Work Rich, Time Poor? Time-Use of Women and Men in Ireland

TIME-USE OF WOMEN AND MEN IN IRELAND

Table 1: Couples Under 65 Years, Changes in Employment Status 1994-2000

Source: Russell et al. (2004), Table 5.11.

As a consequence of these employment and demographic changes such as
the increasing number of lone parents and population ageing there are an
increasing number of people combining working and caring (O’Connell and
Russell, 2005; Cullen et al., 2004). This has led to an increasing focus on issues
of work-life tensions in Irish debates, and indeed the trends in employment
described here are consistent with the type of compositional change that
Jacobs and Gerson (2004) describe as lying behind growth in perceived time-
pressure. Given that in Ireland the proportion of households where both
parents are juggling family and work responsibilities has increased
dramatically in the past decade, we might expect a growth in feelings of time-
pressure.

1.2 Research Questions

However, to really answer the question are we ‘work-rich time poor’, we
need time-use data on paid work and unpaid work. Time-use diaries are
generally seen as a more accurate method of gathering information on unpaid
labour than asking respondents directly how much time they spend on
activities.² In a time-use diary the respondent (and sometimes the
spouse/partner) is asked to complete a diary accounting for his/her time for a
24-hour period. Reliabability tests of time-use diaries have found very high
correlations using different diaries. The validity of time-use diaries have been
assessed by comparing respondents’ and spouses’ accounts of when an activity
occurred, as well as by comparing activities recorded in time diaries with those
occurring when respondents reported their activity at the signal of a random
beeper (Robinson and Godbey, 1998). These studies lend considerable support
for the diary method of collecting time-use for measuring paid and unpaid
work and leisure: more specific measurement issues are considered when
discussing the Irish National Time-Use Survey 2005 below.

² There are problems of recall using direct questions, and self-reported accounts of domestic labour
and caring often reflect aspirations rather than actual time spent.

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