Division of housework within couples in Spain: consequences of educational differences and women’s gender-egalitarian beliefs

Abstract

Women in Spain are normally equally or more educated than their male partners. However, the gendered division of housework and paid work remains one of the most traditional ones in Europe. Using the 2018 Fertility Survey, I studied how the division of domestic work is affected by women’s egalitarian attitudes and partners’ relative incomes, and explored the effects of spouses’ educational differences, looking at nine possible couple compositions. Two theories of housework division were contrasted: relative resources and doing gender. The results provided little support for the former and wide evidence of the latter. After controlling for relative work and relative wages (among others), only highly educated women do less housework. Nevertheless, it only happens when they are coupled with men that are not low educated. The results suggest that there is more equity if women with upper secondary education also have highly educated partners, but the association is not clear. Simultaneously, men increase their housework contribution if they earn more or the same as women, but not when women are the main earners. No influence of gender-egalitarian attitudes was found. These results contribute to understanding the consequences of educational differences between partners and is the first one to study the effects of gender-egalitarian attitudes on housework division in Spain. Significant limitations must be considered, namely, because of the use of a subjective indicator. The results are best interpreted as pointers for future analyses with time use surveys.

Keywords

• domestic work
• gender equality
• unpaid work
• doing gender
• household specialization
• educational differences