More women than men work as paid caregivers globally, data shows.
But in developed economies like the United States, the gender gap in jobs like nursing and social work is surprisingly larger, according to a new study co-authored by the Yale School of Management.
Global researchers looked at 70 countries and found that women working in the care economy made up anywhere between about 40% to 90% of the workforce.
But the percentages varied widely country-to-country.
Researchers attributed the variations to economic structures and cultural values, which differ across the world.
In countries with a higher life expectancy and standard of living, researchers said labor markets offer more flexibility, making it easier – comparatively – to combine work with family caregiving.
Yale researcher Adriana Germano and her co-authors wrote that the gender difference in caregiving occupations was also driven by cultural values.
In individualistic societies like the U.S., the authors said fewer men take up jobs that involve emotional labor – seen more as women's work. In more communal societies like Tanzania, that gap is far less.
The findings were recently published in the American Psychological Association.
“These patterns of gender segregation in the care economy are linked more strongly to indices of economic development and individualism than to gender equality per se,” the authors concluded.
Individualism “predicts these cross-national patterns of gender differences” in the care economy, the authors wrote.
“I think it is fair to say that the global north, and the U.S. in particular, is absolutely more rooted in individualism,” said Laura Mauldin, a sociologist and director of the Graduate Certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut.
Mauldin, author of “In Sickness and in Health,” is not affiliated with this research.
“Take the U.S., for example, we have some of the weakest social safety nets in the world — expecting people to do things on their own is a key feature of individualism and American culture. The result is that women in the Global North, and particularly in the U.S., are more likely to be acting as the invisible safety net in their families.”
Connecticut Public previously reported on the caregiving economy, and on the emotional labor of under-paid caregiving work that women bear disproportionately.
When it comes to unpaid caregiving, women around the world provide 16 billion hours of daily work, including cooking, housework, child care and caring for elderly family members, according to the United Nations. Data from the International Labor Organization shows that unpaid care work prevents more than 700 million women around the world from holding paid jobs.
