An insight on time-use surveysa case study on time poverty in spain

Resumen

Historically speaking, time-use surveys are not a new survey method. They were first designed and used in the early years of the 20th century to understand that part of people’s lives for which information was not available from conventional data sources such as national income, labour and employment statistics. From a feminist perspective, one of the main contributions of time-use surveys is that they have allowed ‘measuring’ unpaid work, which until recently was concealed despite being essential for understanding gender inequalities—and inequalities in general—and labour market organisation. Time-use surveys allow introducing and improving the measurement of poverty that emphasising gender differences and finding other perspectives that are far removed from the ‘traditional’ economic ones based on male conceptions and understandings. The main objective of this work it to provide some insights into how to improve time-use data and time-poverty indicators from a feminist perspective. In order to do this, we analyse time poverty in Spain using the last two Spanish time-use surveys. Although time surveys are a powerful tool to measure unpaid work, we have found significant limitations in the way data are collected and studies are carried out. We analyse the determinants that affect time poverty in Spain, and will look as well at children and older adults’ time poverty, which help us make some policy recommendations. At the same time this thesis aims at contributing to the theoretical framework of poverty in two original ways: 1) analysing the Spanish case, the concept of time poverty, and the methodology used to measure it in rich countries with different time-income dynamics; 2) analysing poverty from a different perspective, which enables an improvement in time-use statistics still very much driven by male standards of economic behaviour. The main driver of this work is the awareness of the need to improve time-use surveys and their comparability, and of the possibility of carrying out an important amount of research by using time-use survey data. In this sense, this work aims at contributing to the discussion on how to improve time-use surveys from a feminist perspective through the analysis of Spanish time-use data.