The Gender Gaps in Time-Use Within Italian Households During 2002-2014

How are Italian parents sharing family duties when they are both working full-time? We estimate gender gaps in the allocation of time by young Italian couples with children and document their trends over the years 2002-2014, disentangling time use on weekdays and weekend days. We show that the gaps in time devoted to Market work and Household work have narrowed over the years 2002-2014, while the gap in Basic childcare and Leisure remained almost constant. But the negative gap (females-males) in Market work shrunk much more than the positive gap in Household work (46% against 25%) The best-case scenario for gender parity is the one in which partners share similar work responsibilities and are relatively young; however, we show that family duties remain heavily unbalanced across gender in this sample. In 2014, full-time working mothers devote to Total work (paid and unpaid) 11 h per week more and to Leisure 9.7 h per week less than their partners. On the positive side, the gender gap in Quality childcare exhibits a reversed sign, which is driven by fathers' engagement on weekend days.