Section 7 Home Life
7.1 Introduction
This section assesses how women’s household responsibilities impact their career or job. It includes the division of labor in the household and how much of the “second shift” (i.e., unpaid work done at home outside of working hours) is required of women at home.
7.2 Key Findings
- Half of responding women reported never taking temporary or permanent leave from their job due to demands from family responsibilities like child or eldercare, and when they do, it is for shorter periods.
- Women report having all or the majority of the responsibility for managing the household.
- One-in-ten women reported being reprimanded, penalized, or terminated from a job because of caretaking responsibilities.
7.3 Temporary or Permanent Time Off for Family
Half of women reported never taking temporary or permanent leave from a job for child care or eldercare responsibilities. Of those who did, the majority of women took 3 months or less.
7.4 Perception of Leave
Note: This graph displays the summarized percentages of the bottom two response categories (Disagree and Strongly disagree) and the top two response categories (Agree and Strongly agree).
For women who took temporary or permanent leave from a job for any amount of time, 74% agreed they would have taken more time off it had been financially feasible. About a quarter of women (26%) agreed or strongly agreed that they did not want to return to work at all.