Gender and Work in the United States and Patterns by Hispanic Ethnicity

Abstract

Across the globe, the pattern of gender specialization in work life repeats: men do more market work than women and women do more unpaid care work than men. This generality differs over the life course, however, as processes of growth, reproduction and aging are filtered through social institutions that affect men and women differently. It also obscures other types of variation. From country to country and within a country over time and across social groups, patterns of work by age and sex can be quite different. Using data from the American Time Use Survey, this chapter documents patterns by age and sex of working time in the United States between two time points, 2005 and 2015, and across one type of social grouping: Hispanic ethnicity. Ethnic background can have a strong effect on cultural ideas around gender roles, but those norms can change over time as well, resulting in convergence or divergence of gender differences in work life within and between groups.