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.

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Brown sugar (Bs) and palm sugar (Ps) were evaluated for their bioavailability of iron in experiments with iron-deficient rats. The iron-deficient rats were fed ad libitum on an iron-deficient diet, Bs or Ps diet with Bs or Ps added instead of sucrose, and M-bs or M-ps diet with the minerals except iron contained in Bs or Ps added to an AIN-76 mineral mixture for the control diet. Iron deficiency resulted in decreases in the body weight, body weight gain, iron content of the liver and bone, and breaking force of the bone, an increase in the liver copper content, and worse hematological values such as the serum iron, hemoglobin, ferritin and unsaturated iron binding capacity (UIBC). However, the body weight, body weight gain, liver copper, breaking force of the bone and these hematological values for the Bs, M-bs, Ps and M-ps groups recovered from the iron-deficiency and reached the levels of the control group, indicating the same food intake among the different dietary groups. It is suggested that Bs and Ps are promising sources of iron, and that the iron in Ps is efficiently absorbed by iron-deficient rats.

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The effects of DSA (depolymerized sodium alginate with a low molecular weight) on the serum lipid level were investigated in healthy women with a high cholesterol intake. The subjects in the test group were given two bottles of a test drink (containing 2 g of DSA per bottle) per day for 3 weeks. The subjects in the control group were given apparently the same drink without DSA. Blood samples were collected 4 times, the first 2 days before the experiment and then weekly during the 3-week experiment. The serum total cholesterol (T-Ch) level of the control group tended to increase, although there was no significant difference in T-Ch level between the test and control groups. The T-Ch level for 6 subjects in the control group with T-Ch of more than 180 mg/dl from the pre-experimental measurement, however, increased with the last two measurements. In contrast there was no change in the T-Ch level of eight equivalent subjects in the test group. The increment in T-Ch concentration due to a dietary excess of cholesterol was significantly suppressed by the concomitant intake of DSA. These results suggest that DSA stimulated cholesterol excretion to protect from an increase in T-Ch due to the dietary excess of cholesterol, especially in those subjects with a relatively high level of serum cholesterol.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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