Analysis of Gender Differences in Time Use Among Iranian Older Adults

Objectives Time use patterns affect humans’ health and quality of life. Different social contexts such as gender roles impact on time use patterns in each society. The purpose of this article is to examine gender differences in time use patterns of Iranian older adults. Methods & Materials The method of this study is the secondary analysis of the Iranian time use national survey data. A multistage stratified random sampling method was used to recruit the study samples. The study data were collected by completing the study questionnaires of 4285 Iranian elderly 60 years and older who were living in urban areas.  Results In this study, 52% of the subjects were male and 48% female. The Mean±SD age of males respondents was 69.2±7.8 years and for females, it was 68.7±7.5 years. About 24.5% of elderly women were living alone compared with 6.6% of men. Also, 5.5% of the elderly men and 6.8% of elderly women were disabled and need caregivers. In addition, the findings showed that elderly men allocated more time to paid works (2 hours per day for men in comparison to 6 minutes per day for women). In contrast, elderly women allocated more time to unpaid works such as caregiving and services to family (4.7 hours per day for women in comparison to 1.7 hours per day for men). Also, elderly men participated more in active leisure than women (P<0.05). Although the sleep time for the elderly women was more than that in elderly men, the time for eating, as well as self-care for men was more than women. According to the multivariate analysis, the gender differences in time use allocation were due to socioeconomic gender differences.  Conclusion Gender differences in time use allocation are due to socio-cultural and economic factors. Thus, we suggest that appropriate social welfare policies be designed to reduce gender differences in time use patterns by taking into account these important factors.