Time Waits for no (Wo)Man: An Investigation of the Gendered Experience of Domestic Time

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Abstract
Quite a lot is already known from the existing sociological literature about the overall time spent by women and men in different domestic tasks, but there is much less information available on more complex sociologically-relevant facets of the experience of time, such as the social context of activities, and the common combinations of different activities. In this paper I use time-use diary data to focus upon three important aspects of the gendered experience of time. These are the social context of domestic tasks in relation to their (gendered) patterns of management, the intensity or density of time-use involving combinations of different activities, and the fragmentation of leisure time according to which activities are responsible for interrupting it. Overall these analyses support the conclusion that women's time is not only more pressured in terms of the intensity of domestic tasks, but that the more enjoyable aspects of their time, such as leisure time, tend to be more fragmented than that of men.