Social Time and Social Space of Wives in Chiba New Town with Reference to Labor Market

本研究的目的是探讨居住在东京东郊千叶新城的失业妻子和在职妻子的生活方式之间的差异。在千叶新城的仁济市，对108户家庭在一个假日（2001年11月18日）和一个工作日（2001年11月19日）的社会时间和社会空间进行了一次简单的问卷调查。被调查住户的属性如下。有高中学历的已婚夫妇组成核心家庭。他们的大部分男性负责人是白领工人;他们中的三分之一通勤到东京市中心，另外三分之一通勤到千叶县西部，其中一些人通勤到东京市中心以外的地方。90%的在职妻子从事灰领工作，她们几乎都在千叶新城附近工作。这表明千叶新城的工作机会比多摩新城少得多。与失业的妻子相比，每天三分之一的时间花在工作和通勤上的在职妻子用于家务和/或抚养孩子的时间较少;失业的妻子在家务上多花了大约两个小时，在睡眠上多花了大约三十分钟，这与多摩新城的调查几乎相同（Sugiura和Miyazawa，2001年）。特别是全职主妇的购物场所仅限于千叶新城中央车站附近的超级名品店，她们单调的生活部分是因为这些购物机会的稀缺。90%以上的全职家庭主妇曾经工作过。他们中的70%刚搬进千叶新城就退休了。她们的举动与使她们成为全职家庭主妇密切相关。

The purpose of this study is to consider the difference between the life-style of unemployed wives and that of employed wives residing in Chiba New Town, east suburbs of Tokyo. A question naive survey of social time and social space in one holiday (Nov.18, 2001) and one weekday (Nov.19, 2001) was conducted among 108 households in Inzai City, Chiba New Town. The attributes of surveyed households are as follows. Married couples with highly school career form nuclear families. The majority of their male heads are white-collar workers ; one third of them commute to Central Tokyo and another one third commute to the western part of Chiba Prefecture while some of them commute further beyond Central Tokyo. Ninety percent the employed wives are engaged in gray-collar works, and almost of them work just around Chiba New Town. This shows working opportunities in Chiba New Town are much less than those in tama New Town. Compared with the unemployed wives, the employed wives who spend one third of daily hours on working and commuting spare less time for domestic duties and/or childrearing ; the unemployed wives spend about two hours too much on housekeeping and about thirty minutes too much on sleeping, which is almost same as the survey of Tama New Town (Sugiura and Miyazawa, 2001). Especially the shopping place of the full-time housewives is limited to supermavlcets near Chiba New Town Chuo Station ; their monotonaus lives are partially caused by these scarcity of shopping opportunities. Ninety percent and over of the full-time housewives had formerly worked. Seventy percent of them retired just as they moved into Chiba New Town. Their moves are closely related with to make them into the full time housewife.