Decomposing Gender Gap in Subjective Time Pressure: Time Use Perspective in Japan

In contemporary societies, people enjoy technological developments, which have resulted in more efficient ways of using time. For example, the current digital transformation in our daily lives particularly weakens the temporal and spatial restrictions for both paid and unpaid work. Eventually, technological developments can contribute to increasing free and leisure time, which makes people feel less busy.

Meanwhile, such an argument lacks a perspective of heterogeneity in time pressure among sub-populations in a single society. Gender is a primary driver of generating inequality in time-use structure because gendered divisions of labour for paid and unpaid work persist in many contemporary societies. In general, previous studies report that married women are more pressed for time than men due to their difficulties in managing the time for paid work and family care. In Japan, a typical case of the persistent strong gendered division of labour, gender inequality in time pressure and where it comes from are still understudied empirically.

To address these issues, I utilised a nationally representative dataset in 2023 that includes various relevant information about time pressure, working, and family lives. First of all, women feel pressed for time more than men, and the difference is more salient in the married sub-sample. Furthermore, with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, the gender gap in time pressure reflects the gendered division of labour in Japanese society. While men’s longer working hours contribute to decreasing the gender gap in time pressure, women’s longer housework hours expand the gender gap. Also, the number of household members increases time pressure in general, and its contribution is larger in women, which implies women have to take on more family responsibilities that make them much busier. To conclude, the gender gap in time pressure in contemporary Japan is due to the concentration of family care on Japanese women.