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Related Experiment Videos

Gender, time use, and health.

C E Bird1, A M Fremont

  • 1Department of Sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana 61801.

Journal of Health and Social Behavior
|June 1, 1991
PubMed
Summary

Women live longer but report more illness. This study suggests that traditional gender roles, with women performing more unpaid labor and men holding more rewarding roles, contribute to women's higher morbidity. Equalizing these roles could improve women's health.

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Area of Science:

  • Social Epidemiology
  • Sociology of Health and Illness

Background:

  • A persistent paradox in social epidemiology is that women exhibit higher morbidity rates despite greater longevity than men.
  • Traditional gender roles assign distinct social responsibilities and rewards to men and women, potentially impacting health outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the hypothesis that women's higher morbidity is linked to their greater involvement in household labor, childcare, and caregiving, alongside reduced leisure and sleep time, compared to men.
  • To examine how operationalizing social roles through time commitments influences the understanding of sex differences in health.

Main Methods:

  • Social roles were operationalized by measuring time commitments to various role-related activities, providing interval-level data.
  • Statistical analyses controlled for gender differences in social roles to assess their impact on health outcomes.

Main Results:

  • After controlling for gender differences in social roles, being male was associated with poorer health outcomes compared to being female.
  • The findings indicate that the burden of unpaid labor and unequal social role distribution significantly affects morbidity.

Conclusions:

  • The study concludes that the observed sex differences in morbidity are largely explained by disparities in social roles and associated time commitments.
  • Achieving greater gender equality in social roles could lead to improved health outcomes for women, aligning their morbidity rates more closely with their longevity.

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