Gender, Unpaid Work, and Social Norms in Young Italian Families: Evidence from Couples Time Diaries

TL;DR

This study examines how gender norms influence unpaid work and leisure in Italian couples, revealing persistent inequalities even among full-time workers and linking traditional attitudes to greater disparities.

Contribution

It provides detailed joint time-use data and gender norm measures, highlighting the persistent gendered division of unpaid work and leisure in Italian families.

Findings

Women do more unpaid work and childcare than men.

Gender inequalities persist even among dual full-time couples.

Traditional gender attitudes correlate with larger disparities in unpaid work and leisure.

Abstract

Why do large gender inequalities in everyday life persist even as women strengthen their attachment to paid work? Existing evidence shows that women continue to do more unpaid work than men, but much of that evidence is based on individual diaries, says little about how inequality is jointly organized within couples, and rarely links daily time allocation to directly measured gender attitudes. This paper addresses that gap using the TIMES Observatory, an original survey of 1,928 co-resident couples with at least one child younger than 11 in Emilia-Romagna or Campania. The data combine matched partner diaries for one weekday and one weekend day with rich socio-economic information and direct measures of gender norms. We document three main findings. First, women do substantially more unpaid work and spend more time with children, while men do more paid work and enjoy more leisure without children. Second, these asymmetries remain sizeable even among dual full-time couples, implying that stronger female labor-market attachment does not by itself equalize daily life. Third, more traditional gender attitudes - especially among men - are descriptively associated with lower male participation in childcare and domestic work and with wider gaps in discretionary leisure. The analysis is descriptive rather than causal, but it shows that gender inequality within couples is visible not only in the amount of work performed, but also in the distribution of time that is genuinely discretionary.