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

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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.