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Gender and Time Use in a Global Context pp 333–371Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

How Do Caregiving Responsibilities Shape the Time Use of Women and Men in Rural China?

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Abstract

This chapter begins by synthesizing the existing literature on time use in rural China through a gendered lens. The authors then analyze data from the 2011 Chinese Household Ethnicity Survey, highlighting the time-use patterns of rural women and men in seven Chinese regions with high concentrations of ethnic minority populations. In the analysis, household members are separated into five age-delimitated categories. Large gender gaps in total work time exist for all but the older adults. Total work time is highest for prime-age adults. Women in the 46–70 age group are the most varied in their time-use patterns, appearing to act as the shock absorbers of the household, working more or less depending on their extended household’s demands for care time, housework time, and income.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Kimmel and Connelly (2007) argue that both theoretically and empirically child caregiving and housework should be kept separate in models of time-use allocation of US mothers of children under the age of 13.

  2. 2.

    In contrast to many jurisdictions where individuals self-identify as being a member of an ethnic minority, in China, minority nationality status is assigned at birth, recorded on official identity documents, and, in almost all cases, fixed throughout one’s life (Maurer-Fazio and Hasmath 2015).

  3. 3.

    The official count of the Muslim population includes as Muslim virtually all members of Muslim-designated ethnic groups (MacKerras 2005), regardless of their actual religious practice.

  4. 4.

    We also estimate another version of our model with three additional household-level variables: net household income, household arable land, and house size. The results generated by this expanded model are quite similar to the regressions reported here.

  5. 5.

    While we have explored the issue of the exogeneity of household composition in other research projects employing Chinese rural data and found evidence that the co-residence decision of elders is interrelated with the presence of household children, income, minority group membership, and widowhood (Connelly and Maurer-Fazio 2015; Maurer-Fazio et al. 2015), we feel comfortable considering daily time-use decisions as being ex post with respect to co-residency decisions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Bates College, Lewiston, ME, USA

    Margaret Maurer-Fazio

  2. Department of Economics, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, USA

    Rachel Connelly

Authors
  1. Margaret Maurer-Fazio
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  2. Rachel Connelly
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Correspondence to Margaret Maurer-Fazio .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bowdoin College Dept of Economics, Brunswick, Maine, USA

    Rachel Connelly

  2. Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA

    Ebru Kongar

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Maurer-Fazio, M., Connelly, R. (2017). How Do Caregiving Responsibilities Shape the Time Use of Women and Men in Rural China?. In: Connelly, R., Kongar, E. (eds) Gender and Time Use in a Global Context. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56837-3_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56837-3_14

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