Not Many News from the Kitchen and the Kids: on the Persistence of Traditional Gender-Specific Time Management in Germany and Great Britain

Abstract

This article is concerned with the gender-specific division of labour at the transition from Fordism to Post-Fordism under the aspect of employed people's 'basic obligations' in family households. While in Fordism, a relative coherence between forms of economic, institutional and social organisation prevailed, this coherence erodes in Post-Fordism. As a starting hypothesis, the transition to Post-Fordism is reflected in the fact that employment participation rates have changed such that there is no more consequent distinction of tasks by genders and between a production and a reproduction sphere. The investigation at hand uses a comparative analysis of time management patterns of employed (excluding self-employed) people's households in family work and gainful employment in Great Britain and Germany. Therein, Great Britain represents an Anglo-Saxon, liberal and Germany a conservative, caring welfare state. The results of the investigation show that the crisis in the transition from Fordism to Post-Fordism is coped with differently. The British welfare regime intervenes less as a steering force than the conservative-caring regime in Germany. This also leads to higher deregulation of working hours in Great Britain. The comparison further reveals that in both countries, the decisive distinction is whether there are children to care for in partner households and in both countries, according to the traditional pattern of division of work, women assume the major part of care and household work. An important difference, however, is that the pattern 'man full-time, woman part-time' is less clear-cut in Great Britain than in Germany. (IAB)

Cite article

Bauer, F. (2009): Nicht viel Neues in Küche und Kinderzimmer. Zur Beharrlichkeit der traditionellen geschlechtsspezifischen Zeitverwendung in Deutschland und Großbritannien. In: M. Heitkötter, K. Jurczyk, A. Lange & U. Meier-Gräwe (Hrsg.) (2009): Zeit für Beziehungen? : Zeit und Zeitpolitik für Familien, p. 235-257.