Domestic work time and gender differentials in Great Britain 1992‐1998

Purpose - Aims to provide new evidence about gender differentials in domestic work time, market work time and total work time, that updates the evidence provided by Jenkins and O'Leary in 1997 and Layte in 1999 using UK time‐budget surveys. Design/methodology/approach - Investigates gender differentials in work times using the British Household Panel survey (BHPS). The BHPS is a nationally representative longitudinal data set consisting of some 5,500 households (and 10,000 individuals) first interviewed in the autumn of 1991 and followed and re‐interviewed every year subsequently. Findings - The picture that emerges from the BHPS data is a rather “traditional” and well‐known one. On average, women (be them married or single) work more at home and less in the labour market than men. The comforting side of this pessimistic conclusion, is that the trends in domestic and paid work time over the 1990s show a narrowing in the gender differentials, thanks mainly to the changing behaviour of women and not of men. Originality/value - An important message that seems to emerge is that women are far more flexible than men. That is, men hardly react or change their behaviour in front of (certain) situations that clearly affect women's time allocation decisions (e.g. presence of children, cohort effects). Finally, the paper identifies and characterises the men who do better at home in relative terms: the “new” men.