ABSTRACT
Since the introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1970 in the UK, the gender wage gap has been falling. The fi gure was 37 per cent in 1973 (comparing the hourly wage of female full-time workers with that of male full-time workers), but it appears to have bottomed out at 18 per cent in 1999 (EOC, 2002). The differential in women’s and men’s human capital (in the forms of educational skills and labour market experience) is one common explanation for the earnings gap by gender (e.g. Mincer and Polachek 1974). Similarly, it has been argued that women’s domestic responsibilities also reduce their acquisition of human capital (Becker 1965, 1991[1981]; Dolton and Makepeace 1990). This chapter focuses on the time use of married and cohabiting men and women and examines the impacts of the division of domestic labour on their respective potential labour market earnings. While there is a huge literature on the effects of family responsibilities on women’s careers, within both sociology and economics, this is usually treated as a single-step event. In this chapter we show, instead, that the process is incremental and continuous. In terms of relationships, this means that whether they like it or not, and in spite of slowly changing ideologies over women, the family, and work at the societal level, men and women increasingly get locked into the positions they fi nd themselves in.
