Employing quantitative analysis of the European Social Survey, the Swiss Household Panel and other panel survey, the aim is to assess the impact of two sociological influences. First, the extent to which occupational structure explains variation in male weekly hours of work. Linked to this is men’s dissatisfaction with the duration of their weekly working hours by their occupation and education. Dissatisfaction may be illustrated if there is a ‘time divide’ or ‘time squeeze` in which high wage rate workers are dissatisfied with their long hours of work and low wage rate worker are dissatisfied with their short hours of work.Second, a unique angle of the proposed research is to explore men’s satisfaction with a female partner’s hours of work, which is critical if people experience the time squeeze because of the loss of someone to undertake the domestic work. Indeed, the rise in the proportion of dual-earner families may lead to increases in work-family conflict, which may exacerbate dissatisfaction in hours.
