Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Mahmood Ghazi_Tabatabaea ¹
• Nader Mehri ²

¹ Member of Social Sciences Faculty, University of Tehran

² Ph.D. Student inDemography, Social Sciences Faculty, University of Tehran

Abstract

Working women compared with non-working women in Iran bear a double burden of
responsibility. They not only have to bear the traditional unpaid responsibilities of taking care
of children and household chores they also have to bear the responsibilities of performing
duties associated with their paid job outside the home. The double burden of responsibility for
the working women refers to the amount of work they do at home and outside the home
comparedwith non-working women. This article aims to quantify the additional work the
Iranian employed women do based on the number of their dependent children under the age
of 7 years. To do this, a comparison between the time allocated for paid and unpaid works by,
respectively, working and non-working married women is made. The required data for the
analysis was provided by the Iranian National Center for Statistics. The results indicated that
married working women with 0, 1 and 2 children work 3 hours and 6 minutes, 1 hour and 42
minutes and 1 hour and 29 minutes, respectively, more than their non-working counterparts.
The results also indicate that with an increase in the number dependent children the relative
intensity of double burden of working women decreases.

Keywords

• dependent children
• double burden of responsibility
• fertility
• Iranian working women
• role conflict
• unpaid work