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Purpose. This chapter explored the effects of egalitarian gender attitudes and routine housework on subjective well-being among older adults in China.

Design/methodology/approach. Data were drawn from the Third Wave Survey on the Social Status of Women in China (2010). The sample included 1,260 older adults aged 63–95, consisted of 428 urban respondents and 832 rural respondents, among which included 638 men and 622 women. Stratified linear regression models were used to examine the effects of egalitarian gender attitudes and routine housework on subjective well-being among urban–rural and gender subsamples.

Findings. The results indicated that egalitarian gender attitudes were positively related to subjective well-being. Routine housework was still gendered work in both urban and rural places in China. Routine housework predicted better subjective well-being only among rural women. There were significant differences in egalitarian gender attitudes and the division of housework between urban and rural samples.

Originality/value. Gender egalitarian attitudes and the division of housework in China were patterned not only by genders but also by the urban–rural division. Different from previous studies, housework did not have influence on subjective well-beings, except a positive association among rural women in the sample.

Past research has established a relationship between the perceptions of fairness in the division of household labor and relationship satisfaction. Varying according to gender and time, this relationship has been found with differing outcomes, including relationship satisfaction, relationship happiness, divorce, and sexual frequency. Although this relationship has been well studied, little research has focused on how this relationship is moderated by relationship status. According to the Second Demographic Transition Theory (SDT), as societies become more “modern,” cohabitation will become more prevalent, eventually becoming socially and culturally equivalent to marriage. As such, it is vital to ask how cohabitation and marriage differ, or if they differ at all. Therefore, this gap is explored by asking, “How do perceptions of the division of household labor affect married and cohabitating heterosexual couples’ relationship happiness and chance of separation?” In order to answer this question, the National Survey of Families and Households (Wave III) is analyzed, with outcomes focusing on relationship happiness and chance of separation. Results indicate that when married and cohabitating individuals experience similar levels of happiness with their partner’s housework, they also experience similar levels of relationship happiness and chance of separation, with relationship status not affecting the impact happiness with partner’s housework has on these relationship outcomes. This suggests that cohabitation and marriage may continue to become more similar overall.

Relationships have changed dramatically in the last 50 years. Fewer couples are marrying, more are cohabiting. Reasons for this shift include more attractive labor market opportunities for women and changing social norms, but the shift may have consequences of its own. A number of models predict that those cohabiting will specialize less than those marrying. Panel data on time use – particularly housework time – as well as on the degree of specialization in more narrowly defined household tasks from the 2001–2019 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey are used to test this prediction.

The time use data for men provides only limited supporting evidence for specialization. The results for women are much stronger. Women who marry without first cohabiting increase their reported housework time more than those who enter cohabitations (by 3.7 hours versus 1.2 hours). The latter generally make up a third of the difference if they do marry. Expanding the analysis to other uses of time yields some further evidence of specialization.

Survey responses on the degree of specialization are more informative. The raw data show substantial intrahousehold specialization and further analysis reveals that on average married couples specialize more than cohabiting couples. Adding couple-specific fixed effects reveals that specialization increases when cohabiting couples marry. Interestingly, there does not appear to be a substantial tradeoff between tasks; partners who report specializing more on one task are more likely to report specializing on other tasks as well. Given the important roles couples have in family formation and the labor market, it is important to understand this intrahousehold behavior.

Time pressures in paid work and household labor have intensified in recent decades because of the increase in dual-earner families and long and nonstandard employment hours. This analysis uses U.S. time-diary data from 1998 to 2000 to investigate the association of employment and household multitasking. Results indicate that mothers do more multitasking than fathers and the gender gap in household labor is largest for the most intense type of multitasking: combining housework and child care. In addition, mothers employed for long hours spend more time multitasking than mothers employed 35–40h per week. It appears that motivations for multitasking are heterogeneous: some multitasking is done out of convenience, whereas other multitaskings are a strategy used to manage too much work in too little time.

Purpose – The current literature of housework division consistently finds positive consequences of an equitable division of housework (particularly for working women). This study looks to more fully explore the characteristics that predict an egalitarian division of housework.

Methodology – This study integrates three theoretical perspectives – relative resource theory, life course theory, and gender studies – and uses data from a nationally representative data set to investigate couples who divide household labor more evenly and compares them to more traditional couples where the woman performs most of the housework using multivariate and logistic regression.

Findings – This study finds that the more resources a spouse possesses, the more likely that spouse is to engage in housework equitably. From a life course perspective, findings show that the longer a woman waits to marry, the more likely she is to have an egalitarian marriage; and length of marriage is a positive predictor of an inegalitarian marriage. Stronger than any other factor in predicting an egalitarian relationship are men's and women's progressive gender ideologies.

Originality of paper – Past research on the division of housework has focused on how chores are sex-typed and divided between men and women, but little investigation has focused on those couples who practice a more egalitarian housework division. This study uniquely finds a clear and irrefutable link between progressive ideologies and egalitarianism, as well as a link between conservative ideologies and “inegalitarianism.”

Over the last several decades, as women have increasingly entered the labor force, they are spending less time at home (Bianchi, 1995; Hayghe, 1997). Having a more constrained schedule has resulted in married women and single mothers substantially decreasing the amount of time that they spend on household labor (Bianchi et al., 2000; Robinson & Godbey, 1997). Traditionally, in two-parent households, husbands rarely participated in household tasks. Now that more married women with children are employed outside the home, one might assume that they would turn to their husbands to help them manage their households. However, current research shows that fathers are making only a slightly greater contribution to housework than they did in the past (Gershuny & Robinson, 1988; Robinson & Godbey, 1997). If mothers are now spending fewer hours on housework, and fathers are only contributing slightly more, then there remains a significant proportion of household chores that either must be done by others or must remain undone. Research suggests that children in particular may find themselves responsible for an increasing proportion of household tasks. For example, the more hours mothers work outside the home, the more hours children spend on family work (Benin & Edwards, 1990; Blair, 1992b; Elder & Conger, 2000; Shelton, 1992).

Past studies on housework and marital studies seldom considered the possible endogeneity between these two factors. This chapter analyses data of the Women’s Status Survey 2010 to investigate the association between satisfaction with family status and housework participation in dual-earner married couples in China. The authors examine the association by ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models and structural equation models (SEM), taking into account of time constraints, economic resources and other demographic characteristics. Results suggest that both men and women are less satisfied with their family status if they share more housework than their partners, after controlling for household income, relative economic contribution, educational qualifications and other factors. Moreover, relative housework contribution is associated more consistently and significantly with satisfaction with family status than absolute housework time. In SEM, the authors include a correlated error term between housework time and satisfaction in the models to take endogeneity between these factors into account. For both urban men and women, relative contribution of housework, but not absolute time of housework, is still negatively associated with family status satisfaction.

If husbands do more housework, would it improve fertility intentions in Taiwan? Using the Taiwan Panel Study of Family Dynamics, the authors examine the association between heterosexual husbands’ housework participation on their own and wives’ fertility intentions, according to the expectations of the post-transitional (occurring after the Second Demographic Transition) reversal in fertility rates and the gender revolution framework. This analysis shows that the effects are evident among Taiwanese heterosexual women but not men, who appear to lag behind on the gender revolution. Overall results show that more involvement in housework from husbands increases the fertility intentions among wives but does not increase their own fertility intentions.

Aims to provide new evidence about gender differentials in domestic work time, market work time and total work time, that updates the evidence provided by Jenkins and O'Leary in 1997 and Layte in 1999 using UK time‐budget surveys.

Investigates gender differentials in work times using the British Household Panel survey (BHPS). The BHPS is a nationally representative longitudinal data set consisting of some 5,500 households (and 10,000 individuals) first interviewed in the autumn of 1991 and followed and re‐interviewed every year subsequently.

The picture that emerges from the BHPS data is a rather “traditional” and well‐known one. On average, women (be them married or single) work more at home and less in the labour market than men. The comforting side of this pessimistic conclusion, is that the trends in domestic and paid work time over the 1990s show a narrowing in the gender differentials, thanks mainly to the changing behaviour of women and not of men.

An important message that seems to emerge is that women are far more flexible than men. That is, men hardly react or change their behaviour in front of (certain) situations that clearly affect women's time allocation decisions (e.g. presence of children, cohort effects). Finally, the paper identifies and characterises the men who do better at home in relative terms: the “new” men.