The distribution of leisure time between the sexes is contested. Becker's theory of specialisation suggests that there is an underlying gender equity in leisure, while the competing view suggests that women are now bearing a 'dual burden' as both family providers and family carers. Using...

Both projects described here, Matadi and Kananga, helped health providers in those two cities offer clinical family planning services. But their approaches differed markedly. The family education program in Matadi concentrated on pioneering community-based distribution of contraceptives, with...

This article proposes an ‘equivalence scale for time’ by which information on total working time in both paid and unpaid labour can be derived from information about paid working time and household structure. Different scales are offered for males and females, and an adjustment according to...

Not so long ago most industrial societies believed that the private life of families should be organised around a division of male ‘provider’ and female ‘homemaker’. The poet, Lord Alfred Tennyson, believed only this arrangement accorded with nature and reason, and declared ‘all else...

Australians have characteristically seen themselves as a people who are unenthusiastic about hard work and more oriented toward the pursuit of leisure. It has often been suggested that the basis of this national identity as a ‘laid back and carefree people’ was the uniquely Australian...

It is widely believed that domestic outsourcing is booming. Many believe the growth of market services is a response to increasing time pressures arising from new responsibilities in the paid workforce, and to an inflexible sexual division of labour at home. The interpretation of the...

The concept of social exclusion has become the central organising concept in social policy research, especially in Europe. The term ‘social exclusion’ has displaced many of the terms formerly in use, such as ‘inequality’, ‘deprivation’ and ‘poverty’. Social exclusion is a...