Reallocating the Clock: How public services are shaping women’s time use in Europe

This paper studies the role of public services in shaping the housework of women and promoting their labour participation in Europe. We explore how public services can be a direct source of employment, notably through schools and hospitals and how they reduce the burden of unpaid labour through their ’defamilialisation’ function. We have elaborated a novel database covering public service provision in 450 European regions, combined with data from the 2012 and 2016 European Quality of Life Surveys (EQLS). Employing a multilevel model analysis, we assess the influence of regional public service availability on women’s time spent on paid and unpaid work. Our findings indicate that the availability of public care services is associated with a decrease in unpaid work hours, while other services emerge as a source of employment for women, significantly increasing their involvement in paid work. We also show that schools and hospitals seem to be associated with an increase in unpaid work, indicating that public services do not fundamentally change the gendered division of labour but are rather instruments for the reallocation of time.