable sharing of care responsibilities.

Family Strategies for Meeting Care and Domestic Work Needs: Evidence From Spain

Abstract Since the 1980s, women have become joint breadwinners in many households in Spain. This study analyzes whether this change in the labor force participation rate of Spanish women has substantially modified strategies for meeting household needs. Using the 2002–3 Spanish Time Use Survey, this study examines the total (paid and unpaid) work time devoted to satisfying the direct care needs of individuals and the determinants of womens and mens participation in housework. These findings are compared with the hypotheses advanced in the literature. The results show that the new social conditions have only slightly modified mens behavior, but that the care strategies women adopt have changed substantially. Although still responsible for care, women now externalize part of this commitment either via the market if their wages permit or by seeking help inside the family. The study concludes by discussing the public policy implications of the findings.

Beyond Employment Working time, living time

The compilation of economic statistics, and particularly those relating to labour, directly reflect the prevailing perspective of the economics discipline, and are manifested in abstractions in the form of models entirely and exclusively focused on market production. In the majority of labour surveys and statistics, thus, domestic work is neither economically relevant nor does it even have the status of ‘work’. The aim of this article is to suggest new ways for studying the working time and living time of women and men, on the basis of a non-gendered methodological proposal implemented in the city of Barcelona - a non-androcentric labour force survey that incorporates both domestic and market work.

Measured time, perceived time: A gender bias:

In recent decades, time-use diaries have emerged as useful tools for recording information on the amount of time that people devote to various activities. Debate remains, however, about whether there are significant differences between the results given by diaries and the results given by questionnaires regarding the share of unpaid labour in the household, in particular the differences between men and women. This paper is a contribution to that debate and widens the focus to consider another type of survey that contains questions that do not call for the measurement of time devoted to housework and caregiving, but rather explore people’s perceptions of the percentage of total housework that they perform.

Lights and Shadows of Household Satellite Accounts: The case of Catalonia, Spain

Abstract The construction of Household Satellite Accounts (HSAs) to value household production is not a new object of study. However, as their use has widened, research efforts have focused on resolving technical aspects of valuation assessment and far less attention has been paid to the underlying conceptual aspects. The purpose of this study is to contribute to improving the HSA as an analytical tool. Two approaches are proposed, drawing on existing data from Catalonia, Spain. The first approach involves incorporating the analysis of time as a key component of HSAs, making it possible to explore aspects of unpaid housework without the influence of monetary valuation. The second develops a new methodology that captures information on both housework and market work, overcoming some of the limitations of current databases used in the calculation of HSAs and allowing an analysis of the various interrelationships that exist between the two types of work.