Gender and The Division of Household Labor in Older Couples

Journalhttp://jfi.sagepub.
com/ Issues of Family
Gender and the Division of Household Labor in Older Couples : A European Perspective
Karsten Hank and Hendrik Jrges Journal of Family Issues 2007 28: 399 DOI: 10.1177/0192513X06296427 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jfi.sagepub.com/content/28/3/399
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
Additional services and information for Journal of Family Issues can be found at: Email Alerts: http://jfi.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://jfi.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://jfi.sagepub.com/content/28/3/399.refs.html
>> Version of Record - Feb 20, 2007 What is This?
Downloaded from jfi.sagepub.com by maria monalisa on October 15, 2012
Gender and the Division of Household Labor in Older Couples

A European Perspective
Karsten Hank Hendrik Jrges
Journal of Family Issues Volume 28 Number 3 March 2007 399-421 2007 Sage Publications 10.1177/0192513X06296427 http://jfi.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com
Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, University of Mannheim, Germany
Using microdata from the 2004 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this study takes a cross-national perspective to investigate the division of household labor among older couples (aged 50 years or more). Across nine continental European countries, the authors find considerable variation in the overall distribution of housework between partners, with more egalitarian countries in northern Europe and more traditional countries in southern Europe. A multilevel analysis shows that about half of the between-country variance in the division of housework is due to differences in older couples characteristics, but that there are no country-specific effects of the main microlevel explanatory variables. Finally, the authors find a significant effect of macrolevel gender inequalities on couples division of housework, suggesting that older couples living in more gender-egalitarian countries are more likely to exhibit an equal sharing of household labor. Keywords: SHARE gender; division of household labor; older couples; Europe;
esearch on productive aging is growing rapidly (cf. Morrow-Howell, Hinterlong, & Sherraden, 2001; OReilly & Caro, 1994). Most of the related literature deals with involvement of the elderly in volunteering (e.g., Caro & Bass, 1995; Erlinghagen & Hank, 2006), grandparenting (e.g., Hayslip & Kaminski, 2005; Pebley & Rudkin, 1999), or other work usually performed for parties outside the individuals household. However, work performed within ones own household also has a substantial economic value. Without home production, one would have to buy substantially
399
400
Journal of Family Issues
more household services on the market (e.g., de Ruijter, Treas, & Cohen, 2005; Stoller & Cutler, 1993). Although gender differences in other types of unpaid or informal work are also recognized (e.g., Herzog & Morgan, 1992; Hook, 2004), they are particularly pronounced in the division of housework between spouses. Despite some changes across cohorts, with more recently born women doing less and their male partners doing somewhat more (both relative and total), today men generally contribute at most one third of core housework tasks (e.g., Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, Folbre, & Matheson, 2000; Breen & Cooke, 2005; Shelton & John, 1996). Several studies dealing with postretirement changes in couples division of household labor show that the total amount of housework done may increase after retirement for both men and women, but that the traditional preretirement pattern largely persists (e.g., Dorfman, 1992; Solomon, Acock, & Walker, 2004; Szinovacz, 2000). So far, however, the division of household labor among older couples has not been analyzed in a crossnational perspective. Recent investigations for the general population strongly suggest that macrolevel factors, particularly gender inequalities, play a significant role in the distribution of housework between spouses (e.g., Breen & Cooke, 2005; Davis & Greenstein, 2004; Fuwa, 2004). Using data on couples aged 50 and older derived from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this article estimates hierarchical linear models to investigate the relationship between societal context and the division of routine household labor in nine continental European countries. Before presenting the empirical analysis, we will briefly review the linkage between micro- and macrolevel aspects of gender and housework.
Authors Note: Both authors contributed equally to this article. We are grateful for comments by two anonymous reviewers. This research was supported by the European Community Fifth Framework Programs Quality of Life project under EC Contract QLK6-2002-002426 (AMANDA). This article is based on data from Early Release 1 of SHARE 2004, which is preliminary and may contain errors that will be corrected in later releases. The SHARE data collection has been funded primarily by the European Commission through the Fifth Framework Program (Quality of Life Project QLK6-CT-2001-00360). Additional funding came from the U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01 AG09740-13S2, P01 AG005842, P01 AG08291, P30 AG12815, Y1-AG-4553-01, and OGHA 04-064). Data collection in Austria (through the Austrian Science Fund, FWF) and Switzerland (through BBW/OFES/UFES) was nationally funded. Please address correspondence to Karsten Hank, Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, University of Mannheim, Building L 13, 17, D-68131 Mannheim, Germany; e-mail: hank@mea.uni-mannheim.de.
Hank, Jrges / Division of Household Labor
401
Gender and the Division of Housework

Various economic models play a prominent role in much of the literature on household labor. Although the new home economics approach, put forward by Becker (1981), proposes that men and women specialize to maximize household utility or efficiency, the resourcebargaining power perspective focuses on power relations in the family (based on, for example, educational or income differentials between the partners), and the economic dependency model is centered on the assumption that women are forced to exchange household labor in return for economic support from a male breadwinner (cf. Brines, 1993; Greenstein, 2000, for example). These theories are compatible with general formulations of the relative resource hypothesis (a person with higher income will do less housework) and the time availability hypothesis (a person who spends more time in paid work will spend less time in housework), which are putatively gender neutral, emphasize choice, and assume that housework allocation is governed by the rules and principles of exchange relations (Coltrane, 2000, p. 1214; see also Shelton & John, 1996, pp. 304ff.). However, it has been suggested that womens employment, time availability, resources, conscious ideology, and power do not account for why wives still do the bulk of family work (Thompson & Walker, 1989, p. 857) regardless of demographic or life-course characteristics. The partners gender appears to be so influential that it is often considered to be the single most important determinant of the division of household labor. Theories on socializationgender role attitudes, for example, contend that people socialized to believe in gender-segregated work will conform to those beliefs (e.g., Coverman, 1985; Cunningham, 2005). Thus, men and women with traditional attitudes are expected to share less housework, whereas men and women with nontraditional attitudes are expected to share housework more equally. It is assumed that people are automatically socialized into rigid gender roles from childhood onward, going along with the development of relatively fixed attitudes and/or deeply gendered personalities. These strict assumptions are rejected by more recent gender construction theories that incorporate the symbolic and performance dimensions of gender (cf. Shelton & John, 1996). As Coltrane (2000) posits, Doing specific household tasks provides opportunities to demonstrate to oneself and to others that one is a competent member of a sex category with the capacity and desire to perform appropriately gendered behaviors (p. 1213). Thus, housework produces not only household commodities but also gendered identities throughout the life course.
402
Gender ideology determines what a proper gender role is. Just as gender ideologies vary across individuals (e.g., Greenstein, 1996), the social construction of gender is highly context dependent and varies across nations or cultures. Mason (1997) defines the societal gender system as
the socially constructed expectations for male and female behavior that are found (in variable form) in every human society. A gender systems expectations prescribe a division of labor and responsibilities between women and men and grant different rights and obligations to them. (p. 158)
Resulting macrolevel gender inequalitiesthat may be promoted or ameliorated by the welfare state (Orloff, 1996; see also Geist, 2005)materialize in various spheres (cf. Huber, 1990) such as the educational system (e.g., Jacobs, 1996), the labor market (e.g., Chang, 2000), or the political arena (e.g., Elder, 2004). Naturally, they are also reflected in spouses division of work in the family (e.g., Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2004; Sundstrm & Duvander, 2002; Thompson & Walker, 1989) and in the household. Thus, Coltrane (2000) suggests that the almost universally observed pattern of household labor
can only be understood by attending to the symbolic significance of household labor in the social construction of gender and by analyzing the social, cultural, economic, and political contexts in which men and women form families, raise children, and sustain households. (p. 1208)
Starting from Baxters (1997) five-country studycovering the United States, Sweden, Norway, Canada, and Australiaa number of studies have explicitly investigated the division of housework in advanced industrialized societies from a cross-national perspective (for an analysis of less developed countries, see, for example, Sanchez, 1993, 1994). A universal finding is that wives contribution to household chores is still greater than their husbands, even in the most egalitarian countries (e.g., Davis & Greenstein, 2004). More differentiated insights can be derived from recent work using multilevel modeling. For example, Batalova and Cohen (2002), who focus on the role of premarital cohabitation, show that national cohabitation rates in countries with higher levels of overall gender equality have equalizing effects on couples division of housework regardless of their own cohabitation experience. Fuwa (2004) elaborates on the role of macrolevel gender inequalities, arguing that male control over the political economy and male dominated ideologies at the macrolevel may act as discount factors
403
against the power of individual womens resources (p. 752; see also Blumberg, 1984). Thus, she expects that individual-level factors will have weaker effects on the division of household labor for women who live in countries with less pronounced gender equalityand vice versa. Using the same data source (the 1994 International Social Survey Programme; ISSP) and selection of 22 countries on which the study by Batalova and Cohen (2002) is based, Fuwa (2004) indeed finds that women living in less egalitarian countries benefit less from their individual assets in the negotiation of housework. This is supported by an analysis of a subset of countries from the 1994 ISSP, which shows that equal sharing of household tasks is particularly rare in countries with a conservative welfare state regime, independent of the partners relative resources, time availability, or gender ideology (Geist, 2005). Finally, utilizing the 2002 ISSP on Gender Roles, Stier and LewinEpstein (2005) examine the effects of employment-supportive policies, gender inequalities in the labor market, and general attitudes toward gender roles on households division of unpaid work in 25 countries. Although it is shown that employment policies have no direct effect on couples division of labor, the authors findings suggest that gender inequalities in the labor market and a countrys gender ideologies do affect the level of gender equality in the family. To our knowledge, though, no cross-national research has been carried out yet that pays particular attention to the gendered division of household labor among older couples. Filling in this gap for continental Europe, our study complements recent time-use research that points to significant intergender and intercountry differences in time-use patterns at older ages (cf. Croda & Gonzalez-Chapela, 2005; Gauthier & Smeeding, 2003). It also adds a European perspective to the so far almost exclusively U.S.-centered literature on the division of housework in later life, particularly after retirement. And finally, it investigates possible interactions between couple characteristics and the households country of residence in determining patterns of household labor.
Method
Data
The data for our study are drawn from the 2004 SHARE (see http://www .share-project.org for more information). The SHARE is modeled closely after the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, and it is the first European data
404
set to combine extensive cross-national information about the socioeconomic status, health, and family relationships of the elderly population (see Brsch-Supan et al., 2005). Release 1 of the data contains information about some 22,000 individuals aged 50 or older from 15,000 households in 10 countries, representing Europes economic, social, institutional, and cultural diversity from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, including Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, France (excluded from our study because of missing macrolevel information), Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Greece. Probability samples have been drawn in each participating country; the weighted average household response rate in the face-to-face part of the survey is 62 percent (a thorough description of methodological issues is contained in Brsch-Supan & Jrges, 2005).1 Our analytic sample was restricted (a) to respondents living in a marital or nonmarital union at the time of the interview and (b) to couples for whom at least one partner filled out the surveys self-completion questionnaire (which includes the question on which our dependent variable is based). This results in a total of 4,135 observations (see Table 1 for details).
Variables
This article deals with routine housework (Coltrane, 2000, p. 1210). The construction of the dependent variable modifies Davis and Greensteins (2004) measure, taking advantage of the fact that the SHARE provides both partners assessments of who takes the primary responsibility for routine household chores (see Lee & Waite, 2005, for a discussion of alternative measures). This is a major improvement over existing data sets such as the ISSP. The (generic) English version of the SHARE questionnaire asks, Who in the couple takes or took the main responsibility for cooking, cleaning the house, laundry and ironing? with five answer categories: myself only, myself mainly, myself and my partner equally, my partner mainly, and my partner only (coded 1 through 5). Because this question was posed to both partners, responses were relabeled to distinguish husbands from wives. To account for possible discrepancies in spouses responses (cf. Kamo, 2000; Lee & Waite, 2005), we use the mean of their respective answers. This information has been recoded, resulting in a variable ranging from 0 (both partners agree that the wife does all housework) to 1 (both partners agree that the husband does all housework).2 On the right-hand side of the regression, we use a set of standard microlevel explanatory variables including the partners age, education, (gross) income,3 employment status, and health, as well as information about the
Table 1 Descriptive Statistics

Germany .242 .172 .101 .681 .315 .293 .048 62.900 2.513 .366 .235 10.178 .589 .431 1.939 .284 .332 .479 .503 .032 .031 .849 587 664 .888 341 .583 410 .181 351 .979 569 .000 189 1.000 605 .182 .550 .405 .450 .083 63.664 2.898 .298 .312 10.689 .554 .461 2.540 .339 .415 .390 .423 .099 .106 .095 .738 .348 .270 .039 62.004 2.736 .261 .139 10.527 .495 .140 2.434 .392 .446 .367 .476 .068 .080 .050 .739 .255 .126 .076 65.309 2.730 .070 .035 9.133 .651 .135 2.727 .267 .349 .393 .487 .023 .023 .056 .678 .227 .154 .017 62.922 3.663 .085 .098 9.202 .746 .368 2.137 .222 .305 .327 .376 .066 .051 .157 .519 .467 .462 .077 61.228 3.014 .336 .379 10.857 .484 .427 2.353 .362 .396 .387 .405 .048 .066 .053 .692 .408 .214 .012 60.511 5.750 .220 .144 9.169 .557 .241 2.079 .199 .230 .246 .250 .030 .046 .111 .635 .429 .381 .048 63.235 2.862 .312 .190 10.427 .519 .392 2.228 .201 .217 .275 .333 .053 .016 .749 .262 .167 .252 .166 .156 .088 .179 .112 .295 .236 .130 .065 .245 .143 Sweden Netherlands Spain Italy Denmark Greece Switzerland
Austria
Gender division of household labor Proportion of couples with equal division of labora Male income < female income Male income > female income Male in labor force Female in labor force Unmarried couple Couples mean age Malefemale age difference Male, high educational degreeb Female, high educational degreeb Household income (natural log) Male retired from labor force Female retired from labor force Number of children Male cares for grandchildren Female cares for grandchildren Male limited by health problems Female limited by health problems Only male response available Only female response available
.203 .105
.105 .630 .241 .200 .038 62.268 3.005 .272 .143 9.456 .697 .470 2.107 .277 .339 .437 .425 .036 .050
GEM N
.746
419
405
Note: GEM = United Nations gender empowerment measure. a. Share of couples with values equal to or larger than .5 for the division of housework variable. b. International Standard Classification of Education categories 4 or higher. Source: SHARE 2004 (Release 1), authors calculations.
406
partners marital status and family responsibilities (see Table 1 for descriptive statistics). One advantage of our data is that we have true couple information, that is, individual data for each question asked of each partner. This advantage also complicates matters because each individual variable type enters the analyses twice. Overall, we have thus opted for rather parsimonious but robust specifications. We measure household income by the relative income position in each country. More precisely, we compute country-specific income quintiles, which enter the regression as a set of dummy variables. This has the additional advantage of combining flexibility in functional specification with ease of interpretation. We treat differences in the partners income as an indicator of relative resources. Relative income of partners is coded as a set of dummy variables for which the baseline category represents couples whose individual income is in the same country-specific (individual) income quintile. Thus, the two dummy variables indicate whether the female partner is in a higher or lower income quintile than the male partner. Employment status is used as an indicator of time availability. In the SHARE, respondents are asked to self-report employment status by selecting one of the following categories: (a) retired, (b) employed or selfemployed, (c) unemployed, (d) permanently sick or disabled, and (e) homemaker. We code as working all respondents who say they are currently employed or self-employed. The employment status variable is also used to create an indicator for past labor force status (retired), which may have lasting effects for retired couples (see below for a discussion). Because less traditional gender ideologies have been shown to be closely associated with cohabitation (Batalova & Cohen, 2002; Cunningham, 2005; South & Spitze, 1994), union type is used to account for the gender ideology dimension at the level of couples. We measure the age (or cohort; this is equivalent in cross-sectional data) of a couple by the average age of both partners. Age differences between partners, which might indicate intracouple power relationships, are also included as control variables. They are measured as the male age minus the female age. Education enters the analysis as one dummy variable for high education for each partner, where high education is equivalent to an International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) code of 4 or higher (beyond upper secondary education). Past and current family responsibilities are measured by the number of children the couple has and by a dummy variable that equals 1 if the respondent said that during the past 12 months, he or she has regularly or
407
occasionally looked after grandchildren without the presence of the parents. The SHARE contains a large amount of information about the respondents health status (including specific diagnoses, symptoms, etc.). In the context of our study, we are particularly interested in the effect of healthrelated limitations on daily activities (such as housework). Our health indicator is derived from a global activity limitation question: For the past 6 months at least, to what extent have you been limited because of a health problem in activities people usually do? (1) severely limited, (2) limited, but not severely, (3) not limited. In the empirical part, we do not distinguish between degrees of limitation. Our main concern, however, is the role of societal factors in older couples division of household labor. Like Batalova and Cohen (2002) and Fuwa (2004), we use the United Nations gender empowerment measure (GEM; see United Nations Development Program, 2004) as a core measure of macrolevel gender inequalities. The GEM is an index based on the percentage of parliamentary seats held by women, the percentage of female administrators and managers, the percentage of professional and technical workers who are women, and womens share of earnings income. It ranges from 0 to 1, where higher scores represent greater levels of empowerment for women. Because the GEM is not available for France, this country was excluded from our analysis.
Analytical Strategy
To investigate the interaction between micro- and macrolevel determinants of older couples division of household labor, we estimate hierarchical linear models (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). This and similar kinds of multilevel modeling have become a popular alternative to estimating separate models for each country (or other levels of context) in the analysis (see Teachman & Crowder, 2002, for a review). We follow a stepwise procedure, starting with the empty Model 0, which includes no independent variables at all and examines the overall couple- and country-level variances. In Model 1, all couple-level characteristics are entered into the regression with fixed effects across countries. In Model 2, we allow the coefficients of the three main couple-level variablesthe malefemale income gap, the partners employment status, and union typeto vary across countries. Finally, Model 3 includes cross-level interactions between the GEM and the intercept as well as the slopes of the three main couple-level variables.
408
Empirical Findings
Before presenting our multivariate results, we will briefly discuss two main descriptive findings, displayed in Figure 1. First, there is an obvious northsouth divide in the gender division of labor in the SHARE countries. This is reflected in the distribution of the proportion of couples in which the partners share household tasks equally (including the small number of cases where the husband does more). Although, for example, in Greece and Spain less than 10 percent of couples aged 50 and older exhibit an equal division of labor in the household, this is the case in about 17 percent of Dutch, German, and Swedish couples. The top rank is held by the Danes, where one out of four couples shares core household tasks equally.4 Second, there is strong indication for a close relationship between the division of household labor among older couples and macrolevel gender inequalities.5 Plotting the proportion of couples with an equal division of housework against the GEM reveals a clear positive association. The four countries with above average proportions of older couples sharing housework equallythe Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Denmarkare also the ones with the highest GEM scores (.8 or more). Similar associations are also found with single items of GEM, such as the proportion of female members of parliament or the femalemale wage ratio (details not shown here). We now turn to the multivariate analysis (see Table 2; note that positive coefficients indicate a larger share of the male partner in total housework). In Model 0, the between-country variance of the intercept is statistically significant. The variance components in this empty model suggest that about 10 percent of the overall variance in the division of housework is due to between-country variance (cf. Bryk & Raudensbush, 1992). A similar order of magnitude is reported in the studies by Fuwa (2004) and Stier and Lewin-Epstein (2005), for example. Including couple-level variables in Model 1 reduces the variance of country-level intercepts by almost half (from .0030 to .0017) and the couple-level variance by 7 percent (from .0279 to .0259). Turning to our main microlevel explanatory variables, we find an asymmetric effect of relative income: Men with a lower income than their female partners tend to do somewhat more housework than those having about the same income as their partners (where equal income is defined as being in the same income quintile), but the difference is not statistically significant (cf. Bittman, England, Sayer, Folbre, & Matheson, 2003). However, if the wife earns less than her husband, the husbands share in household duties is significantly lower than in couples with about equal
409
Figure 1 Gender Empowerment Measure and Shares of Couples With Egalitarian Division of Household Labor Across Europe
Note: at = Austria; ch = Switzerland; de = Germany; dk = Denmark; es = Spain; gr = Greece; it = Italy; nl = Netherlands; se = Sweden. Source: SHARE 2004 (Release 1), authors representation.
income. With regard to time availability, we find that mens participation in the labor force also decreases males participation in household chores, whereas if the female partner engages in paid work, her husbands share of household labor increases. Finally, living in a nonmarital union also increases mens participation in housework strongly, supporting the view that cohabitation goes hand in hand with less traditional gender ideologies. Both male and female higher education, which is also likely to be positively correlated with less traditional gender ideologies, contributes to a more gender-equal division of housework (e.g., Coltrane, 2000). Older
410 Model 0 SE .0184 .0035 .0234** .0065 .0111 .0079 .0121 .0005 .0006 .0067 .0075 .0083 .0082 .0082 .0084 .0600** .0021** .0002 .0152* .0157* .0113 .0104 .0099 .0068 .0616** .0461** .0117 .0086 .0160 .0005 .0006 .0066 .0075 .0082 .0081 .0081 .0084 .0077 .0454** .0618** .0493** .0021** .0002 .0147* .0161* .0118 .0109 .0099 .0080 .0246* .0097 .0031 .0132 .2177** .0147 .0141 .2175** .2172** .1168** .0032 .0760 .0246* .0089 .0452** .0227 .0620** .0115 .0527* .0364 .0022** .0001 .0150* .0170* .0123 .0102 .0093 .0071 SE SE Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 SE 0.0064 0.0194 0.0111 0.0341 0.0088 0.0250 0.0119 0.0212 .0096 .0252 .0177 .0592 .0005 .0006 .0066 .0075 .0083 .0081 .0082 .0084
Table 2 Determinants of Couples Division of Housework: Results of Hierarchical Linear Models
Intercept GEM Male income < female incomea GEM Male income > female incomea GEM Male in labor forceb GEM Female in labor forceb GEM Unmarried couple GEM Couples mean age Malefemale age difference Male, high educational degree Female, high educational degree Household income, 1st quintile Household income, 2nd quintile Household income, 4th quintile Household income, 5th quintile
.2176**
.0149 .0226** .0106** .0145 .0178 .0008 .0152** .0422** .0310** .0116 .0074 .0020 .0084 .0081 .0056 .0054 .0114 .0110 .0002** .0115 .0073 .0020 .0084 .0081 .0055 .0054 .0114 .0109 .0116 .0074 .0020 .0084 .0081 .0055 .0054 .0114 .0110 .0017** .0007 .0002
.0156 .0234** .0105** .0147 .0174 .0007 .0147** .0413** .0305**
.0139 .0244** .0108** .0148 .0177* .0004 .0142** .0409** .0298**
Male retired from labor forceb Female retired from labor forceb Number of children Male cares for grandchildren Female cares for grandchildren Male limited by health problems Female limited by health problems Only male response available Only female response available Variance components Intercept Male income < female income Male income > female income Male in labor force Female in labor force Unmarried couple Level 1 .0259 .0017** .0001 .0002 .0001 .0001 .0010 .0257 .0001 .0002 .0008 .0257
.0030**
.0279
Note: GEM = United Nations gender empowerment measure. a. Reference category: male income = female income. b. Reference category: males (females, respectively) who are neither employed nor retired. significant at 10%. *significant at 5%. **significant at 1%. Source: SHARE 2004 (Release 1), authors calculations.
411
412
couples (i.e., those with a higher mean age) exhibit the expected more traditional pattern of housework, whereas the age difference between the partners has no significant effect. Similarly, the coefficients of the dummy variables for different levels of household income turn out to be statistically insignificant. However, there is some indication for a nonlinear relationship between mens participation in household tasks and household income: The negative coefficients for the lowest and highest income quintiles suggest that the contribution of the male partner might be lowest at the upper and lower bounds of the income distribution. If the woman has retired, her husbands share of household labor increases. At first glance, this might seem to be a surprising result, contradicting findings of previous studies (e.g., Szinovacz, 2000). In our model, however, the reference category consists of women who are neither gainfully employed nor retired. Because these are mostly housewives, retirement in our model is an indicator of womens previous labor force participation, which is likely to facilitate a somewhat more equal division of housework between the partners even after retirement (assuming continuity in household roles; e.g., Dorfman, 1992).6 Male retirement tends to be negatively correlated with the dependent variable, but the respective coefficient is not statistically significant. Family obligations have an effect on older couples division of household labor in the senses that an increase in the number of children is associated with a decrease in males participation in household chores and that men caring for grandchildren also take larger responsibilities within their own households. Limitations by health problems are not significant if they affect men, but they do result in a stronger engagement of the husband in household duties if the female partners health is limited. As a final couplelevel control variable, we use information about whether only the male or only the female partner answered the question about the division of housework. Consistent with previous studies (e.g., Kamo, 2000), mens involvement in household chores is reported to be stronger if the informant is a man himself, whereas it appears to be significantly weaker if only the wifes response is available (see below for further discussion). Allowing the relative resources, time availability, and gender ideology indicators to vary across countries in Model 2 does not change the coefficients derived from the previous model. The variance components for the slopes of the respective variables are not statistically significant, which means that their effects do not differ by country. Model 3 finally includes the GEMs effect on the intercept and on the slopes of the malefemale
413
income gap, the partners employment status, and union type. The coefficient for the effect of the GEM on the intercept is .1168 and is statistically significant. This means that holding constant microlevel characteristics, mens contribution to housework in more gender-egalitarian countries is substantially larger than elsewhere. Moreover, including the GEM reduces the remaining between-country variance of the intercept by almost 90 percent, from .0017 to .0002! However, as already indicated in Model 2, the coefficients for the main microlevel variables generally do not vary between countries with higher or lower GEM scores. The only exception is the marginally significant effect of the GEM on the slope of the male income < female income dummy, suggesting that men in countries with higher values of GEM contribute somewhat more housework if they earn less than their female partner, whereas this is not the case in countries with lower values of GEM. Following a reviewers recommendation, we also estimated Model 3 separately for men and women (see appendix). As expected from our own previous findings, the predicted average division of household labor is larger in the male model (.2317) than in the female model (.2031). In particular, the positive association between mens contribution to household chores and cohabitation or health limitations of the female partner appears to be stronger if the interviewee is male. Moreover, the variance of country-level intercepts is larger in the male model (.0018 vs. .0005), pointing to a greater cross-national heterogeneity in mens than in womens responses to the housework question in the SHARE. In contrast to the initial (couple-level) Model 3 and the male model, the positive effect of the GEM on the cohabitation slope is marginally significant if the respondent is female. This finding, however, cannot be considered as sufficiently robust to argue that gender ideology would be more effective in attaining a more egalitarian division of housework in more gender-equal countries.
Discussion
Using microdata from the SHARE, this study is the first to investigate the division of household labor among older couples in a cross-national perspective. Across continental Europe, we find considerable variation in the overall distribution of household labor. One may roughly distinguish between more egalitarian countries in northern Europe, such as Sweden and
414
particularly Denmark, on one hand, and more traditional countries in the southern parts of Europe, above all Spain and Greece, on the other hand. Because we are dealing with cohorts born in 1954 or earlier, it is not surprising to find a generally lower level of mens participation in housework than might have been expected from studies that are representative of the whole population (e.g., Davis & Greenstein, 2004, p. 1265). The outcome of the multivariate analysis suggests an asymmetric, that is, gendered, effect of the partners relative income. If the wife earns less than her husband, for example, the husbands share in household duties is significantly lower than in couples with about equal income, but there is no statistically significant effect of relative income if the reverse case is considered. Mens participation in the labor force decreases males participation in household chores, whereas the female partners engagement in paid work increases her husbands share of household labor. In addition to this support for the time-availability hypothesis, we find evidence that less traditional gender ideologiesindicated by cohabitation and higher education contribute to a more gender-equal division of housework. However, our multilevel analysis reveals no country-specific effects of these couple-level characteristics. The latter finding is different from Fuwa (2004), who provides evidence that relevant microlevel factors have weaker effects on the division of household labor for women who live in countries with less pronounced gender equality. The lack of support for the macrolevel discount factor argument in our study may result from a common baseline level of gender equality in our sample of nine countries, which might be too high to allow the identification of effects such as those revealed in Fuwas analysis of 22 more diverse nations. Although our results point to a greater cross-national heterogeneity in mens than in womens responses to the housework question in the SHARE, a general finding is that about half of the between-country variance in the division of housework is due to cross-country differences in couples characteristics. Still, we find a significant effect of macrolevel gender inequalities on couples division of housework. Even when controlling for individual characteristics of the household, couples living in countries with higher scores of GEM are more likely to exhibit an equal sharing of household labor (see Figure 1). Discussing the mechanisms through which gender empowerment may work, Batalova and Cohen (2002) suggest that norms about the division of labor may . . . be affected by womens visibility in positions of public authority and prestige (p. 753). This points to
415
the role of broader cultural mechanisms in shaping cross-national variations in the division of household laborand although the GEM accounts for a major share of the between-country variance in the distribution of housework, our analysis still points to the presence of (statistically) significant, unobserved macrolevel heterogeneity. Bianchi et al. (2000) conclude that much of the increase in mens share of housework observed in younger U.S. cohorts is because of their increased willingness to perform this labor, which is likely to have resulted from
changed attitudes about what is expected, reasonable, and fair for men to contribute to the maintenance of their home [. . . as well as from . . .] cultural change in ideas about womens work. It is likely more acceptable for men to cook and clean, indeed, welcomed, for men to show competence at making a home-cooked meal, for example. (p. 219)
Such intertemporal cultural changes are visible as cross-cultural differences in our investigation.7 This study has some limitations that call for further research. First and foremost, the current SHARE data allow only a cross-sectional view. That is, we cannot observe actual changes in housework after retirement. Our rough cross-sectional evidence as well as previous U.S. research suggests that such changes tend to be small. However, the magnitude of these changes is likely not only to increase in the future (when new generations of more highly educated women will enter retirement), but also to vary across national contexts. Exploiting such intertemporal and intercountry variations should be a promising field for future research. Second, compared to the ISSP, for example, the sample of countries currently represented in the SHARE is relatively small. In particular, former Socialist societies are yet missing. Future studies of the division of housework among older couples should not only aim at an extension of the spatial and time dimensions of their analyses, though. They should, third, also try at the microlevel to account for complementary productive activities of elders inside and outside their own homes (see Hook, 2004) and at the macrolevel to include indicators that allow development of a better grasp of the cultural factors contributing to the persistence of the gendered division of (household) labor.8 Although some suggestions in this latter regard have already been put forward (such as national cohabitation rates, used by Batalova & Cohen, 2002), much more systematic work needs still to be done.
Appendix
416 Model 3: Male SE .0054 .0165 .0143 .0436 .0109 .0311 .0138 .0238 .0113 .0300 .0203 .0690 .0005 .0007 .0077 .0088 .0098 .0096 .0096 .2031** .1119** .0014 .0683 .0241** .0053 .0501* .0231 .0644** .0021 .0411 .0635 .0019** .0004 .0163* .0192* .0163 .0121 .0137 .2317** .1236** .0082 .0777 .0265* .0215 .0457** .0250 .0591** .0282 .0678** .0155 .0027** .0007 .0138 .0131 .0094 .0065 .0015 Model 3: Female SE .0083 .0251 .0127 .0390 .0102 .0288 .0142 .0241 .0120 .0317 .0237 .0786 .0006 .0007 .0081 .0092 .0102 .0100 .0100
Determinants of Couples Division of Housework: Results of Hierarchical Linear Models, With Separate Estimations for Male and Female Respondents
Intercept GEM Male income < female incomea GEM Male income > female incomea GEM Male in labor forceb GEM Female in labor forceb GEM Unmarried couple GEM Couples mean age Malefemale age difference Male, high educational degree Female, high educational degree Household income, 1st quintile Household income, 2nd quintile Household income, 4th quintile
Household income, 5th quintile Male retired from labor forceb Female retired from labor forceb Number of children Male cares for grandchildren Female cares for grandchildren Male limited by health problems Female limited by health problems Variance components Intercept Male income < female income Male income > female income Male in labor force Female in labor force Unmarried couple Level 1 .0018** .0005 .0005 .0002 .0004 .0013 .0337 .0005** .0001 .0004 .0002 .0004 .0024 .0369
.0100 .0117 .0266** .0091** .0104 .0180 .0057 .0179** .0099 .0137 .0085 .0024 .0100 .0096 .0065 .0064 .0104 .0142 .0091 .0025 .0104 .0100 .0068 .0066
.0091 .0175 .0217* .0129** .0145 .0139 .0054 .0094
Note: GEM = United Nations gender empowerment measure. a. Reference category: male income = female income. b. Reference category: males (females, respectively) who are neither employed nor retired. significant at 10%. *significant at 5%. **significant at 1%. Source: SHARE 2004 (Release 1), authors calculations.
417
418
Notes
1. For details on survey participation, item nonresponse, and imputations in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), see de Luca and Peracchi (2005) and Kalwij and van Soest (2005). 2. In 95 percent of our observations, both partners chose the same or a neighboring answer category. Values indicating that the male partner does the main share or even all of the housework are observed for less than 2 percent of our sample. 3. Missing values are a particular concern in the case of income variables. In our study we use imputed information about income provided from the data by the SHARE group. See Brugiavini, Croda, Paccagnella, Rainato, and Weber (2005) for a detailed description of the applied imputation procedures. 4. The proportion of older French couples with an equal division of household labor (as estimated from the SHARE data) is 16 percent, that is, slightly above the average of the nine countries included in our full analysis. 5. To ease the interpretation of the size effect of the United Nations gender empowerment measure, we rescaled the values published by the UN so that the country in our sample with the lowest score has value zero and the country with the highest score has value one. 6. The coefficients of the variables for participation in the labor force and retirement are significantly different from each other (both for males and for females). Although this provides some indication for postretirement changes in the division of household labor, these changes are obviously too small to affect the basic distribution of work between men and women. 7. A closely related issue concerns cross-national variations in equity points. An unequal (i.e., not 5050) distribution of household labor need not necessarily be perceived as unfair. However, only since the 1990s has research begun to isolate conditions associated with labeling divisions of housework as fair or unfair (Coltrane, 2000). Recent work by Davis (2004) not only reveals cross-national differences in womens average perceptions of fairness of the division of household labor, but also shows that these differences are affected by a countrys political and economic history as well as by womens overall empowerment. 8. This is not to say that economic factors contributing to greater gender material equality would be irrelevant (cf. Breen & Cooke, 2005).
References
Batalova, J. A., & Cohen, P. N. (2002). Premarital cohabitation and housework: Couples in cross-national perspective. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 743-755. Baxter, J. (1997). Gender equality and participation in housework: A cross-national perspective. Comparative Family Studies, 28, 220-248. Becker, G. S. (1981). A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bianchi, S. M., Milkie, M. A., Sayer, L. C., & Robinson, J. P. (2000). Is anyone doing the housework? Trends in the gender division of household labor. Social Forces, 79, 191-228. Bittman, M., England, P., Sayer, L., Folbre, N., & Matheson, G. (2003). When does gender trump money? Bargaining and time in household work. American Journal of Sociology, 109, 186-214. Blumberg, R. L. (1984). A general theory of gender stratification. Sociological Theory, 2, 23-101. Brsch-Supan, A., Brugiavini, A., Jrges, H., Mackenbach, J., Siegrist, J., & Weber, G. (Eds.). (2005). Health, ageing and retirement in EuropeFirst results from the Survey of Health,
419
Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Mannheim, Germany: Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging. Available at http://www.share-project.org. Brsch-Supan, A., & Jrges, J. (Eds.). (2005). The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in EuropeMethodology. Mannheim, Germany: Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Ageing. Available at http://www.share-project.org. Breen, R., & Cooke, L. P. (2005). The persistence of the gendered division of domestic labour. European Sociological Review, 21, 43-57. Brines, J. (1993). The exchange value of housework. Rationality and Society, 5, 302-340. Brugiavini, A., Croda, E., Paccagnella, O., Rainato, R., & Weber, G. (2005). Generated income variables in SHARE Release 1. In A. Brsch-Supan & H. Jrges (Eds.), The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in EuropeMethodology (pp. 105-113). Mannheim, Germany: Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging. Bryk, A. S., & Raudenbush, S. W. (1992). Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods. Newbury Park: Sage. Caro, F. G., & Bass, S. A. (1995). Increasing volunteering among older people. In S. A. Bass (Ed.), Older and active: How Americans over 55 are contributing to society. New Haven: Yale University Press, 71-96. Chang, M. L. (2000). The evolution of sex segregation regimes. American Journal of Sociology, 105, 1658-1701. Coltrane, S. (2000). Research on household labor: Modeling and measuring the social embeddedness of routine family work. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 1208-1233. Coverman, S. (1985). Explaining husbands participation in domestic labor. Sociological Quarterly, 26, 81-97. Croda, E., & Gonzalez-Chapela, J. (2005). How do European older adults use their time? In A. Brsch-Supan, A. Brugiavini, H. Jrges, J. Mackenbach, J. Siegrist, & G. Weber (Eds.), Health, ageing and retirement in EuropeFirst results from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (pp. 265-271). Mannheim, Germany: Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging. Cunningham, M. (2005). Gender in cohabitation and marriage: The influence of gender ideology on housework allocation over the life course. Journal of Family Issues, 26, 1037-1061. Davis, S. N. (2004). Is justice contextual? A cross-national analysis of womens perceptions of fairness of the division of household labor. Unpublished manuscript, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Davis, S. N., & Greenstein, T. N. (2004). Cross-national variations in the division of household labor. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66, 1260-1271. de Luca, G., & Peracchi, F. (2005). Survey participation in the first wave of SHARE. In A. Brsch-Supan & H. Jrges (Eds.), The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in EuropeMethodology (pp. 88-104). Mannheim, Germany: Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging. de Ruijter, E., Treas, J. K., & Cohen, P. N. (2005). Outsourcing the gender factory: Living arrangements and service expenditures on female and male tasks. Social Forces, 84, 305-322. Dorfman, L. T. (1992). Couples in retirement. Division of household work. In M. Szinovacz, D. J. Ekerdt, & B. H. Vinick (Eds.), Families and retirement: Conceptual and methodological issues. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 159-173. Elder, L. (2004). Why women dont run: Explaining womens underrepresentation in Americas political institutions. Women & Politics, 26, 27-56. Erlinghagen, M., & Hank, K. (2006). Participation of older Europeans in volunteer work. Ageing & Society, 26, 567-584.
420
Fuwa, M. (2004). Macro-level gender inequality and the division of household labor in 22 countries. American Sociological Review, 69, 751-767. Gauthier, A., & Smeeding, T. (2003). Time use at older ages: Cross-national differences. Research on Aging, 25, 247-274. Geist, C. (2005). The welfare state and the home: Regime differences in the domestic division of labour. European Sociological Review, 21, 23-41. Greenstein, T. N. (1996). Husbands participation in domestic labor: Interactive effects of wives and husbands gender ideologies. Journal of Marriage and Family, 58, 585-595. Greenstein, T. N. (2000). Economic dependence, gender, and the division of labor in the home: A replication and extension. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 322-335. Hayslip, B., & Kaminski, P. L. (2005). Grandparents raising their grandchildren: A review of the literature and suggestions for practice. The Gerontologist, 45, 262-269. Herzog, A. R., & Morgan, J. N. (1992). Age and gender differences in the value of productive activities. Research on Aging, 14, 169-198. Hook, J. L. (2004). Reconsidering the division of household labor: Incorporating volunteer work and informal support. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66, 101-117. Huber, J. (1990). Macro-micro links in gender stratification. American Sociological Review, 55, 1-10. Jacobs, J. A. (1996). Gender inequality in higher education. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 153-185. Kalwij, A., & van Soest, A. (2005). Item non-response and alternative imputation procedures. In A. Brsch-Supan & H. Jrges (Eds.), The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in EuropeMethodology (pp. 128-150). Mannheim, Germany: Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging. Kamo, Y. (2000). He said, she said: Assessing discrepancies in husbands and wives reports on the division of household labor. Social Science Research, 29, 459-476. Lee, Y.-S., & Waite, L. J. (2005). Husbands and wives time spent on housework: A comparison of measures. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 328-336. Mason, K. O. (1997). Gender and demographic change: What do we know? In G. W. Jones, R. M. Douglas, J. C Caldwell, & R. M. DSouza (Eds.), The continuing demographic transition (pp. 158-182). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Morrow-Howell, N., Hinterlong, J., & Sherraden, M. (Eds.). (2001). Productive aging: A conceptual framework. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. OReilly, P., & Caro, F. G. (1994). Productive aging: An overview of the literature. Journal of Aging and Social Policy, 6, 39-71. Orloff, A. (1996). Gender in the welfare state. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 51-78. Pebley, A. R., & Rudkin, L. L. (1999). Grandparents caring for grandchildren: What do we know? Journal of Family Issues, 20, 218-242. Sanchez, L. (1993). Womens power and the gendered division of domestic labor in the third world. Gender & Society, 7, 434-459. Sanchez, L. (1994). Material resources, family structure resources, and husbands housework participation: A cross-national comparison. Journal of Family Issues, 15, 379-402. Sarkisian, N., & Gerstel, N. (2004). Explaining the gender gap in help to parents: The importance of employment. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66, 431-451. Shelton, B. A., & John, D. (1996). The division of household labor. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 299-322. Solomon, C. R., Acock, A. C., & Walker, A. J. (2004). Gender ideology and investment in housework: Postretirement change. Journal of Family Issues, 25, 1050-1071.
421
South, S. J., & Spitze, G. (1994). Housework in marital and nonmarital households. American Sociological Review, 59, 327-347. Stier, H., & Lewin-Epstein, N. (2005, May). Policy effects on the division of housework. Paper presented at the spring meeting of the ISA Research Committee 28, Oslo, Norway. Stoller, E. P., & Cutler, S. J. (1993). Predictors of use of paid help among older people living in the community. The Gerontologist, 33, 31-40. Sundstrm, M., & Duvander, A.-Z. (2002). Gender division of child care and the sharing of parental leave among new parents in Sweden. European Sociological Review, 18, 433-447. Szinovacz, M. E. (2000). Changes in housework after retirement: A panel analysis. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 78-92. Teachman, J. D., & Crowder, K. D. (2002). Multilevel models in family research: Some conceptual and methodological issues. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 280-294. Thompson, L., & Walker, A. J. (1989). Gender in families: Women and men in marriage, work, and parenthood. Journal of Marriage and Family, 51, 845-871. United Nations Development Program (UNDP). (2004). Human development report. New York: UNDP.

Gender and The Division of Household Labor in Older Couples

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Gender and The Division of Household Labor in Older Couples

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Journalhttp://jfi.sagepub.

com/ Issues of Family

>> Version of Record - Feb 20, 2007 What is This?

Downloaded from jfi.sagepub.com by maria monalisa on October 15, 2012