Stephen Manker Article #1 April 18, 2012 There are many gender studies that have found large

discrepancies in time use for American men and women. In fact, Professor Monson and Professor Perkins recently presented our class with a study on the social organization of paid and unpaid work in the U.S. household according to gender and time use. This article goes beyond the U.S. household, and compares different employment regimes and family policies in the U.S., France, Italy, and Sweden. The article attempts to answer a common question about social welfare programs for men and women in Europe and the U.S.: How do European men and women stack up against U.S. men and women in regards to balancing childrearing and market work? I believe that this article does an excellent job of taking our prior conversations about Feminist economics, particularly the gender division of labor, and putting them into a more global context. By comparing various social structures and institutions in Europe and the U.S., the class will hopefully get a better idea of alternative welfare programs that enable men and women to balance paid work and family commitments. Do men and women spend their time differently at various stages of their lives? The results of this study show that there are large discrepancies in the gender division of labor at the different life stages, particularly during the common period of life for child rearing. They also show that womens time in unpaid work is more influenced by the various phases of life than male counterparts. What is interesting is that U.S. couples do not have the most blatant gender gap with regards to time spent in unpaid domestic work. Italians rank the worst, French and American somewhere in the middle, and Sweden is considered to have the least amount of difference in the amount of time men and women spend engaged in childrearing and unpaid domestic work. I like that this article focuses on the various phases of our stylized life course. It looks at the amount of time men and women spend in both labor spheres before, during, and after child rearing. The data is a little cumbersome, though, and could be intimidating to some class members. I think that it is important to compare the U.S. to other countries when talking about the gender time-use gap instead of constantly berating our classmates with depressing statistics. If we feel inspired to change these statistics, which I believe many of us do, we need to look at alternative labor and social welfare regimes. Dominique Anxo, Letizia Mencarini, Ariane Pailhe, Anne Solaz, Maria Metizia Tanurri, and Lennart Flood (2011): Gender Differences in Time Use Over the Life Course in France, Italy, Sweden, and the US, Feminist Economics, 17:3, 159-195