Self-employed Mothers and the Work-Family Conflict

Jose Alberto Molina (1, 2) , Jose Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal (1, 3) , Raquel Ortega (1)

1 University of Zaragoza - Universidad de Zaragoza [Zaragoza]
2 Institute for the Study of Labor-IZA
3 Centre for Time Use Research, University of Oxford

We analyze how self-employed and employed mothers allocate their time throughout the day in order to balance their work and family responsibilities. To that end, we use time diary information from Spain, a country with a low level of women's participation in the labor market (Spanish Time Use Survey, 2002-2003). We find that self-employed mothers devote less time to market work, and more time to tertiary (e.g., sleeping, eating) and leisure activities, than employed mothers in a working day. We also find differences between employed and self-employed mothers in the timing of market work, child care and housework throughout the day, and we find complementarities between the timingof market work of working mothers and the timing of child care of their male partners. Our results on timing are consistent with the hypothesis that self-employment stands as a possible way for mothers to have greater control over the timing of work (flexible hours), and that they may therefore be able to work odd shifts, when the spouse is available to care for the children.

Mots clés: Social Sciences & Humanities

Domaines: Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

Jose Alberto Molina, Jose Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal, Raquel Ortega. Self-employed Mothers and the Work-Family Conflict. Applied Economics, 2011, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00036846.2011.558486⟩. ⟨hal-00687811⟩