Gender Inequalities in Allocating Time to Paid and Unpaid Work: Evidence from Bolivia

Abstract

In this chapter we are interested in how gender influences the allocation of time among adults and results in inequalities among individuals. The case we will analyze is that of urban Bolivia, an example of an urban population of a developing country in which the incidence of paid work is higher for men than for women, but where, nonetheless, more than two-thirds of the adult urban female population has a paid job and an even higher proportion of men report doing domestic work.

Many ideas in this chapter were presented at ‘The global Conference on Unpaid Work and the Economy: Gender, Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals,’ which was held in 2005 at the Levy Economics Institute in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY and later discussed at the International Poverty Centre. The authors would like to thank Rania Antonopoulos, Indira Hirway and an anonymous reader for valuable feedback as well as Diane Elson, Sanjay Reddy, Eduardo Zepeda, Terry McKinley, Dag Ehrenpreis and Imraan Valodia and Karla Correa for their comments and suggestions.

International Poverty Centre and CSC/Cambridge University.

International Poverty Centre.

International Poverty Centre.