To Örebro University

This study examines the connection between the time that women and men spend on paid work and housework and psychological distress, and addresses the question whether gender differences in time spent on these activities account for the gender difference in psychological distress. A group (n =1,277) of employed and cohabiting women and men from the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey 2000 (LNU 2000) are analysed using OLS regression. Results show that time spent on housework explains part of the gender difference in psychological distress. Among women, paid working time and possibly time spent on housework are associated with low psychological distress. However, spending too much time on one role decreases the possible beneficial effect of the other, and this is mainly caused by the resulting increase in total role time. Men's level of psychological distress is not associated with hours of paid work or housework. The study also shows that the division of housework between women and men is unusually uneven in households where women have a long total role time. Thus, an increase in men's participation in housework could decrease the gender difference in psychological distress as well as the number of women experiencing a high workload.

Absolute as well as relative hours of paid and unpaid work may influence well-being. This study investigates whether absolute hours spent on paid work and housework account for the lower well-being among women as compared to men in Europe, and whether the associations between well-being and hours of paid work and housework differ by gender attitudes and social context. Attitudes towards women's and men's paid work and housework obligations may influence how beneficial or detrimental it is to spend time on these activities, as may social comparison of one's own hours to the number of hours commonly spent among similar others. A group of 13,425 women and men from 25 European countries are analysed using country fixed-effects models. The results suggest that while men's well-being appears to be unaffected by hours of paid work and housework, women's well-being increases with increased paid working hours and decreases with increasing housework hours. Gender differences in time spent on paid work and housework account for a third of the European gender difference in well-being and are thus one reason that women have lower well-being than men have. Gender attitudes do not appear to modify the associations between hours and well-being, but there is a tendency for women's well-being to be higher the less housework they do compared to other women in the same family situation and country. However, absolute hours of paid work and housework appear to be more important to women's well-being than relative hours.

The present study investigates whether associations between well-being and paid work and housework, respectively, differ between European family policy models, and whether any such differences can be attributed to differences in the experience of work–family conflict. Analysing data on mothers and fathers in 18 European countries, the study finds that the traditional family policy model shows the most positive association between women’s well-being and paid working hours, although this association is concealed by work–family conflict. Possibly, the selection into long paid working hours of women with rewarding jobs is greater here than elsewhere. Women’s housework hours are also most positively associated with well-being in the traditional model, although well-being decreases when housework hours become too long. In the market-oriented model, women’s paid working hours and housework hours are instead associated with decreasing well-being, the former association appearing to be caused by work–family conflict. The strongest positive association between men’s paid working hours and well-being is found in the market-oriented model, but again, control for work–family conflict reveals positive associations in this and other models. Hence, among both mothers and fathers, work–family conflict appears to be one important reason why paid working hours are not more clearly associated with high levels of well-being.