Many African countries are still in the early stages of structural transformation. Typically, as economies move through the structural transformation, activities once conducted within the household are outsourced to the market. This has particular implications for women’s time use. In this paper, we document that current patterns of female time use in home production in several African countries closely resemble historical time use patterns in the Untied States. We highlight two stylized facts about women’s time use in Africa. First, in North Africa, women spend very few hours in market work and female labor force participation overall is extremely low. Second, although extensive margin participation of women is high in sub-Saharan Africa, women tend to work in the market for only a few hours each week, with the rest of their work hours spent in home production. These two facts suggest two different types of constraints that could slow down the reallocation of female time from home to market as economies grow: social norms related to women’s market work, and a lack of infrastructure (e.g., household infrastructure and childcare facilities) to facilitate marketizing home production. We discuss recent empirical evidence related to each set of constraints and highlight new avenues for research.

中文翻译：

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结构转型时期非洲的时间使用和性别

许多非洲国家仍处于结构转型的早期阶段。通常，随着经济体经历结构转型，曾经在家庭内部进行的活动会外包给市场。这对女性的时间使用具有特别的意义。在本文中，我们记录了当前几个非洲国家女性在家庭生产中的时间使用模式与美国的历史时间使用模式非常相似。我们强调了关于非洲女性时间使用的两个典型事实。首先，在北非，女性在市场工作上花费的时间很少，女性劳动力参与率总体上极低。其次，虽然撒哈拉以南非洲女性的广泛边际参与率很高，但女性往往每周在市场上工作的时间只有几个小时，其余的工作时间都花在了家庭制作上。这两个事实表明，随着经济的增长，两种不同类型的限制可能会减缓女性从家庭到市场的时间重新分配：与女性市场工作相关的社会规范，以及缺乏基础设施（例如，家庭基础设施和儿童保育设施）来促进市场化家庭生产。我们讨论了与每组约束相关的最新经验证据，并强调了新的研究途径。