Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The (first) survey to explore women's attitudes and intentions concerning hours of work and the legislation affecting them, carried out by the Equal Opportunities Commission as part of its statutory duty to review the legislation which affects the hours women may work in industry.

Main Topics:

After asking questions about personal and household characteristics and work, if any, the survey covered domestic duties and attitudes to work inside and outside the home. The attitudes of the women, and a sample of their husband's, were then collected, in terms of five specific examples of the widened patterns of working hours for women that would be available if protective legislation were abandoned.

Multi-stage stratified random sample

suitable wards were divided into two strata depending on the proportion of manual men. Within strata the wards were ordered and a probability sample of 85 wards chosen. Thus a sample of 3411 women's names were drawn from the electoral registers of some of the eligible wards. Interviews were conducted only with women aged 18 to 59, and a randomly chosen sample of two-thirds of the husbands of working women and one-third of the husbands of non-working women

Face-to-face interview