Job Market Paper: 

"Time Constraints and the Gender Gap in Brazil"

This paper examines how unequal household time burdens shape gender gaps in employment, hours, earnings, and human capital in Brazil. Using PNADC (2012–2024) and PNS (2019) data, I document that hours worked are strongly linked to earnings growth and upgrading. I develop and estimate a structural model in which individuals allocate time across domestic work, job search, and market work in wage or self-employment. Greater domestic responsibilities make women more time-constrained, lowering participation and limiting human-capital accumulation while working. The model reproduces key gender patterns in participation, hours, sectoral sorting, and part of the earnings gap, including women’s underrepresentation in self-employment—where time investments are most rewarded. Counterfactuals show that easing women’s domestic burden reduces participation and hours gaps, increases the share of high-ability women, and raises total output by roughly 3%, even after taxation needed to fund the policy. Policies that boost on-the-job human capital shift women toward self-employment but reduce their presence in wage work and lower aggregate production. The results suggest that balanced interventions that relax time constraints while supporting skill accumulation maximize macroeconomic and distributional gains.