What Do They Mean by Egalitarian?

• In Event: 3523 - Family Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 11: Work and Families

Abstract

Nowadays, most US residents would like to have egalitarian romantic relationships. Existing scholarship has studied the structural and interpersonal constraints that couples face to achieve egalitarianism, but the multiple ways in which it may still be pursued remain relatively unknown. In this study, I ask: How do partners share —and would like to share— household and financial responsibilities? To answer this question, I draw from an original 2018 survey which provides a broad picture of US work and family experiences and preferences, and explores different ways of sharing household and financial responsibilities, related to different theories about gender equality. I find that gender attitudes, in particular the rejection of essentialism (the idea that men and women are innately different in interests and skills), predict equal sharing arrangements, which make 20% of arrangements in the US. This means that, despite previous studies had dismissed their effects on the pursuit of egalitarian relationships, gender attitudes play an important role in work and family preferences. Additionally, I find that non-essentialist attitudes are more likely to be held by highly educated women. Moving on, I propose to conduct in-depth interviews with highly educated women and their male partners to understand how different ways of sharing household and financial responsibilities may relate to their ideas about gender equality.

Author

• Inés Martínez Echagüe, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill