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“Women's work”: welfare state spending and the gendered and classed dimensions of unpaid care
journal contribution
posted on 2021-03-31, 15:50 authored by Naomi Lightman, Anthony KevinsAnthony KevinsThis study is the first to explicitly assess the connections between welfare state spending and the gendered and classed dimensions of unpaid care work across 29 European nations. Our research uses multi-level model analysis of European Quality of Life Survey data, examining childcare and housework burdens for people living with at least one child under the age of 18. Two key findings emerge: First, by disaggregating different types of unpaid care work, we find that childcare provision is more gendered than classed—reflecting trends toward “intensive mothering”. Housework and cooking, on the contrary, demonstrate both gender and class effects, likely because they are more readily outsourced by wealthier individuals to the paid care sector. Second, while overall social expenditure has no effect on hours spent on childcare and housework, results suggest that family policy may shape the relationship between gender, income, and housework (but not childcare). Specifically, family policy expenditure is associated with a considerably smaller gender gap vis-à-vis the time dedicated to housework: This effect is present across the income spectrum, but is particularly substantial in the case of lower income women.
Funding
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant (File no: 430-2018-00062)
History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- International Relations, Politics and History
Published in
Gender and SocietyVolume
35Issue
5Pages
778-805Publisher
SAGE PublicationsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by SAGE Publications under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2021-03-24Publication date
2021-08-16Copyright date
2021ISSN
0891-2432eISSN
1552-3977Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Dr Anthony Kevins. Deposit date: 29 March 2021Usage metrics
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