Work, Family and Gender The profound inequalities that plague families across social class simultaneously create a chasm between women’s and men’s opportunities in the United States. Through the 1990s, full-time employed women earned an average of 75 percent of what men in the same position earned. The gap is not merely due to differences in years of paid work experienced, to differences in the number of hours worked, or to differences in amount of education. Economic studies have shown that a majority of the pay gap between women and men is associated with their differing family responsibilities. For example, among 30-year-old working women, those who are not mothers earn 95 percent as much as men, whereas mothers earn just 75 percent as much as men. In national surveys, both working men and women said that women have far more of the family caretaking and household responsibilities. Eight out of ten employed mothers and seven out of ten working women caring for their parents said they do far more of the household chores than their spouse or partner. Men agreed: more than five out of six said their wife or partner does most of the household chores. Similarly, women and men reported facing unequal demands from family members. Twice as many mothers as fathers said their family often make demands of them. Working women are more likely than working men to also be caring for a child, spouse or partner with a disability, or for an elderly relative. Those men who do help care for a disabled adult or elderly relative are more likely than women to spend one day or less a month providing that care. Women are three times as likely as men to have spent forty hours or more a month caring for a disabled child. Working women also spend more time providing both unpaid assistance and emotional support to their elderly parents or parents-in-law. While our data make clear that working women continue to carry a disproportionate amount of the caregiving load in families, they also highlight the share of working men who carry a demanding family-caregiving load. While women bear more of the caregiving burden, they face worse working conditions than men. In addition to the disadvantages women face in salaries, working conditions often make it difficult or impossible for women to succeed to their full potential at the same time as caring for family members. Our national research revealed that employed mothers were significantly less likely than fathers to have paid leave they could take to care for family members. Not only did women have less paid leave in general, but they were less likely to have choices about their work hours, in terms of both when to start and end work and when to take breaks. In fact, on all measures of job autonomy (such as having a say on what jobs are to be done), women had less than men. To eliminate gender inequalities we need policies that address the relationship between paid work and family caregiving responsibilities, making it possible for both women and men to succeed at work while caring for family members. For more information, please see: Earle A, Ayanian JZ, Heymann SJ. What Predicts Women’s Ability to Return to Work After Newly Diagnosed Coronary Heart Disease: Findings on the Importance of Paid Leave. Journal of Women’s Health. Forthcoming. Heymann SJ. Inequalities at Work and at Home: Social Class and Gender Divides. In: Heymann SJ and Beem C, eds. Unfinished Work: Building Equality and Democracy in an Era of Working Families. New York: New Press, 2005. Heymann, SJ. Work Family Policy: Its Critical Impact on American Women and Families. Presentation delivered on Oct. 8, 2003 in conjunction with the Capitol Hill Briefing Series on Women's Health Policy, sponsored by the Kaiser Foundation and Women's Policy, Inc. Heymann SJ. The Widening Gap: Why Working Families Are in Jeopardy and What Can Be Done About It. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Click for excerpts and figures on Gender Inequalities and Working Conditions from The Widening Gap. The excerpts are in PDF format. To view them, download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Back to US Initiatives
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