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Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the gender dimension of its more visible socio-economic impacts has been the topic of study by several researchers. The current paper takes this further by focusing on the invisible chores done in the families at home. This paper studies how people's behavior towards housework changed during and after the confinement period in Spain. We analyze whether people did more housework during the lockdown period than before it, the way this housework was distributed between women and men, and whether this has changed since the end of lockdown. The empirical analyses point to a new trend in the housework gender gap: differences between men and women have narrowed since the lockdown, although women continue to bear most of the responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores working class couples' experiences of female‐breadwinning during the Great Recession in Spain. It examines the extent to which couples' adaptations to these gender‐atypical work‐family arrangements have led to processes of (un)doing gender. The study is based on the analysis of 24 semi‐structured biographical interviews and life history calendars with men and women in 12 heterosexual couples who have gone through different breadwinning statuses during their trajectory. Findings show that men whose partners were primary breadwinners for a period make the greatest effort to preserve the male‐breadwinner illusion. In contrast, female breadwinners identify with a co‐breadwinner model and do not understate their own economic contribution. Men's insufficient participation in housework and child care is experienced by women with disapproval, which turns into open conflict when the women perform the bulk of such work. The paper concludes that adaptation to unconventional arrangements can constitute a catalyst for processes that undo gender, but more qualitative longitudinal research is needed to determine how economistic and normative factors interact dynamically across different countries and social groups in shaping these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to study the influence of leisure-time physical activity on depression crises and the difficulty in performing light household tasks. Design/methodology/approach: A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted using data from the 2020 European Health Survey in Spain. A total of 1,076 individuals diagnosed with depression were selected. ANOVA, chi-square, Fisher's exact test and Mann–Whitney U test were applied, and a simple moderation analysis was conducted using the SPSS PROCESS 4.0 macro. Findings: Women had higher percentages of some or much difficulty in performing domestic activities (p = 0.007). Differences were found between experiencing a crisis in the past 12 months versus not having one (p < 0.001): less physical activity was performed, perceived health was worse and difficulty in performing domestic activities increased. The moderation analysis confirmed the moderating effect of physical activity on the relationship between experiencing a crisis and having difficulty with domestic activities (p = 0.017). Research limitations/implications: The usual limitation of descriptive cross-sectional studies, which cannot establish causal relationships, must be added to low sample sizes in some categories. Practical implications: The analysis with gender differentiation, promoting gender-specific adapted practices, considering age and personal circumstances of the patient, appropriate exercise prescription, as well as its evaluation and follow-up, are areas where specialist nurses need to delve deeper to enhance the quality of care. Originality/value: Leisure-time physical activity moderates the relationship between experiencing a crisis and having difficulty with light household tasks: those who engage in occasional physical activity have less difficulty compared to those who do not engage in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few years, the proliferation of digital labour platforms has led to the transformation of business models and labour relations in an increasing number of economic activities, including highly feminized and informal traditional sectors, such as care and domestic work. Drawing on an analysis of 37 digital care platforms in Spain, this research compares the distinctive features and structural power dynamics they engender, and it constructs a taxonomy of business models of these care platforms. By analysing the main features of their operational models, we are capable of distinguishing three main types of platforms: marketplace, on‐demand, and digital placement agencies. First, the paper argues that the distinctive features of each digital platform business model have differentiated impacts on working conditions in terms of access to tasks, remuneration, flexibility and means of control. This differentiation allows us to understand what is transformative and what is continuous in platforms' precarization or formalisation of care work and working conditions of carers, mainly women and migrants. Each business model has its differentiated outcomes in terms of labour control and reorganization of women's and migrants' reproductive work. Second, more broadly, while digital care platforms may have contributed to facilitating workers' access to jobs, reducing transaction costs and standardising processes, this has often been through the creation of more flexible and insecure forms of work and to increased market pressures. Therefore, this study contributes to existing research addressing the degree of formalization of labour relations in digital platform work through a nuanced analysis of their business models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the intrahousehold bargaining power of spouses in Spanish families, in a collective framework. We estimate household labor supply equations and, under certain testable restrictions, we obtain a theoretically derived sharing rule for household income, which characterizes intrahousehold bargaining power. Then, using unique data on decision-making in the household, we construct Pareto weights, and study the validity of the collective model by comparing the theoretical sharing rule and the constructed Pareto weight. The results reveal that both the observed Pareto weight and the theoretical sharing rule display qualitative similarities, thus providing direct empirical support to the collective model. Furthermore, the results suggest that Spanish wives behave more altruistically, while husbands behave more egoistically. This should be taken into account by policy makers and researchers when analyzing inequality in the household, and contemplating specific policies affecting the household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature shows that a partner becoming unemployed leads to a reallocation of domestic work towards the newly unemployed partner, but that this reallocation remains gendered. In this paper, we explore the relationship between employment status and domestic work before and after the 2007 economic crisis in Spain, where the crisis had a dramatic impact: the unemployment rate rose from 9 per cent in 2006 to 20 per cent in 2010. We hypothesize that a crisis can exacerbate the effect of unemployment on domestic work. We analyse Spanish time-use data pre-crisis (2003) and during the crisis (2010), using ordinary least squares regressions and an interaction between the year of the survey and the employment situation of the household (N = 15,594594). Our results suggest that employment status affects unpaid work – both domestic chores and childcare – in a gendered way, but we find little support for a differential effect of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the time men use on childcare and household work the result of preferences or cultural, institutional and economic constraints? Can such constraints be measured when we only observe men's choices (functionings) but not their capabilities? Using a random utility model together with stochastic specifications of the probability of having different capabilities, this paper shows that it is possible to distinguish between preferences and capabilities. Utilising time use data for Spain, we find that even though men do relatively little childcare, it is important to them. So, men do care to care. Our estimates show that, given our model, only about 9% of men with children have the full capability set, while 58% of them are constrained to a low level of care and housework. According to our model, many of these would not change behaviour if they had the full capability set, but about 20% of fathers would choose to provide more childcare and housework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyse the processes of vulnerabilisation related to unemployment, based on the case of Spain in the period 2010–2020. I conceptualise unemployment time as empty time that unemployed people attempt to fill using temporal tactics. To explain the degree of temporal agency of the unemployed, I shall analyse their tactics according to four social conditions: previous work socialisation, duration of unemployment, domestic relationship and social class. In terms of method, this study was based on quantitative time data obtained from the most recent Time Use Survey for Spain (from 2009 to 2010), and on qualitative time use data obtained from eight discussion groups and 49 interviews with unemployed people. Drawing on these data, I analyse relationships between temporal tactics in unemployment, the social conditions of the subjects and their processes of vulnerability, and define five temporal tactics, which I term: the investing time tactic, the domestic hyperactivity tactic, the domestic work rejection tactic, the constant effort tactic and the non-tactic. I conclude by demonstrating that these tactics can be sequenced as stages in a process of vulnerability associated with gradual desynchronisation from pre-unemployment times, underlining the importance of socio-temporal categories and conditions in understanding vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The time that middle-class fathers and mothers devote to care activities has significantly increased over the last two decades in Spain. In a context of increasingly widespread intensive and child-centred parenting styles, the attachment parenting movement draws on a gender-essentialist interpretation of attachment theory to prescribe a series of practices that place great pressure on women's time, minds and bodies. Such burdens are likely related to the gendered division of household roles, but this issue remains largely underexplored in research. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the links between gendered interpretations of attachment parenting principles and gendered patterns of labour division. The methodological approach consists of 28 semistructured interviews conducted separately with mothers and fathers from heterosexual couples with professional or managerial jobs and children under three years of age. The findings show that the gender essentialist interpretation of the attachment relationship rather than the amount of attachment parenting performed seems more determinant of task segregation. Prolonged breastfeeding stands out as a major barrier to a more egalitarian division of tasks, even for couples who are critical of the gendered interpretation of the attachment figure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is testing the three first-order conditions of an intertemporal optimization model for a representative individual who chooses simultaneously for her level of consumption and leisure, assuming a separable utility function. We estimate these conditions jointly in a system of equations, using a Spanish pseudo-panel data set built by combining the Family Expenditure Survey and the Labor Survey over the period 1987–1997. Our results are in line with previous empirical evidence as regards the elasticity of intertemporal substitution for consumption, as our estimate for this elasticity is between 0.4 and 0.5. Further, we also obtain the first estimate for Spain of the intertemporal elasticity of leisure. This value is above 0.3, and is comparable to other estimates found for other economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of Moroccan women crossed the border between Melilla and Morocco on a daily basis to work in domestic employment, a consolidated niche sector of cross-border employment for low-skilled working-class women. When the border closed due to COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, many decided to remain in Melilla. Following the precepts of grounded theory and using biographical interviews, the paper investigates the survival strategies these women deployed following the border closure. An ambivalent process began: on the one hand, their labour conditions worsened, exposing them to worse situations of violence; on the other, they developed strategies of resistance and agency, assuming the role of breadwinner for their families and opting for a process of emancipation through inclusion and training opportunities in the city of Melilla. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic work is an oppressive occupational niche for migrant women. The strategies domestic workers employ to resist this situation have been scarcely studied. This paper is interested in their activism. Through a qualitative study in southern Spain, the meaning of such socio-political action for migrant women is explored. In the spring of 2020, eleven activists from the Seville Association of Domestic Workers were interviewed. The material was subjected to content analysis. The meanings associated with their activism were grouped into four categories: (1) the horizon of "struggle", (2) the forms of "struggle", (3) the levels of involvement, and (4) the challenges of activism. The results are limited to a historically recent case, and to a small sample chosen purposively; however, they contribute to the understanding of migrant women's agency, and open fields of reflection for domestic workers' organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses housework gender inequality in Spain. Whether the sharing of housework and paid work between husbands and wives is driven purely by economic rationality or whether there are other factors related to gender identity at the root of intra-household gender inequality, remains an open debate. This article assesses the role of the gender deviance neutralization hypothesis and examines whether it overrides the explanatory power of economic exchange theory in the distribution of unpaid housework in Spain. Housework stochastic frontiers are constructed for each partner in heterosexual co-resident couples to identify the factors behind inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the notion of bodywork, we analyse the bodily aspects of personal assistance to expand the dialogue between medical sociology and disability studies. We aim to, firstly, overcome the lack of attention to the bodywork of personal assistant (PAs) in disability studies; secondly, explore the micropolitics of personal assistance and the role of independent living mandates in configuring this bodywork of PAs; and, thirdly, propose a more relational and material approach to the impairment/disability debate. This exploration is based on qualitative semi‐structured interviews with 23 PAs conducted in Spain between 2018 and 2020. Our research reveals that PAs' bodywork implies performing their body as body‐absence, such as when they enact body‐tool and body‐prosthesis figurations, but also as body‐presence, for instance, as acting bodies and affected/affecting bodies in specific situations. Through their analysis, we foreground how PAs' bodywork conveys normative ways of enacting the body and how these body figurations are not only challenged and negotiated but define the actual practice of personal assistance. To conclude, we stress on the theoretical contributions of our study towards both disability studies and medical sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address the role of imported intermediates in productivity by applying a methodology that proposes an equivalence between input–output analysis and data envelopment analysis, and decomposes sectoral productivity gains into two factors: efficiency change and technical change. We illustrate this by using data for Spain in the 2008–2015 period with three levels of labor skills, capital, and twenty-eight industries, and compare the results of two different settings: one including only domestic intermediates and the other incorporating total (i.e. both domestic and imported) inputs. We find differential results regarding productivity, efficiency, and technical changes that are attributable to imported intermediates. We also find that the main drivers of productivity change are high-skilled labor and the manufacturing sector. Our results suggest the importance of both trade and educational policies that respectively foster international economic complementarities and promote higher qualification of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns that started in March 2020 have sparked an increase in domestic labor in many families across the globe. This study focuses on gender differences in the distribution of domestic housework and childcare, as well as how they have impacted couples' conflicts during confinement, in the context of Spain and Italy. It employs a sequential mixed-methods approach in which a quantitative survey was followed by qualitative in-depth interviews. The results of the quantitative study (N = 447) showed that, for women, total household labor performed during confinement led to the perception of an unequal household distribution, which impacted couples' conflicts. In-depth interviews with participants from both countries confirmed the quantitative findings and allowed a nuanced understanding of how conflict negotiations evolved during the confinement. The results provide a comprehensive view of how the pandemic may have worsened women's situation in the household. HIGHLIGHTS Pandemic lockdowns intensified the already unequal distribution of housework in households in Spain and Italy. Women disproportionally spent more hours on childcare and household chores during confinement. Traditional gender norms shaped women's and men's perceptions of unfairness in terms of division of housework. Gender norms also limited women's bargaining power and shaped couples' conflict and negotiation strategies. Policies should aim to alleviate intrahousehold inequality to achieve better work–life balance for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic work is a sector characterized by various forms of injustice, prompting some women to embark on a pathway towards activism. Based on the Sociopolitical Development (SPD) framework, this study aims to explore female Latin American migrants' experiences of injustice in the domestic work sector in Spain and how they challenge them, particularly when they become involved in organized collective action. To this end, in‐depth interviews were conducted with 11 women of Latin American origin who actively participate in the Association of Domestic Workers of Seville. The qualitative analysis found that being a domestic worker, having experiences of exploitation, discovering rights, receiving rights training, sharing stories of oppression, and engaging in sociopolitical actions are key experiences in guiding migrant women from the acritical and adaptive stages of SPD towards the pre‐critical, critical, and liberation ones. Knowledge about these significant life‐changing events may be useful for designing interventions aimed at fostering different ways in which oppressed groups can challenge injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deploys the notion of 'employable femininity', by which we refer to the mystification along postfeminist lines of an idealized womanhood suitable to be employed and worked upon, in order to explore how women's relation to employment is currently being articulated and contested in contemporary Spain. Structural transformations during neoliberalism have promoted women's rising involvement into labor markets while, simultaneously, reinforcing the systemic relevance of women's unpaid work in the domestic arena. A hegemonic, media-constructed model of femininity has thus emerged where participation into paid employment is presented as a path towards liberation and economic independence for certain women who, nonetheless, cannot do away with the care-related responsibilities traditionally allotted to them. The current Spanish conjuncture provides a paradigmatic case in point to observe how women's relation to employment is being reconfigured, insofar as attempts to 're-domesticate' women in the aftermath of the Great Recession have been confronted by a resurgent feminist movement which, nowadays, figures as the main vector of social contention in contemporary Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study focuses on the joint effect of gender and marital status on financial literacy. The study is based on the data of 7,456 adults who responded to the Financial Competencies Survey (2016), conducted by the Bank of Spain. The results revealed that married/couple women have a lower level of financial literacy than married/couple men, perhaps because men often make decisions regarding family finances, while women are often in charge of other homework. This may have important consequences for the financial autonomy of women of all ages, especially as they aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paid domestic workers are commonly excluded from general labor laws across the globe. This article unpacks the ideological structure underlying the legitimation of this widespread exclusion and how it is shifting. I examine transcripts of official debates in the International Labour Organization 1919–2014 and in Spain 1978–2018 that deal with how paid domestic work is treated in general labor regulations. I show that justifications for limiting domestic workers' labor rights have shifted from using the separate spheres framework to leveraging notions of racialized hierarchies of skill that perpetuate the devaluation of domestic work despite offering greater recognition of labor rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ real‐time household data to study the impact of the pandemic lockdown on paid and unpaid work in Spain. We document large employment losses that affected more severely low‐skilled workers and to some extent college educated women. We show that the pandemic resulted in an increase in the gender gap in total hours worked, including paid and unpaid work. This is due to the smaller decrease in paid work hours among women that was not compensated by a smaller increase in unpaid work. We also examine the impact of the lockdown on within‐household specialization patterns. We find that while men slightly increased their participation in home production, the burden continued to be borne by women, irrespective of their labor market situation. This evidence suggests that traditional explanations cannot account for the unequal distribution of the domestic workload. Additional analysis supports gender norms as a plausible explanation for our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 health crisis brought with it an increase in the workload on family members due to the restriction of services and the suspension of formal and informal care networks. Numerous studies have analyzed how home confinement have affected different gender gaps, including the gender gap related to chores within the home. This research aims to contribute to the existing literature from the perspective of gender geography by introducing the variable municipality size in the analyses. Our research in the case of Spain shows the COVID-19 health crisis to have had a significant impact on gender gaps, albeit to varying degrees. Women, especially those living in small municipalities, experienced a widening of the gap related to care and domestic workload during confinement. The study of the distribution of the more burdensome chores between genders shows an even more imbalanced scenario to the detriment of women. However, following the end of confinement, the situation improved. Although the imbalance against women remains, the gap with respect to the pre-pandemic situation has been reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]