Abstract
Housework time has been noticed internationally as a measure of equality between men and women. It has long been evident that there exsists a gender bias between wives and husbands concerning the division of housework. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the actual situation of couples' participation in housework using data from the time use survey of Tokyo, Setagaya, 1995. We showed average housework time, the percentages of participation in housework, and housework division ratios between husbands and wives on a weekday and a holiday.
Husbands whose wives worked full-time were the most progressive in housework participation. Their housework time on any given weekday was, on average, 50 min. Sixty-six point two percent of them participated in housework on a weekday. Twenty-nine point seven percent of them did “clothing care” which according to previous data had been quite unusual. Besides, on a weekday they shared 19.2% of the housework. This ratio was the highest we had ever seen. The results suggested that couples with full-time working wives were moving towards a more gender-free lifestyle.
On the other hand, couples with part-time working wives showed a tendency towards traditional gender role differentiation.
