Does She Mind All that Housework?: Gender, Gender Ideology, and Family Satisfaction Cross-nationally

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Gender Roles and Ideologies

Abstract

Despite increases in labor force participation, women continue to do more unpaid household labor than men (England 2010; Seedat and Rondon 2021). However, women don't seem to mind. Many women find their heavy share of household labor fair (Baxter 2000; Greenstein 1996) or satisfactory (Baxter and Western 1998). While literature points to country context as an explanatory factor (women’s reactions to household labor are less negative if they live in traditional countries), we are interested in women's own gender ideologies. Specifically, we examine how women’s family satisfaction is related to the proportion of household labor they do and the amount of work done by their male partners. We then examine how these relationships are moderated by women’s own gender ideologies. We argue that although an unequal division of household labor may be associated with lower family satisfaction among women on average, women with more traditional gender ideologies may not be as dissatisfied as other women. We use data from the ISSP, and our sample includes 12,672 women with male partners from 39 countries. Preliminary results indicate that the negative connection between household chores and family satisfaction is moderated by women's gender ideology. We do not find that greater gender equality at the country level moderates the connection between household work and satisfaction. We extend the literature in two ways. First, while studies examine the connection between housework and satisfaction, few separate the different kinds of housework people do, we distinguish between household chores and family care and find that women’s satisfaction is related not only to the division of chores but also to the absolute hours of care work. Second, previous studies have examined how these relationships are moderated by country-level gender ideology. Few, if any, studies examine how individual gender ideology moderates the connection between household labor and family satisfaction, thus overlooking variation among women in a country.

Authors

• Shagun Sethi, Purdue University

• Jeremy E. Reynolds, Purdue University