The Accumulative Effect of Career Opportunities on Housework Gender Gap

• In Event: 3523 - Family Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 6: Household Division of Labor

Abstract

Prior studies have discussed gender inequality in housework by widely adopting individual characteristics and interactions such as time availability, resource-power, and gender performance, as well as macro-level environments. However, gender inequality in the labor market could result in gender differences in personal characteristics such as time or income, and could buffer the change in macro environments. This study, therefore, investigates how gender difference in career opportunities contributes to couples’ housework gender gap accumulatively. Employing couple-level data from National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) Wave 1 and 2, the findings show that the effect of couples’ difference in career opportunities on couples’ housework gap was not accumulative with couples’ time being together. However, the accumulative effect was significant for couples in non- managerial/professional occupations, but not for couples in managerial or professional occupations.

Author

• Shih-Yi Chao, University of Southampton