Sex-Typed Chores and the City: Gender, Urbanicity, and Housework

How does place structure the gendered division of household labor? Because people's living spaces and lifestyles differ dramatically across urban, suburban, and rural areas, it follows that time spent on household chores may vary across places. In cities, for example, many households do not have vehicles or lawns, and housing units tend to be relatively small. Urban men's and women's time use therefore provides insight into how partners contribute to household chores when there is less structural demand for the types of tasks they typically do. We examine these dynamics using data on heterosexual married individuals from the American Time Use Survey combined with the Current Population Survey. We find that urban men spend relatively little time on male-typed chores, but they spend the same amount of time on female-typed chores as their suburban and rural counterparts. This pattern suggests that urban men do not "step up" their involvement in female-typed tasks even though they contribute little in the way of other housework. In contrast, urbanicity rarely predicts women's time use, implying that women spend considerable time on household chores regardless of where they live. Implications for research on gender and housework are discussed.