Las políticas de conciliación y sus efectos en España

We pursue two objectives. First, to analyze the gender inequalities of unpaid household work in Spain, both in the time spent on housework and the time spent with children; second, to recommend efficient policies for reconciling work and family to reduce the existing gender inequalities at work and, indirectly, class inequalities. After exploring recent time use data (the Spanish Time Use Survey 2002-2003, and the Harmonized European Time Use Survey), the two most significant results are: a) in Spain there is a degree of gender inequality in terms of household work that is a lot more pronounced than in most Western European countries: the relative contribution of men to total household work is lower than in other Western European countries; b) in Spain, an increase in the economic power of women in relation to their male partners has a strong impact on an equitable distribution of household work, especially in the time spent on housework. Given these results, we propose several family and gender policies, such as active policies for female employment, policies of conciliation and, as a transversal policy, to increase substantially the public spending on families.