Psych

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Gender Inequality in Housework Across 20 European Nations: Lessons from Gender Stratification Theories

Judith Treas1 & Tsuio Tai2

Published online: 9 January 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Abstract The gendered division of housework is the linchpin in a broader system of gender inequality. Consistent with pioneering feminist theories of gender stratification, this cross-national study demonstrates this approach with multi- level models that consider individual as well as cultural and structural variables that are associated with the absolute time men and women spend doing housework. Building on re- search relating national gender ideology to the husband-wife shares of housework, this paper asks how gender ideology relates to the absolute amount of time that men and women spend doing housework. Complementing this cultural indica- tor, the paper introduces a previously neglected constraint on domestic practices, asking whether the quality of a country’s housing stock predicts weekly hours in housework. Drawing on 2012 International Social Survey Program data for 20 European countries, we study nationally representative sam- ples totaling 7733 respondents who were ages 18–65 and le- gally married, cohabiting, or in civil partnerships. Even con- trolling for individual-level covariates, results confirm that men and women perform less housework in countries where public opinion supports gender equality. In countries with more substandard housing, however, women, but not men, spend more time in housework than they do elsewhere.

Keywords Housework . Gender inequality . Housing quality . Attitudes . Feminist theory . Cross-national research

Introduction

Housework continues to be stereotyped as largely women’s work (Tai and Treas 2013). In spite of the rise in their labor force participation, women still do most of the household la- bor, even in 13 European countries, such as Norway and the UK, where gender egalitarian values receive general support (Apparala et al. 2003). Considering the UK and three English heritage countries, together with five countries from Scandinavia and Continental Europe, Sayer (2010) document- ed substantial country-to-country differences in how much time women and men spend doing housework. Given that household labor perpetuates gender inequality (Chafetz 1991), this paper builds on feminist theorizing on gender strat- ification. Of broad international interest, this cross-national research on housework evaluates how the cultural and struc- tural context of European nations shapes the absolute time that women and men spend in household labor.

This study of household labor is inspired by the second wave feminist perspective that calls attention to the broad social institutions sustaining gender inequality (Budig 2004). The paper draws on recent cross-national scholarship on the key contextual influences that are associated with the gen- dered division of work in the home (Treas and Lui 2013). In sociology, pioneering theorizing by feminists describes gen- der stratification as the product of an integrated, multi-level system of domination operating at the individual, household, and societal levels (Blumberg 1984; Chafetz 1991). Based on this insight, multi-level models have analyzed how country- level factors, together with the characteristics of individuals, are associated with the division of housework between men

* Judith Treas [email protected]

Tsuio Tai [email protected]

1 Department of Sociology, University of California-Irvine, Social Science Building 3151A, Irvine, CA 92697, USA

2 Department of Sociology, National Taipei University, Social Science Building, No. 151 University Road, San Shia, Taipei 237, Taiwan

Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511 DOI 10.1007/s11199-015-0575-9

and women (Fuwa 2004; Hook 2010). At the individual-level, predictors are used to explain who does the housework–the relative resources that partners bring to bargaining over house- work, their time available for household chores, their attitudes toward women’s and men’s appropriate activities, and the housework their situation demands (Coltrane 2000; Geist 2005; Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010). At the societal level, research traces participation in housework to cultural understandings and related social structures (Bergh 2007). For example, examining 24 industrialized countries (e.g., U.S., Australia, Japan, Israel, Germany, Hungary, Norway), Fuwa (2004) concludes that cultural beliefs supporting tradi- tional gender roles for men and women are associated with a higher share of housework done by women. Geist (2005) determined that couples in so-called conservative welfare states (e.g., Austria) where policies favored one- breadwinner families were less likely to share housework than in market-oriented, liberal welfare states (e.g., U.S.) or Nordic social democratic ones (e.g., Sweden), where policies were either more neutral or favorable toward two-earner families. Recognizing culture and structure as complementary explanations, this paper considers both as critical aspects of the multiple and interconnected forces that buttress gender inequality by sustaining taken-for- granted domestic practices (Treas and Lui 2013).

Using 2012 data on men and women in 20 European coun- tries from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) (GESIS 2012), we build on feminist thinking about house- work that emphasizes the link between micro-level gender inequality and country-level contextual factors (Cooke 2011). An investigation of individual and household charac- teristics (working hours, attitudes, partners’ relative incomes, household income, number of children, education, and age) sets the stage for analyses that ask how cultural beliefs and structural constraints of countries are associated with the time men and women spend doing housework. The paper makes two contributions. First, it extends previous research on how a country’s gender ideology relates to the husband-wife division of housework to analyze the implications of an egalitarian ideology for the absolute time that men and women spend doing housework. Specifically, the expectation is that men and women will spend less time in housework in societies where public opinion favors more egalitarian gender roles (H1). Second, the paper tests the association of housework time with a previously unexplored country characteristic, the quality of housing stock that is argued to affect housework demands. That is, men and women in countries with poorer housing quality are hypothesized to spend more time doing housework than their counterparts elsewhere (H2). Introducing the novel housing explanation for time spent on housework, the paper offers a check on the robustness of the gender ideology association with housework practices. It also provides an acknowledgement of the multifaceted complexity

which feminist theory attributes to the maintenance of gender inequality and oppression.

Background

In setting the research context, this paper begins with a brief description of the challenge that household labor poses to gender equality before moving to feminist theories that inform the problem. These theories identify gender domination as a multi-faceted system sustained at multiple levels in the social order. We describe key structural and cultural characteristics that researchers on housework have identified with countries, as well as the concepts informing their analyses of individual respondents. Drawing on prior research, we elaborate on the rationale for our testable hypotheses. They anticipate that less time will be devoted to housework in countries with more gender egalitarian ideologies and higher quality housing stock. Lastly, we situate our study in terms of different re- search designs that have been used to advance cross-national understanding of housework.

Contributions of Feminist Theories

Women have come a long way toward realizing the aspira- tions of trail-blazing liberal feminists, such as the 18th Century British writer, Mary Wollstonecraft, who argued that gender inequality would end if women received the same ed- ucation as men. As Budig (2004) describes in an overview of developments in feminist theory, liberal feminism advocated removing legal and social barriers to women’s access to higher education and employment (Budig 2004). Women now sur- pass men in higher education enrollment and graduation in a majority of the world’s nations (McDaniel 2012). Furthermore, an ambitious analysis of eight Western European countries, plus the U.S. and Japan, documents the decline in gender segregation for higher status, non-manual occupations (Charles and Grusky 2004). However, as pointed out so memorably in a feminist classic, The Second Shift (Hochschild and Machung 1989), women’s progress in the household has lagged their gains in the workplace. Despite the rise in women’s labor force participation, women around the globe continue to do the large share of housework (Treas and Drobnič 2010). In country after country, what change has occurred in the gendered division of household work has mostly been due to women, who have abandoned more house- work than men have taken on (Bianchi et al. 2006; Sayer 2010).

Contemporary research on household labor is indebted to feminist thinking linking the circumstances of individual women to the social institutions of a society. Acker’s (1973) pioneering critique pointed out the failure of sociological the- ories of social stratification to acknowledge gender as a critical dimension of differentiation and inequality. Arguing that the

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position of women was highly relevant to the structure of the larger social system, Acker invited analyses linking women’s micro-level disadvantages to broader social structures. With the rise of second wave feminism, Marxist feminists empha- sized broad societal forces of capitalism and patriarchy that worked against women in the struggle for equality in the household (Hartmann 1981). In setting forth a general theory of gender stratification, Blumberg (1984) described gender inequality as being sustained by an integrated system of male domination at all levels of society–micro, meso, and macro. Feminists in the historical-comparative tradition advanced this perspective by theorizing the interplay of state welfare ap- proaches with systems of gender, work, and caring (Orloff 1993; Sainsbury 1996). Among European countries, for in- stance, Pfau-Effinger (2010) identifies several national pat- terns of child care, such as a high reliance on public care where full-time employment of mothers with young children is com- mon. This is the case not only for Finland and France, but also for the former East Germany where the pattern carries over from the socialist period despite the limited child care charac- terizing the rest of Germany.

Pointing to the gender-based division of labor as the basis for gender stratification, Chafetz (1991) attributed the perpet- uation of women’s disadvantage to both structural and cultural forces that reinforce one another at different levels. To take one example, women’s housework limits their paid employ- ment, which leaves men to accrue power from the economic and political sectors; being more highly valued than the re- wards of the household sector, these gains from public en- gagement reinforce patriarchal authority in the home. The power from their structural positions allows men to define cultural gender ideologies that legitimate inequality and main- tain gender differentiation. Behavior is influenced by gender ideologies internalized via socialization beginning early in life (Weitzman 1979). This feminist approach points toward ana- lyzing micro-level behavior, such as housework, not only in terms of micro-level characteristics of individuals, but also in terms of structural constraints and cultural ideologies at the societal level.

Factors Associated with Gendered Housework Practices

Micro-level empirical studies quickly consolidated around a few dominant theories. Reviews of the research literature on Europe, the U.S., and other European heritage countries (e.g., Australia) have identified a proven set of individual-level var- iables predicting the division of housework between husbands and wives (Coltrane 2000; Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010). Micro-level social interaction was the foundation for the imaginative feminist argument that gender was created in the doing. Gender identities were acted out in intimate, face- to-face interactions with women doing and men eschewing housework (West and Zimmerman 1987). Four other

theoretical approaches motivated micro-level research on cou- ples’ housework with representative sample surveys in U.S. and Europe. 1) Consistent with a gender-neutral time availability proposition, the partner who works fewer hours for pay spends more time in housework on account of having more free time to do chores (Bianchi et al. 2000). 2) Following power and exchange theories (Emerson 1976), the greater the relative resources (e.g., income) a partner brings to bargaining over household labor, the less housework that partner per- forms (Knudsen and Waerness 2008; Mannino and Deutsch 2007). 3) The demand-capability model (Coverman 1985) points to household demands–gauged by the presence of chil- dren in Australia (Baxter et al. 2008) or the larger size of the Dutch home (van der Lippe et al. 2004)–as being associated with greater work done around the home. The greater the household’s need for housework, the more housework will be carried out. 4) Mixing gender socialization theories with social psychology (Eccles et al. 2000), another framework stresses that men’s and women’s gender attitudes influence their housework, as Cunningham (2001) has shown for the U.S.

Micro-level research often focused on a single country and analyzed husbands’ and wives’ relative shares of housework. As reported for countries as different as the U.S. (Cunningham 2005) and Sweden (Evertsson 2014), men with less traditional views of gender did a larger share of the household chores than other men, but women with less traditional attitudes did a smaller share of housework than other women. Less is known about how gender attitudes relate to the absolute hours men and women spend in housework, if only because analyses of housework time often relied on time use studies that did not include attitude variables (Sayer 2010).

Macro-level empirical studies have addressed many differ- ent concerns. One tradition emphasizing culture traces country differences in the gendered organization of family life to pub- lic opinion regarding the norms for men’s and women’s ap- propriate roles (Diefenbach 2002; Fuwa 2004;) or to the cul- tural template offered by a legacy of gender conservative Catholicism versus Protestantism (Morgan 2006). The social policies of various countries have been shown to both reflect and reinforce the cultural assumptions about gender that un- derpin men’s and women’s paid and unpaid work (Cooke 2011). Some types of state welfare regimes influence house- work by privileging certain domestic arrangements, such as the male breadwinner/female homemaker family advantaged by conservative welfare states such as Austria (Geist 2005). Particular policies, such as parental leave and protections against employment discrimination, have been shown to be associated with greater gender parity in household labor over 34, largely European countries (Fuwa and Cohen 2007). When women’s attainments are considered, countries like Denmark where women are more empowered in public life (as measured by income, occupation or political

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representation) also show greater gender equality in couples’ housework (Ruppanner 2010). To generalize from a rich liter- ature, research on the macro-level factors associated with household labor supports the feminist proposition that there are many, highly inter-related influences on gender inequality.

Theorizing Key Country Characteristics

Building on prior empirical research on housework and on feminist theorizing about the multiple and inter-related origins of gendered practices, this paper focuses on two country-level characteristics while controlling for respondent characteristics reported to influence participation in housework. A country’s gender ideology is expected to relate to absolute time spent in housework. The quality of a country’s housing stock, a vari- able new to the literature, is also expected to relate to house- work time.

Gender Ideology as Cultural Context

The idea that cultural beliefs about gender influence women’s and men’s participation in housework is well-established (Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010). Through gender role socialization (Eccles et al. 2000; Weitzman 1979), beliefs about gender specialization are learned and internalized by individuals who express their gender attitudes in surveys (Cunningham 2001). Because attitudes shape personal prefer- ences, they influence how individuals act.

Gender egalitarian beliefs reject essentialism. The essen- tialist system of ideas holds that the differences between men and women have biological and psychological bases and that different activities are, therefore, right and natural (Budig 2004). This ideology is consistent with a household Bdivision of paid work and family responsibilities that is based on the notion of separate spheres^ for men and women (Davis and Greenstein 2009, p. 96). Summarizing 20 years of re- search on the household division of labor in heterosexual cou- ples, Davis and Greenstein (2009, p. 96) observe that Bthe proportion of housework performed by the woman is related to the woman’s ideology, the man’s ideology, or both.^ For 24 largely European and North American countries, Diefenbach (2002) considers a country-specific measure of gender culture based on the mean of respondents’ responses to the item, A man’s job is to earn the money; A woman’s job is to look after the home and family. The more supportive the culture is of these gender differences, the less equal the household division of labor is found to be. Fuwa (2004) uses a multi-item survey measure of gender ideology. She considers 22 European coun- tries, plus Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan and the U.S. The nations where respondents, on average, voice stronger support for gender egalitarian norms also display greater housework parity between husbands and wives. Importantly, the results for country-level gender ideology are not just tapping

individual beliefs about gender. In Fuwa’s study, macro-level public opinion is statistically significant even when individual-level attitudes are controlled. In fact, there is evi- dence that individual attitudes have little influence over the division of household labor in Sweden, where public support for gender equality is particularly high (Aboim 2010). As this shows, the climate of public opinion is an influential cultural context, regardless of individual gender attitudes or personal preferences for behavior.

Although cultural gender ideology is known to matter for housework (Davis and Greenstein 2009), research to date has emphasized its relation to the partners’ relative shares of housework, not to its absolute volume. Measuring the couple’s division of housework or shares speaks to the degree of gender parity in the household. Regardless of whether the chores are divided equally or not, however, most people would agree that the sheer volume of housework may constitute an oppressive force. Even if men and women share domestic responsibilities equally, doing many hours of housework weekly is a burden meriting attention.

This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the association of country-level gender ideology with the volume of housework–the weekly hours that women and men spend doing housework. We hypothesize that men and women will spend less time in housework in societies where public opinion favors more egalitarian gender roles (H1). Controlling for individual attitudes, both genders are expected to do less housework if they live in a country with lower cultural expec- tations for traditional female housewifery. These expectations are apt to be associated with lower housekeeping standards in the culture. Egalitarian ideas about gender likely make outsourcing of housework to paid workers more culturally acceptable. Weaker norms linking women to the home might also imply a culture where the sorts of domestic activities traditionally done by homemakers are not valued for either women or men. By contrast to housekeeping, in Europe, North America, and Australia, both mothers and fathers are spending more time doing child care, a time use change relat- ed to the greater cultural value placed on parent-child interac- tion today (Gauthier et al. 2004). In our study, both men and women are hypothesized to spend less time in housework where a gender egalitarian ideology rejects separate roles for men and women.

Housing Quality as Structural Constraint

Traditional gender ideology is associated with other societal characteristics that are known to be related to gendered house- work practices. For example, across 22 developed nations, egalitarian gender beliefs are positively associated with soci- etal wealth and women’s employment, although they do not account for the influence of cultural beliefs on housework (Fuwa 2004). This papers tests the robustness of the

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association between gender ideology and housework hours by controlling for a novel country-level constraint on house- work—the quality of the country’s housing stock. As we hy- pothesize, men and women in countries with poorer housing quality will spend more time doing housework than their counterparts elsewhere (H2).

This hypothesis is based on the assumption that keeping a dwelling clean will take more time when it is deteriorating than when it is well-maintained. Damp walls, for instance, require extra scrubbing and airing to discourage mildew. This logic would ideally be tested with data on the quality of respondents’ own dwellings, but such information is not avail- able in the survey we use nor, to our knowledge, any other cross-national data on household labor. We can, however, capitalize on the overall housing quality data for specific European countries. As theoretical justification, societies where many people live in poor housing are apt to have adopted time intensive domestic routines (e.g., more frequent cleaning) to cope with the common housekeeping problems presented by deteriorating dwellings. People with high quality housing do not have this need to institutionalize time- intensive practices.

Housing quality represents a novel addition to the lit- erature on housework. What gets cleaned has received little attention. Indirect evidence comes from Dutch sur- vey data (van der Lippe et al. 2004). Even with controls for household income, children, and partners’ employ- ment status, the number of rooms in the household is positively associated with hiring housekeeping help—a finding consistent with greater housework demands. Those living in an apartment instead of a house are less likely to have (and presumably to need) labor-saving household appliances. If physical features of the house- hold dwelling, e.g., its size, contribute to the demand for housework, they probably affect the amount of house- work women and men do. The association between the dwelling and housework has been acknowledged. Grzeskowiak et al. (2006, p. 506) argue that housing has high quality when Bthe maintenance, renovation, and repair in the home are minimal, least costly, and effortless.^ When surveyed, U.S. respondents rank low maintenance as one of the most desirable housing fea- tures (Lodl et al. 1990).

Assuming that features of residential housing affect how much housework needs to be done, we consider a structural aspect of a country’s housing stock—its housing quality. We define poor housing quality in terms of substandard structural features of the dwelling (e.g., a leaky roof). This definition speaks to the structural integrity of the housing unit as shelter. It excludes labor-saving design elements (entry mudrooms) and amenities (dishwashers) that cut down on the time needed to do housework (Heisig 2011) but are not customary in all countries.

Research Approaches to Multi-level Systems of Gender Inequality

As a multi-level, cross-national analysis, this study can be situated not only in a theoretical context, but also a methodo- logical context. Because residents of a country share a com- mon context influencing their behavior, countries are the unit of analysis in cross-national studies of housework. Some strat- egy or another is required to reduce many countries to a trac- table number of cases. One approach rests on choosing a few strategic cases that epitomize key country differences com- pared in depth (Cooke 2011; Hook and Wolfe 2012). Cooke (2006), for example, demonstrates the predictable housework legacy of three different policy patterns: West Germany, which favored the male breadwinner family; East Germany where women’s full-time employment was promoted; and the U.S., which took a hands-off position on women’s paid and unpaid work. Alternately, countries are reduced to a typology of cultural understandings and social struc- tures that characterize some historical tradition or geo- graphic region (Pfau-Effinger 2010; Therborn 2004). Geist (2005) categorized 10 countries following the in- fluential capitalist welfare regime typology developed by Esping-Andersen (1990). Compared to conservative re- gimes such as Austria, the Nordic social democratic and English-speaking liberal regimes were significantly more likely to have respondents report gender parity in household chores.

Multi-level statistical models now allow for the analy- sis of the cross-national survey data sets that have become available for dozens of countries. Although the number of country cases determines the number of macro-level var- iables that can be considered at once, multi-level statisti- cal models, such as employed in this paper, can include many more countries than other approaches. Consistent with the theoretical proposition that gender stratification is a multi-level phenomenon, these models allow for the estimation of effects at both the micro (individual) and macro (country) levels (Raudenbush and Bryk 2002). At the macro-level, the models analyze country-specific values for independent variables such as our gender ide- ology indicator; each country falls at some point along the continuum from traditional to egalitarian public opinion on gender. This general approach to culture is seen in the work of political scientists (Inglehart 1997), sociolo- gists (Ruppanner 2008), and cross-cultural psychologists (Triandis 1995). What multi-level models lose in country- specific nuances, they gain in the ability to address a specific dimension that speaks to conditions across coun- tries. Importantly, they overcome the statistical limitations of small country samples, because pooling data increases statistical power and, thus, reveals patterns not otherwise apparent.

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Method

Data came from the 2012 International Social Survey Program (GESIS 2012). The ISSP was a cross-national collaboration that fielded annual surveys of nationally representative sam- ples. Topical modules were appended to on-going country surveys (e.g., the U.S. General Social Survey) to provide a cross-national aspect to national studies. To complement stan- dard demographic items found in each survey, subcommittees developed and rigorously pretested specialized questions to assure country relevance and linguistic equivalence. Although respondent-level data on housing quality were not available in the ISSP, the surveys were matched with country- level data on housing quality (Eurostat 2012) available for 20 European countries in the ISSP: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany (East and West reported separately), Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland. Countries without comparable housing quality indicators (e.g., the U.S.) were dropped, as was Spain which lacked data on gender attitudes.

Participants

Respondents were recruited according to the scientific sam- pling protocols of the local affiliate. We restricted analysis to 12,479 ISSP respondents who were ages 18–65 and legally married, cohabiting, or in civil partnerships. We were unable to distinguish same-sex from heterosexual couples. We ex- cluded 362 respondents with missing values on the dependent variable, weekly housework hours, as well as 4384 respon- dents who did not answer, refused to answer, or answered Bdoes not know^ on explanatory variables. Our final analytic sample was comprised of 3435 men and 4298 women (n=7733). Great Britain had the smallest sample (n=155) while France had the largest (n = 733). See Appendix Table 4 for descriptive statistics for men and women by country.

Instrumentation

The dependent variable was weekly housework hours. Implausibly high values in excess of 60 h were recoded to 60 h to eliminate outliers that were often respondent reporting mistakes. The variable was based on responses to the question on the average hours spent weekly on household work, not including childcare and leisure activities. The hours were not limited to core female-typed activities such as laundry, and some respondents may have interpreted the question to in- clude stereotypically male chores such as home repairs.

As discussed above, the key, individual-level, independent variable predicting housework hours was a scale of respon- dent’s egalitarian gender attitudes. Responses ranged from

strongly agree (1) to strongly disagree (5). Five items of established reliability and validity (Davis and Greenstein 2009) were reverse coded and factor analyzed to construct a scale of egalitarian gender attitudes (alpha=.78): 1) A pre- school child is likely to suffer if its mother works, 2) family life suffers when the woman has a full-time job, 3) what most women really want is a home and children, 4) being a house- wife is as fulfilling as working for pay, and 5) a man’s job is to earn money; a women’s job is to look after the home and family.

Other measures spoke to theoretically-based variables discussed above. We tested the time availability hypothesis that posits more housework is done by respondents with fewer employment demands. Respondent’s working hours per week, top coded to 60 h, gauged limits to the time available to do housework. Regarding the partner’s time availability, only a binary spouse/partner work status variable (work- ing=1, else=0) was available for all 20 countries. To assess whether greater relative income was a resource translating to less housework as posited by relative resource theories, dum- my variables distinguished the respondent’s income as being higher (omitted reference category), the same, or lower than the spouse/partner’s. Number of children, 0–17 years of age, is a control variable measuring the demand for housework in the household. Household income in also controlled, because higher income may have permitted respondents to reduce their housework by outsourcing chores (Treas and de Ruijter 2008). In country-specific currency, the income variable differed from country to country (i.e., categorical or numeric, monthly or annual). To harmonize across countries, we calculated the relative distance of respondent’s household income from the country-specific 85–90th income percentiles (Stier et al. 2001). Because education is positively associated with gender egalitarian beliefs (Davis and Greenstein 2009), education is a control. It was divided into three categories: low (omitted reference), upper secondary (general secondary allowing entry into university as well as post-secondary but non-tertiary vo- cational programs), and tertiary. Because recent cohorts hold more progressive gender attitudes (Davis and Greenstein 2009) and younger women do relatively less housework (Fuwa 2004), age was controlled. Age in years was an interval measure (with age-squared added to take account of non- linearity).

As previously explained, the key macro-level cultural var- iable is egalitarian gender ideology. It was measured by the mean for all of a country’s respondents on the gender attitudes scale. The variable ranged from -.64 to .66. Weakly correlated (−.22) with the ideology variable, the main structural indicator was the quality of the country’s housing stock, which was hypothesized to be negatively associated with time spent on housework (Eurostat 2012). Based on 2012 data from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey, country- specific poor quality housing was the percent of the

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population living in a dwelling with leaky roofs; damp walls, floor or foundation; or rot in the window frames, floor or foundation (Eurostat 2012). Individual-level reports of hous- ing quality were not available in the ISSP. Summary statistics for men and women appear in Table 1. Gender-specific means by country are reported in Appendix Table 4 with associated F or chi square statistics showing that the countries differ signif- icantly on each variable.

Data Analysis

The multivariate analysis was based on three multi-level ran- dom-intercept models estimated separately for women and men. Because the clustering of respondents within countries violated the OLS assumption of independent cases, we esti- mated multi-level models of weekly hours of housework (for men and women separately). The individual-level model was: Yij = β0j + βkjXkij + Rij where Yij was weekly housework hours reported by respondent i in country j. β0j was the individual-level intercept. βkjXkij were individual-level

predictors including the spouse/partner’s work status, the re- spondent’s working hours, gender attitudes, age, age-squared, education, number of children, household income and respon- dent’s relative income vis a vis the partner’s. Rij, the error term, was assumed to be normally distributed with mean zero and variance σ2.

The initial country-level model was:

β0j ¼ γ00 þ γ01gender egalitarian ideologyj þ U0j βkj ¼ γk

where γ00 was the country-level intercept, and γ01 represented the effect of ideology on the model intercept. The random effect at the country level was U0j. Except for dummy vari- ables, all variables were centered at their grand means. The between-country variance in mean weekly housework hours differed statistically from zero (p<.001), justifying the use of random effects models. For those living in a country with average gender ideology, an intercept may be interpreted as

Table 1 Individual and country variable means, standard deviations, and range: married and cohabiting persons, 18–65, in 20 European countries

Variable Women Men

Mean S. D. Min Max Mean S. D. Min Max

Individual-level

Housework hours weekly 17.21 11.89 0 60 9.51 8.66 0 60

Working hours weekly 26.10 18.57 0 60 36.32 18.16 0 60

Spouse/partner work status .80 .40 0 1 .73 0.44 0 1

Egalitarian gender attitudesa .07 1.02 −2.59 1.76 −.08 .97 −2.59 1.76 Relative income

Respondent income higher .21 .41 0 1 .69 .46 0 1

Same income .19 .39 0 1 .16 .37 0 1

Spouse/partner’ income higher .59 .49 0 1 .15 .36 0 1

Number of children .93 1.13 0 7 .90 1.13 0 7

Household income .55 .24 0 1 .58 .25 0 1

Education

Lower .21 .41 0 1 .23 .42 0 1

Upper secondary .41 .49 0 1 .43 .49 0 1

Tertiary .37 .48 0 1 .34 .47 0 1

Age 44.60 11.61 18 65 47.11 11.13 18 65

Country-level

Egalitarian gender ideologyb .04 .38 −.64 .66 .05 .38 −.64 .66 Poor quality housing (%) 13.82 5.80 6.00 31.50 13.82 5.98 6.00 31.50

N 4298 3435

S.D. standard deviation, Min minimum value, Max maximum value; Data source GESIS (2012) a Egalitarian gender attitudes: measure from factor analysis of reverse-coded Likert items: 1) A preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works; 2) Family suffers when the woman has a full-time job; 3) A job is all right, but what most women really want is a home and children; 4) Being a housewife is just as fulfilling as working for pay; 5) A man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and family (alpha = .74). Higher scores represent more egalitarian attitudes toward gender roles b Egalitarian gender ideology: country-specific mean for individual gender attitudes

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the weekly housework hours reported by a respondent with low education, higher income than his/her spouse’s, and mean values on other characteristics.

Results

Descriptive statistics for the variables appear separately for men and women in Table 1. Women, on average, spend over 17 h weekly in housework as compared to fewer than 10 h for men. Men work 10 more hours for pay each week than do women (36 versus 26 h, respectively). Fully 80 % of women’s partners are working for pay as are 76 % of men’s. Women’s average gender beliefs are significantly more gender egalitarian than men’s (.07 vs. −.08, p<.001). In most households, men have higher incomes than their partners. The households average slightly less than one minor child. Mean household income, expressed relative to the country’s 85–90th income percentiles, is .55 and .58 for women and men, respectively. The educa- tional distributions of men and women are similar with about 1 in 5 having low education, over 1 in 3 having tertiary educa- tion, and over 4 in 10 falling in the middle. Women average about 45 years of age and men 47. As for the country-level variables, the standard deviation of .38 indicates considerable cross-national variation in cultural views. On average, about 14 % of respondents live in poor quality housing although the figure ranges from 6 to 32 % across the 20 countries.

Figure 1 illustrates country-to-country differences for women and for men on the dependent variable, weekly hours of housework. Among women, housework ranges from about 11 h weekly in Norway to 26 in Slovenia. Among men, it ranges from 6 in France to 16 in Poland. The graph confirms that women spend substantially more time in household labor than men in each of the 20 countries. The country-to-country

variation is also greater for women. Countries where women spend more time in housework are generally places where men do, too. The partners’ hours in housework are correlated .40 at the household level; the correlation for partnered men and women is higher at the country level (.77). In sum, the figure shows there is substantial cross-national variation in housework time to be explained by countries’ cultural and structural dimensions, as well as by the individual-level char- acteristics of their residents.

Multivariate Results

Multi-level models test for the association of weekly hours of housework with micro- and macro-level variables. Table 2 for women shows the results of random intercept models that allow for country-to-county differences in housework time. Model 1 reports the results for a model containing only micro-level individual and household characteristics as inde- pendent variables predicting weekly housework hours. Consider time availability. Controlling for other individual- level variables, women working more hours for pay report significantly fewer hours of housework weekly, as we would expect (p<.001). Whether the partner works for pay is not significantly related to women’s household labor, however. In keeping with gender socialization theories, more egalitarian gender attitudes relate to women doing less housework (p<.001). By contrast, a woman’s relative resources, i.e., her income compared to her husband’s, does not predict her time in housework, but total family income is negatively associated with her hours (p < .01). As expected from the demand- capability model, the number of children is linked to greater housework for women (p<.001). All things considered, the positive coefficient suggests that an additional child equates to an extra hour of housework weekly for the woman. Even

Data: GESIS (2012)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Females

Males

Fig. 1 Weekly housework hours by gender and country. Data: GESIS (2012)

502 Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511

controlling for gender egalitarian attitudes known to be posi- tively associated with education, woman’s upper secondary or tertiary education (as opposed to lower education) translates to significantly fewer hours in housework. Likely reflecting gen- eration differences, older women perform more housework (p<.001), but the significant age-squared coefficient suggests the effect of age flattens out at advanced ages.

Gender Ideology

The characteristics of female respondents are largely consis- tent with previous micro-level findings of time availability, demand capability and gender socialization. Although their own characteristics matter, it remains to be seen whether the hours women spend in housework depend on the cultural and structural characteristics of the societies in which they reside. In Table 2, Model 2 adds the country-specific measure of public support for egalitarian gender ideology to the individual-level variables predicting housework hours. The

analysis tests the hypothesis (H1) that housework hours are lower where gender attitudes are more egalitarian. Because individual-level variables are controlled, we are checking macro-level effects on housework hours of individuals with similar individual and household characteristics.

As hypothesized (H1), the negative and significant (p<.001) coefficient shows that women living in countries where public opinion is more gender egalitarian do less house- work than women elsewhere do. The cultural context of the country, as measured by gender ideology, matters above and beyond the woman’s own gender attitudes, which are con- trolled in this model. The influence of women’s individual characteristics remains largely unchanged with the addition of the public opinion measure of national culture.

Figure 2 shows a scatterplot of the 20 countries to illustrate the negative association between the mean weekly housework hours for women in each country (vertical axis) and the mean gender ideology value for each country (horizontal axis). The regression line plotted through the countries shows the

Table 2 Results of multi-level random-intercept models for women’s housework hours

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

B S.E. B S.E. B S.E.

Intercept 18.398 *** .771 18.010 *** .750 17.937 *** .747

Individual-level variables

Working hours −.147 *** .010 −.146 *** .010 −.146 *** .010 Spouse/partner work status (Not working omitted) .891 .483 .923 .482 .939 .482

Egalitarian gender attitudes −1.343*** .180 −1.181 *** .181 −1.180 *** .181 Relative income (Woman’s income higher omitted)

Same income −.502 .490 −.517 .489 −.512 .488 Spouse/partner income higher −0.111 .425 −.087 .424 −.076 .423

Number of children 1.098 *** .165 1.136*** .165 1.135 *** .165

Household income −2.207 ** .782 −2.322** .779 −2.366 ** .779 Education (Lower omitted)

Upper secondary −1.242 ** .444 −1.238 ** .443 −1.242 ** .442 Tertiary −2.495 *** .493 −2.398 *** .491 −2.402 *** .491

Age .568 *** .117 .559 *** .116 .560 *** .116

Age-squared −.005 *** .001 −.005 ** .001 −.005 *** .001 Country-level variables

Egalitarian gender ideology −8.019 *** 1.326 −7.384 *** 1.345 Poor quality housing .179 * .083

Residual components

Between-country 2.277 2.131 2.107

Within-country 9.914 9.914 9.914

Degrees of freedom, Individual-level 4286 4285 4284

Degrees of freedom, Country-level 19 18 17

N = 4298

B unstandardized coefficients, S.E. standard error

Significance levels (Two-tailed tests): *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001; Data: GESIS (2012)

Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511 503

negative relation between gender egalitarian public opinion and the hours of housework women carry out. Gender ideol- ogy offers at least a partial explanation of housework time, as indicated by the R2 of .535.

Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and Finland–all Nordic countries–cluster at the bottom right where there is high support for gender equality and low housework burden for women. As a post-socialist society, East Germany stands out among these Nordic countries; East German women, however, do several hours more housework per week than women in Nordic countries with high support for gender equality. The other post-socialist countries (Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Croatia, Slovenia) are found at the top left where views are less gender egalitarian and women’s housework burdens are higher. There are, how- ever, differences even among these post-socialist countries; Lithuanian, Croatian, and Slovenian women spend more time in housework than we would expect, even given their tradition- al gender ideologies. Consistent with feminist theories of gen- der as a complex, integrated system, other unmeasured aspects of country cultures must influence the time women spend in housework. Austria, Switzerland, West Germany, and Ireland have moderate gender views and middling levels of housework. Great Britain and France also have moderate views, but women there do less housework than we would otherwise expect.

Housing Quality

Model 3 adds the country-level structural variable, poor qual- ity housing, both as a test of the hypothesis (H2) that the

variable predicts housework and as a check on the robustness of gender ideology’s association with housework. In keeping with the hypothesis, European women living in a country with more substandard housing spend significantly more time in housekeeping than women who live where quality of the housing stock is higher. Feminist theories of gender stratifica- tion regard women’s disadvantage as the product of a complex system of oppression operating at multiple levels. We find that women’s housework hours are predicted not only by their personal characteristics, but also by the cultural and structural context of the countries where they live.

Results for Men

Table 3 reports on the analysis for male respondents. Model 1 shows that individual-level findings parallel women’s in sev- eral ways. Longer working hours (p < .001), more gender egalitarian attitudes (p < .05), and higher family income (p<.01) are all associated with men doing less work around the house. Children are significantly (p<.01) related to higher housework hours for men, too, although the size of the coef- ficient is only half as large as for women. As with women, spouse’s employment is non-significant, but men differ in having non-significant education and age coefficients, too. Men with lower income than their wife report doing more housework than men with higher relative income (p<.05), a finding sometimes interpreted as doing gender behavior that is designed to neutralize the stigma of deviating from male breadwinner norms.

Data: GESIS (2012)

Fig. 2 Women’s mean weekly housework hours by egalitarian gender ideology: 20 European countries. Data: GESIS (2012)

504 Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511

Addressing the implications of the cultural context, Model 2 adds the country-level variable for gender egalitarian ideol- ogy. Like women, men living in a country with a more gender egalitarian culture do significantly fewer housework hours, regardless of own gender attitudes. This result was expected (H1). Unlike women, when country-level gender ideology is controlled, men’s individual-level gender egalitarian attitudes cease to be statistically significant at the .05 level. Model 3 adds the country-level structural variable, poor housing qual- ity, to the cultural indicator of public opinion. The result offers no support for the hypothesis (H2). In contrast to women whose housework is greater where the housing stock is poor quality, men’s time in housework is not affected by housing quality. This is illustrated in Fig. 3. Not only do women spend many more hours weekly in housework than do men, but also women’s housework time climbs much more steeply as the country’s share of substandard housing rises. Because gender ideology remains statisti- cally significant at the .001 level even with housing

quality controlled, there is evidence that this cultural in- fluence on men’s housework hours is robust.

Discussion

Household labor demonstrates that gender inequality is deeply entrenched in the fabric of society. Although women have made progress toward greater equality in the workplace, most of the burden of labor in the home still falls to women. To understand the forces that sustain household gender inequali- ty, this paper draws on sociological theorizing about gender stratification by influential second generation feminists. This theoretical framework emphasizes that gender inequality is maintained by a complex, integrated system of structural and cultural forces that work at multiple levels–from micro to macro–to reinforce women’s disadvantage. This cross- national analysis of the time Europeans spend in housework in 20 countries implements this approach with multi-level

Table 3 Results of multi-level random-intercept models for men’s housework hours

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

B S.E. B S.E. B S.E.

Intercept 9.337 *** .542 9.113 *** .537 9.089 *** .516

Individual-level variables

Working hours −.062 *** .010 −.060 *** .010 −.060 *** .010 Spouse/partner Work Status (Not Working omitted) .402 .354 .439 .353 .445 .354

Egalitarian gender attitudes −.342 * .168 −.206 .171 −.210 .171 Relative income (Man’s Income Higher omitted)

Same income .745 .395 .747 .394 .752 .394

Spouse/partner income higher .988 * .433 .994* .432 .994* .432

Number of children .452 ** .146 .492** .146 .493 ** .146

Household income −2.359 ** .698 −2.448*** .697 −2.471 *** .697 Education (Lower omitted)

Upper secondary .598 .385 .620 .384 .630 .383

Tertiary −.104 .435 −.002 .435 .001 .434 Age .169 .114 .151 .114 .150 .114

Age-Squared −.001 .001 −.001 .001 −.001 .001 Country-level variables

Egalitarian gender ideology −4.413*** .990 −4.300*** .934 Poor quality housing .030 .057

Residual components

Between-country 1.573 1.529 1.376

Within-country 8.085 8.085 8.085

Degrees of freedom, Individual-level 3424 3423 3422

Degrees of freedom, Country-level 19 18 17

N = 3435

B unstandardized coefficients, S.E. = standard error

Significance levels (Two-tailed): *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001; Data: GESIS (2012)

Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511 505

models that consider not only the micro-level characteristics of individuals, but also macro-level structural and cultural features of society.

This paper considers how cultural beliefs and structural con- straints relate to housework. Its contributions are two-fold. First, although prior research has related a country’s gender ideology to the partners’shares of housework (Fuwa 2004), this paper extends the analysis to address the implications of gender ideology for the absolute amount of time that men and women spend doing housework. Second, the paper introduces a previ- ously unexplored country characteristic, the quality of the hous- ing stock, and tests its relationship to men’s and women’s housework. Besides presenting an original explanation for time spent on housework and a check on the robustness of the gender ideology association with housework practices, the housing variable recognizes the feminist theorizing of gender inequality as a complex, multifaceted system operating at multiple levels.

Consistent with prior studies, the results show that charac- teristics of the wife, the husband, and their household are as- sociated with the amount of housework that they do. Predictably, given the logic of time availability, respondents who work longer hours for pay, for example, spend fewer hours on housework. Individual-level factors, however, are an insufficient explanation for the weekly hours that men and women spend doing housework. The country context in which respondents reside also has implications for housework time.

As an indicator of a country’s culture, gender egalitarian public opinion is, as hypothesized (H1), significantly associ- ated with both women and men doing less work around the home. As the multi-level gender stratification theory would

suggest, this macro-level variable is statistically significant even when individual gender attitudes and other respondent characteristics are taken into account. Because both women and men do less housework when public opinion is gender egalitarian, the spread of gender egalitarian variables may go hand in hand with a general societal decline in the appreciation of housekeeping as an activity or a fall in acceptable standards for housekeeping.

Practical constraints on behavior arise from tangible aspects of a country’s social structure. Women devote more time to housework in countries where more of the housing stock is poor quality. Although women seem to adopt more time-intensive domestic practices where substandard housing poses special demands, men do not. Thus, there is only partial support for the hypothesis (H2). Power differentials or widely accepted norms of gender specialization may protect men from the day-to-day burden of peeling paint or leaky windows. We can- not, however, discount the possibility that male-typed chores, such as repairs and maintenance, go under-reported as house- work. Importantly, however, societal gender ideology remains statistically significant even with housing quality controlled.

Limitations of the Study

Comparative and cross-national research on housework has focused largely on Western countries for which data are more readily available. That is true of this analysis of 20 European countries, and a different set of countries might lead to different conclusions. In one sense, these countries have a common cul- ture. Therborn (2004), for example, identifies what he calls the

8.20 13.20 18.20 23.20 28.20 9.84

12.85

15.85

18.85

21.85

Poor Hous ing Quality W

e e k ly

H o

u s e w

o rk

H o

u rs

Male Female

1Predicted values adjusted for respondent's working hours, spouse/partner work status, gender attitudes, relative income, family income, number of children, respondent’s education, age and age squared. Data: GESIS (2012)

Fig. 3 Weekly housework hours by percent of housing of poor quality for male and female respondents1

506 Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511

Christian-European family system. European gender relations were historically patriarchal. Because European women had somewhat greater autonomy than women elsewhere, European patriarchy was comparatively tenuous and ultimately less resilient to challenges. Although gender parity has yet to be achieved, European culture has become much more gender egalitarian in behavior and attitudes (Gershuny et al. 1994; Treas et al. 2014). Furthermore, there is evidence that less gen- der egalitarian countries have been catching up and converging toward greater gender parity in housework (Geist and Cohen 2011). That said, cultural differences between European socie- ties, such as Eastern Europe’s stronger support for women’s maternal and home roles (Haavio-Mannila and Rotkirch 2010; Treas and Widmer 2000), invite further analysis.

To illustrate complexity and difference, consider a few points of comparison between Sweden and Poland (Appendix Table 4). Under socialism, Polish state policy was universal employment, but high levels of full-time female em- ployment were imposed on a conservative Catholic society with fairly traditional attitudes toward women’s place in the home (Appendix Table 4). In comparison to a work-oriented culture like Sweden’s, where mothers are not expected to stay home, Poland is a child-oriented country where public opinion favors women working only before children and after children are older (Treas and Widmer 2000). A long legacy of maternal employment has not, therefore, translated into men sharing household chores, as it has in Sweden (Treas and Tai 2012). Sweden is a historically Protestant, now largely secular, coun- try. Sweden’s wealthy and educated population embraces values of individualism and post-materialism (Inglehart 1997; Lesthaeghe and Sirkyn 1988), thus, contributing to an accep- tance of cohabitation and non-marital sex not seen in Poland (Heuveline and Timberlake 2004; Treas et al. 1998). Relative to the Poles, Swedes enjoy the security of a generous, social democratic welfare state, including part-time jobs, public child care and parental leave that keep women in the work force.

Even this abbreviated treatment of the differences makes clear that Poland’s less gender egalitarian ideology and lower housing quality may be incomplete explanations for Polish women doing 24 h of housework weekly versus 13 for their Swedish counterparts. The paper, nonetheless, makes a unique contribution in showing that an egalitarian ideology, in general, is linked to fewer hours in housework for both men and women, but that higher housing quality can be said to benefit only women in terms of housework time. If only because of constraints of data and methods, however, the complex, multi- level nexus of causation must be addressed by the accumulation of studies that are each necessarily limited and incomplete.

Future Research Directions

This paper offers the first demonstration that women’s time spent in housework is related to the nature of their country’s

housing stock. That we are unable to pursue the link between housing quality and housework time for individual respon- dents invites attention to the need to collect housing data in family surveys. For example, the distinction between housing that is owner-occupied versus rented would seem important for housework, because homeowners bear responsibility for upkeep of the dwelling and likely take pride of ownership in their home. Because housing quality is itself the product of social forces, it would be useful to consider the role of national housing policy in promoting the high quality housing stock that is associated with a lower domestic burden for women.

In addition, future studies might build on our finding that a country’s egalitarian ideology is related to less time on house- work for both men and women. This contrasts with the well- established finding that egalitarian ideas about gender at both the micro and macro levels are associated with women doing a smaller share of housework, but with men doing a larger share. Cross-national time use data have dominated studies on the absolute time spent on housework. Besides the greater reliability of diary records, time use data offer greater detail on types of household activities. Time use studies, however, are necessarily more limited in the variables that might explain housework patterns, including attitudes reflecting cultural ide- ologies. This suggests not only that these studies might collect more attitude data, but also that researchers interested in housework should make use of the admittedly limited time measures that exist in sources such as the ISSP.

Lastly, other contextual characteristics of countries, often highly correlated, are likely to figure in the processes that sustain or challenge household labor practices. They, too, un- derscore research opportunities. That the countries with very poor housing quality and highest household burdens are found in Eastern Europe, for example, invites questions of whether region or state welfare regime type explains the connection between housing and housework. If it is an outcome of state policies, poor quality housing may only mediate the state ef- fect on the organization of housework. Feminist theorizing on the complicated origins of gendered inequalities argue for consideration of other characteristics of countries.

The complex and multi-faceted nature of women’s disad- vantage points out why gender inequality is demanding to study and why it is resistant to change. A signal contribution of feminist theories of gender stratification has been to em- brace this complexity in order to provide the conceptual framework for empirical research. In intimate lives and broad country contexts, the gendered nature of housework continues to offer fresh opportunities to advance our understanding of household gender inequality.

Compliance with Ethical Standards There are no potential conflicts of research. All protocols for ethical treatment of respondents were ob- served in the collection, archiving and analysis of survey data. Respon- dents provided informed consent.

Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511 507

T ab

le 4

In d iv id u al an d h o u se h o ld

ch ar ac te ri st ic s: p ar tn er ed

w o m en , ag es

1 8 – 6 5 , 2 0 co u n tr ie s

C o u n tr y

N H o u se w or k

h o u rs

G en de r

at ti tu d es

W o rk in g

h o u rs

S p o u se ’s w o rk

st at u s

R m or e

in co m e

S am

e in co m e

S po u se

m o re

in co m e

N o . o f

ch il dr en

H o u se h ol d

in co m e

L es s th an

se co n da ry

U p p er

se co nd ar y

T er ti ar y

A ge

A u st ri a

1 8 9

1 9 .5 7

−. 47

22 .4 7

.7 7

.1 1

.1 7

.7 1

.6 5

.6 4

.7 1

.1 5

.1 4

43 .5 0

B u lg ar ia

1 6 0

2 2 .5 6

−. 75

23 .7 3

.7 1

.1 9

.1 6

.6 5

.7 2

.5 1

.2 4

.5 3

.2 3

46 .5 9

C ro at ia

1 7 9

2 5 .7 3

−. 28

21 .5 0

.6 9

.1 7

.1 9

.6 4

.9 6

.5 5

.3 5

.5 2

.1 3

43 .4 0

C ze ch

R ep ub li c

27 6

20 .6 2

−. 44

28 .2 5

.8 5

.1 1

.3 1

.5 8

.7 6

.5 2

.3 1

.6 0

.0 9

42 .3 5

D en m ar k

29 7

12 .1 8

.6 9

28 .1 1

.7 5

.2 4

.1 8

.5 8

1. 16

.6 4

.0 8

.2 5

.6 7

48 .2 7

F in la nd

24 1

11 .4 9

.4 8

29 .8 1

.7 6

.2 2

.2 3

.5 4

.8 6

.5 5

.0 4

.5 2

.4 4

44 .5 2

F ra nc e

48 8

11 .1 9

.3 4

26 .6 0

.8 3

.1 8

.2 2

.6 0

1. 15

.5 2

.2 9

.1 6

.5 5

42 .2 6

Ic el an d

23 1

13 .1 6

.5 6

31 .9 6

.9 3

.2 0

.1 6

.6 5

1. 26

.6 2

.2 4

.2 8

.4 8

42 .0 0

Ir el an d

28 1

18 .3 7

.2 3

21 .8 5

.7 9

.2 5

.1 9

.5 6

1. 21

.4 0

.0 9

.4 3

.4 8

45 .4 0

L at vi a

1 9 5

2 3 .2 1

−. 91

25 .4 6

.7 6

.2 6

.2 3

.5 1

.7 4

.5 2

.0 8

.6 7

.2 5

44 .1 3

L it h u an ia

1 5 2

2 4 .9 7

−. 56

28 .5 3

.7 6

.2 0

.2 6

.5 5

.8 0

.5 8

.1 1

.6 1

.2 9

45 .0 1

N or w ay

28 9

10 .7 5

.6 3

34 .2 0

.9 0

.1 9

.2 0

.6 1

1. 12

.6 0

.1 6

.2 4

.6 0

44 .9 8

P ol an d

16 2

23 .9 0

−. 40

24 .1 6

.7 6

.2 4

.1 0

.6 5

1. 02

.4 7

.1 0

.6 0

.3 0

44 .7 2

S lo v ak ia

1 7 2

2 3 .0 5

−. 58

23 .9 0

.7 1

.1 6

.2 4

.5 9

.6 9

.4 3

.3 7

.5 1

.1 2

47 .2 8

S lo ve ni a

15 6

25 .9 4

.0 0

22 .3 5

.6 1

.2 4

.2 4

.5 2

.6 4

.5 6

.4 0

.3 8

.2 1

47 .0 8

S w ed en

20 4

13 .0 6

.7 4

31 .4 2

.8 6

.2 3

.1 6

.6 1

.7 9

.6 1

.2 1

.2 4

.5 5

45 .6 5

S w it ze rl an d

2 4 3

1 8 .2 1

−. 25

21 .2 4

.9 1

.4 3

.1 0

.4 7

.8 2

.5 3

.1 7

.5 5

.2 8

44 .7 2

W es t G er m an y

20 7

16 .3 1

.3 3

18 .4 8

.8 7

.2 0

.1 1

.7 0

.9 0

.6 2

.1 0

.5 9

.3 0

43 .3 9

E as t G er m an y

11 3

14 .7 5

.8 5

28 .2 7

.7 8

.3 2

.1 6

.5 2

.5 3

.5 1

.0 3

.7 5

.2 2

46 .5 2

U n it ed

K in g d o m

6 3

1 3 .9 4

.0 4

1 8 .5 6

.7 6

.1 6

.1 3

.7 1

1 .0 8

.5 6

.1 3

.3 5

.5 2

4 5 .1 1

T o ta l

4 2 9 8

1 7 .2 1

.0 7

2 6 .1 0

.8 0

.2 1

.1 9

.5 9

.9 3

.5 5

.2 1

.4 1

.3 7

4 4 .6 0

F or

C h i2

T es t

– 5 4 .0 2

7 8 .9 2

1 2 .4 0

8 .5 9

1 86 .0 9

8 .0 6

1 7 .6 5

1 2 00 .0 0

5 .6 7

P –

.0 00

.0 00

.0 00

.0 00

.0 00

.0 00

.0 00

.0 00

.0 00

In d iv id u al an d H o u se h o ld

C h ar ac te ri st ic s: P ar tn er ed

M en , ag es

1 8 -6 5, 20

C o u nt ri es

C o u n tr y

N H o u se w or k

h o u rs

G en de r

at ti tu d es

W o rk in g

h o u rs

S p o u se ’s w o rk

st at u s

R m or e

in co m e

S am

e in co m e

S po u se

m o re

in co m e

N o . o f

ch il dr en

H o u se h ol d

in co m e

L es s th an

se co n da ry

U p p er

se co nd ar y

T er ti ar y

A ge

A u st ri a

1 8 9

1 9 .5 7

−. 47

22 .4 7

.7 7

.1 1

.1 7

.7 1

.6 5

.6 4

.7 1

.1 5

.1 4

43 .5 0

B u lg ar ia

1 6 0

2 2 .5 6

−. 75

23 .7 3

.7 1

.1 9

.1 6

.6 5

.7 2

.5 1

.2 4

.5 3

.2 3

46 .5 9

C ro at ia

1 7 9

2 5 .7 3

−. 28

21 .5 0

.6 9

.1 7

.1 9

.6 4

.9 6

.5 5

.3 5

.5 2

.1 3

43 .4 0

C ze ch

R ep ub li c

27 6

20 .6 2

−. 44

28 .2 5

.8 5

.1 1

.3 1

.5 8

.7 6

.5 2

.3 1

.6 0

.0 9

42 .3 5

D en m ar k

29 7

12 .1 8

.6 9

28 .1 1

.7 5

.2 4

.1 8

.5 8

1. 16

.6 4

.0 8

.2 5

.6 7

48 .2 7

F in la nd

24 1

11 .4 9

.4 8

29 .8 1

.7 6

.2 2

.2 3

.5 4

.8 6

.5 5

.0 4

.5 2

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44 .5 2

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48 8

11 .1 9

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26 .6 0

.8 3

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.6 0

1. 15

.5 2

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.1 6

.5 5

42 .2 6

Ic el an d

23 1

13 .1 6

.5 6

31 .9 6

.9 3

.2 0

.1 6

.6 5

1. 26

.6 2

.2 4

.2 8

.4 8

42 .0 0

Ir el an d

28 1

18 .3 7

.2 3

21 .8 5

.7 9

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1. 21

.4 0

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.4 8

45 .4 0

L at vi a

1 9 5

2 3 .2 1

−. 91

25 .4 6

.7 6

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.2 3

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.7 4

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44 .1 3

L it h u an ia

1 5 2

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−. 56

28 .5 3

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34 .2 0

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.2 0

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1. 12

.6 0

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.6 0

44 .9 8

A p p en d ix

508 Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511

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ab le 4

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– 5 4 .0 2

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