Abstract
This paper aims to sketch gender relations in Argentina at the awakening of devaluation in order to
explore the effects of macroeconomic developments during 2002 on families and women. The
paper argues that the devastating effects on welfare in the immediate post-devaluation period were
neither restricted to monetary variables nor gender neutral.
The paper makes use of the only existing country-wide time use database, which was collected in
2001 as part of a Living Conditions Survey. The focus of the paper is on women and men situated
and embedded in a variety of family relationships, which entail different total unpaid work burdens
and, more importantly, differing compromises on who shoulders the unpaid work burden and the
shares involved. Participation rates on housework, childcare and childcare of very young children
are analysed through multivariate analysis. The paper also shows that a household's average unpaid
workload, lifecycle and income can explain women’s and men’s shares in unpaid work.
Making use of these estimations, the paper assesses the impacts the Argentine crisis has had on the
intra-household distribution of housework and the reallocation of care work.