Ebru Kongar

Time Allocation of Married Mothers and Fathers in Hard Times: The 2007–09 US Recession

Using American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data for 2003–10, this study examines whether the 2007–09 recession contributed to gender equality in married mothers’ and fathers’ paid and unpaid work hours. Trend analysis shows that the recession narrowed the disparity in both paid and unpaid work hours, as mothers substituted paid work for unpaid work and fathers’ paid work hours declined. If the jobless recovery after June 2009 is included in the recessionary period, hardship in the labor market for fathers brought greater gender equality only in paid work. Relative to mothers and in an absolute sense, fathers’ paid work hours and total workload declined and their personal care and leisure time increased. These findings suggest an alternative path for moving toward equality in workloads that entails gender-equitable job creation, living wage, and work–life balance policies.

Importing Equality or Exporting Jobs? Competition and Gender Wage and Employment Differentials in U.S. Manufacturing

This study investigates the impact of increased import competition on gender wage and employment differentials in U.S. manufacturing over the period from 1976 to 1993. Increased import competition is expected to decrease the relative demand for workers in low-wage production occupations and the relative demand for women workers, given the high female share in these occupations. The findings support this hypothesis. Disproportionate job losses for women in low-wage production occupations was associated with rising imports in U.S. manufacturing over this period, and as low-wage women lost their jobs, the average wage of the remaining women in the study increased, thereby narrowing the gender wage gap.

Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities: A Critical Feminist and Postcolonial Analysis

ABSTRACT This contribution seeks to delineate the broad contours of a transnational, anti-imperial feminist perspective on gender and economics in Muslim communities by bringing together feminist analyses of Orientalist tropes, development discourses and policies, and macro- and microeconomic trends. The goal is to facilitate conversations among scholars who have tended to work within their respective disciplinary and methodological silos despite shared interests. This approach pays special attention to intersectionality, historicity, and structural constraints by focusing on the diversity of the experiences of women and men by religion, location, citizenship, class, age, ethnicity, race, marital status, and other factors. It recognizes the complex relationships between the economic, political, cultural, and religious spheres and the role of local and transnational histories, economies, and politics in shaping peoples lives. Finally, it emphasizes that openness to different methodological approaches can shed clearer light on the question of how various structural factors shape womens economic realities.

Is deindustrialization good for women? Evidence from the United States

Abstract The gender wage gap in the United States narrowed considerably throughout the 1980s and then more slowly in the 1990s. Using a decomposition methodology and US Current Population Survey data, this study investigates the impact of deindustrializations continuing shift in employment away from manufacturing to services on the US gender wage gap between 1990 and 2001. The study finds that the widening of the gender wage gap in the service sector caused a slowdown in the narrowing of the US gender wage gap. Within the service sector, two occupational elements affected the growing gender wage gap: womens entry into traditionally male occupations characterized by high wages and high gender wage differentials that resulted in the relative increase in mens wages compared to womens wages in these occupations.

Time Use of Mothers and Fathers in Hard Times and Better Times: The US Business Cycle of 2003-10

The U.S. economic crisis and recession of 2007-2009 accelerated the convergence of women’s and men’s employment rates as men experienced disproportionate job losses and women’s entry into the labor force gathered pace. Using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data for 2003-2010, this study examines whether the narrowing gap in paid work over this period was mirrored in unpaid work, personal care and leisure time. We find that the gender gap in unpaid work followed a U-pattern, narrowing during the recession but widening afterwards. Through segregation analysis we trace this U-pattern to the slow erosion of gender segregation in housework and through a standard decomposition analysis of time use by employment status we show that this pattern was mainly driven by movement towards gender equitable unpaid hours of women and men with the same employment status. In addition, over the business cycle gender inequality in leisure time increased.

Feminist Approaches to Time Use

The recognition that unpaid work time needs to be incorporated in all analyses of the economic choice, both in individual decision making and in the study of economic growth, business cycles, and the effects of macro policies on individuals is a fundamental tenant of feminist economics. The analysis offered goes beyond simply adding up time by emphasizing other important aspects of time use like who else is around, the time of day when an activity takes place, and subjective well-being of time use. On the macroeconomics side, the representative agent model is rejected for models in which consumers differ by gender, age, sexuality, race and ethnicity, migration status, and income class. Time poverty and its relationship to income poverty and the macroeconomic effects of recession and austerity are also explicitly analyzed.

Time Use of Parents in the United States: What Difference Did the Great Recession Make?

Feminist and institutionalist literature has challenged the “Mancession” narrative of the 2007-09 recession and produced nuanced and gender-aware analyses of the labor market and well-being outcomes of the recession. Using American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data for 2003-12, his paper examines the recession’s impact on gendered patterns of time use over the course of the 2003-12 business cycle. We find that the gender disparity in paid and unpaid work hours followed a U-shaped pattern, narrowing during the recession and widening slightly during the jobless recovery. The change in unpaid work disparity was smaller than that in paid work, and was short-lived. Consequently, mothers’ total workload increased under the hardships of the Great Recession and declined only slightly during the recovery.

Offshoring of white‐collar jobs in the United States and gendered outcomes

Purpose - Since the mid-1990s, offshore production has become increasingly important in white-collar, service sector activities in the US economy. This development coincided with a stagnant gender wage gap in the service sector and a slowdown in the narrowing of the overall US gender wage gap over this period. This paper aims to categorize white-collar service sector occupations into two groups based on whether an occupation is at risk of being offshored and to assess the relative contribution of these two groupings, through their employment and wages, to the trends in the gender wage gap within the service sector and the US economy between 1995 and 2005. Design/methodology/approach - Standard occupational decomposition methods are applied to Current Population Survey and Displaced Workers Survey data. Findings - The findings show that in occupations at risk of being offshored, low-wage womens employment declined, leading to an artificial increase in the average wage of the remaining women thereby narrowing the gender wage gap. This improvement in the gender wage gap was offset by the relative growth of high-wage male employment in at-risk occupations and the widening of the gender wage gap within not-at-risk occupations. Originality/value - These findings contribute to the growing literature on the causes of the stagnation of the US gender wage gap in the 1990s.

Gendered Patterns of Time Use over the Life Cycle: Evidence from Turkey

Using data from the 2006 Turkish Time-Use Survey, we examine gender differences in time allocation among married heterosexual couples over the life cycle. While we find large discrepancies in the gender division of both paid and unpaid work at each life stage, the gender gap in paid and unpaid work is largest among parents of infants compared to parents of older children and couples without children. The gender gap narrows as children grow up and parents age. Married womens housework time remains relatively unchanged across their life cycle, while older men spend more time doing housework than their younger counterparts. Over the course of the life cycle, womens total work burden increases relative to mens. Placing our findings within the gendered institutional context in Turkey, we argue that gender-inequitable work-family reconciliation policies that are based on gendered assumptions of womens role as caregivers exacerbate gender disparities in time use.

Gendered Patterns of Time Use over the Life Cycle in Turkey

Using data from the 2006 Turkish Time-Use Survey, this chapter examines gender differences in time allocation among married opposite-sex couples over the life cycle. While the authors find large discrepancies in the gender division of both paid and unpaid work at each life stage, the gender gap in paid and unpaid work is largest among parents of infants compared to parents of older children and couples without children. Married women’s housework time remains relatively unchanged across their life cycle, while older men spend more time doing housework than their younger counterparts. Over the course of the life cycle, women’s total work burden increases relative to men.