Gender equality and extension of women rights in Russia
within millennium development goals
4. Time allocation
The Time distribution structure differences lie in the basis of different positions of males and females in the labour market, economic sphere. In spite of the high level of female labour activity formed within the second half of the XX century, the unwritten "social agreement" keeps being in force, this agreement had fixed distribution of roles in the family and on the labour market. Within a long history time period a situation formed where the female is responsible for the housekeeping and children and the male's responsibility is to be the breadwinner, to do income earning. This leads to the fact that, especially accounting for the females high employment level in Russia, the males' time is distributed between their working time and leisure in a greater degree, and with the females among their working time, leisure and household.
| Women | Men | |
| All housework is made by wife | 21,4 | 11,5 |
| Each have his responsibilities, but majority of work is made by wife | 38,9 | 32,6 |
| Majority of work is made by both wife and husband | 28,1 | 36,7 |
| Each have his responsibilities, but majority of work is made by husband | 5,2 | 12,0 |
| Doesn’t know | 4,3 | 5,1 |
| Other | 2,1 | 2,1 |
The traditional "social agreement" conflicts and does not conform with the new males' and females' roles on the labour market. The positions levelling in the labour activities should be supplemented with the levelling of the positions in the household. But on this topic there are contradictory trends within the society. Along with the family equality position wide enough shared by males and females there are conservative opinions created by the growing market relations and by the latest social economic processes. Researches show that among the males of young age the patriarchal family advocates number is growing. Within the 16-30 old males and females group an almost twofold break between the advocates and opponents of an "equitable" family is observed while with their parents' generation group the similar parameters differ slightly17.
(for having this activity), hours per week, RLMS.18
| Men | Women | |
| labor market employment | 43,0 | 38,4 |
| working on your individual land plot, dacha, or garden plot | 15,4 | 13,0 |
| looking for and purchasing food items | 3,6 | 4,4 |
| preparing food and washing dishes | 5,2 | 13,8 |
| cleaning the apartment - sweeping, cleaning the floors, windows, straightening closets, balconies |
2,6 | 5,7 |
| doing laundry, ironing linens, clothes for you or other members of the family | 2,0 | 4,2 |
| looking after the children | 15,0 | 31,5 |
The modern statistics and the research data do not permit making a accurate evaluation of the time structures gender distributions. The last time budgets investigations were carried out by the Goskomstat in 1990. In 1994 through 1998 RLMS included questions about time allocation, but this data has a considerable shift, as they do not take into account all kinds of activity in household. Nevertheless this data permits to obtain certain evaluations. Average weekly time consumption of females for all kinds of housekeeping labour amounts to 30.3 hrs, the same with males is 14.0 hrs19.
The time allocation structures do not depend directly on the country level of economic development and reflect national and cultural features of gender roles distribution peculiarities in housekeeping20. Female Great household obligation cannot be "corrected" neither by administrative nor political, not economic methods. And though at considerable incentives appearance at the labour market as a result of female substitution effect do decrease household employment time other (all) things being equal the household obligations make less competitive labour force. Both the employers and the females themselves are aware about this. As a result the household obligations make females less profitable labour force and do not allow them to be competitive at the labour market along with the males. The females have to choose between the children and work or put up with the necessity of housekeeping and work combining.
In the latter case this leads to female's general time occupation at the labour market and at the household becoming greater than the males'. On average female's general employment time exceeds the male's employment time by 25% and the capable to work females' general employment time is 2 times higher than the males'.21 While evaluating the gender distributions uniformity of various family resources including time resources both males and females indicate that a male has much more possibilities of devoting as much time and force as he thinks it necessary and spend his spare time as he thinks necessary.22
Thus, the females have not only less possibilities on the labour market but they have less free time which they can use for investing into their own human capital.
17 N.E. Tikhonova. The Urban Poverty Phenomenon in Modern Russia. M.: Letniy Sad, 2003, p. 197.
18 E. B. Mezentseva. Males and Females within the Housekeeping Labour Sphere: Economic Rationality Logic against Gender Identity Logic? // Gender equality: Looking for Old Problems Solution. ILO, ?.: 2003, p. 58.
19 E. B. Mezentseva. Males and Females within the Housekeeping Labour Sphere: Economic Rationality Logic against Gender Identity Logic? // gender equality: Looking for Old Problems Solution. ILO, ?.: 2003. It should be taken into account that in this case traditionally "female" kinds of activity have been involved into household activity and "male" kinds of activity in housekeeping was not taken into account at all.
20 Thus in Japan, for instance, males spend only 3 hours a week on housekeeping.
21 E. B. Mezentseva. Males and Females within the Housekeeping Labour Sphere: Economic Rationality Logic against Gender Identity Logic? // gender equality: Looking for Old Problems Solution. ILO, ?.: 2003, p. 57-58.
22 I. D. Gorshkova, I.I. Shurygina. Violence over Wives in Modern Russian Families. M.: MAKS Press, 2003, p.112.