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The current study aims to examine couples' conjoint negotiation with a third party, testing the effects of asymmetrical contextual ambiguity, gender stereotypes' priming and egalitarianism. It predicted differences in the processes of decision making between egalitarian and traditional couples, reflected in choices of female or male negotiator.

Egalitarianism levels were measured by the Altrocchi and Crosby Marriage Questionnaire. The asymmetrical contextual ambiguity was manipulated through two newly constructed negotiation cases – one feminine‐stereotyped and the other masculine‐stereotyped, based on Miles and LaSalle. Priming of gender stereotypes was manipulated using two passages inducing explicit or implicit priming, based on Kray, Galinsky and Thompson. Primary statistical analysis was χ² test for equal proportions.

The hypotheses were by and large supported: as expected in all four experimental conditions, traditional couples chose men as their negotiator. By contrast, egalitarian couples tended to nominate their negotiator depending on the situation (feminine, masculine, and under implicit priming). In addition, under explicit priming their selection was in the predicted direction but not significant.

This study provides insights with respect to effective ways to conduct conjoint negotiations. In addition, it indicates the need to enhance women's negotiation self‐efficacy, so that they can become more active in negotiation processes.

The current study explored real‐life couples' conjoint negotiation with a third party, rather than examining couples' internal negotiation processes or individuals' dyadic negotiation, which prevailed in extant research. Future research should adopt the focus on genuine couples' conjoint negotiation, employed in this study.

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.”

During the transition to parenthood, the gender division of paid and unpaid work undergoes a profound redefinition in response to both attitudes and resources. These attitudes may be concordant or discordant between two partners, they may or may not clash with perceived financial or labour market constraints, and they may or may not provoke explicit conflicts and negotiations. In this study, by combining quantitative and qualitative data, we focus on Italian couples with young children or in transition to first child, and we explore what happens when partners have discordant views. The findings show that the division of domestic and care work seems more resistant to change and more responsive to the husband’s attitudes than does the division of paid work, as the latter is mainly driven by the woman’s education and attitudes. The findings also show that very few couples overtly disagree. If they do so, the main issue in dispute is the allocation of domestic work and the main solution consists more in hiring external help than in obtaining the husband’s greater participation. Compared with domestic work, the allocation of care is a less disputed and more flexible issue: when women start negotiations on a more equal sharing, men are more willing to increase their participation. However, when a more equal sharing is not attained, couples’ narratives tend to give the “cause” to the constraints of the man (typically his work) than of the woman, while they point at a redefinition (for the best of the family) of her rather than his preferences.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of a couple‐level shared identity as forming the basis for the development of dual‐career couples' strategies regarding involvement in work and family roles. A model is developed that is intended to help researchers in this area conceptualize the relationship between career choices and career progression between members of a dual career couple. Examining career development at the couple‐level extends one's understanding of how the decisions made by one member of the dyad influence the career of the other.

In order to develop this model, the theories of cognitive interdependence and gender role ideology are examined and applied to the formation of a shared identity.

Development of the model, as well as a review of the extant literature, revealed that career decisions in dual career couples are made at the level of the dyad.

The findings demonstrate that organizations cannot view their employees in isolation, but that important transitions such as relocation, and taking on more responsibility are decisions that increasingly are made at the couple level. Employers may need to consider the dyad when offering career advancement opportunities and when implementing work‐life balance programs.

The career progression of one member has implications for the other. Therefore, it is insufficient for an individual to have a career in isolation when the individual is part of a dual career couple. Examination of career at the dyad level will advance one's knowledge of how careers unfold.

This paper aims to investigate the idiosyncratic relationships between work and nonwork among dual-career professional couples (DCPCs) intentionally without children, considering individual members' role salience, nonwork responsibilities and care or career orientation.

Interview data from 21 Canadian and American couples (42 individuals) was used to explore the research question: How do DCPCs without children perceive their work-nonwork balance?

DCPCs without children are a heterogenous demographic. Some couples are career oriented, some care oriented, some exhibit both orientations, shaping their experience of work-nonwork balance. Unlike popular stereotypes, they do have nonwork responsibilities and interests outside of their thriving careers. Similar to their counterparts with children, they face conflicts managing work and nonwork domains.

Based on theories of role salience, work-nonwork conflict, enrichment and balance, the authors suggest that analyses of work-nonwork balance should include nonwork activities other than child caring. The authors further propose that the experience of the work-nonwork interface varies according to whether couples are careerist, conventional, non-conventional or egalitarian. The study also demonstrates that work-nonwork experiences are relational in nature and should be explored beyond a strictly individual perspective.

Work-life balance experiences of dual-career professional couples with children have received considerable attention, but there remains a paucity of research on the definitions of work-life balance among dual-career professional couples without children. This qualitative investigation sheds light on childfree couples' lives outside of work and their concomitant understanding of work-life balance.

The study draws on interviews with 21 dual-career professional couples in Canada and the US, exploring their non-work lives and how they conceive of work-life balance.

Thematic analyses demonstrate that this group, while free of child rearing responsibilities, still deals with myriad non-work obligations. These couples also defy uniform characterization. The inductive investigation uncovered four couple categories based on the individual members' career and care orientations. These included careerist, conventional, non-conventional and egalitarian couples. Definitions of work-life balance varied across couple type according to the value they placed on flexibility, autonomy and control, and their particular level of satisfaction with their work and non-work domains.

This study contributes to research at the intersection of work-life balance and various demographic groups by exploring the work-life balance of professional dual-career couples without children. Using an interpretive ontology, the study advances a typology of childfree dual-career professional couples. The findings challenge the rhetoric that these couples are primarily work-oriented but otherwise carefree. Thus, this study demonstrates ways that childfree couples are different as well as similar to those with children.

This paper aims to utilize a mixed-embeddedness approach to examine how state welfare policies, employment conditions and gender norms shape orientations to divisions of business and domestic labor among Czech copreneurs, i.e. romantic couples involved in businesses together.

Twelve copreneur couples were interviewed; male and female partners were interviewed separately. Women’s narratives are centered in analyzing motivations for business, divisions of labor, orientation to business/family and state policies. After detailing women’s orientations, correspondence with male partner orientations is considered.

Analysis reveals how state policies, employment conditions and gender norms inform copreneur narratives about business and family life in the Czech Republic. Female respondents expressed three orientations: business as opportunity, business for family and business/home as teamwork. Women tended both business and family, whereas most male partners focused exclusively on business.

Although the small, purposive sample was not representative of all Czech copreneurs, findings detail how social context frames business/family dynamics.

This mixed-embeddedness perspective demonstrates how gender norms, state taxation and welfare shape the organization of Czech copreneurships and can support or discourage women’s entrepreneurship.

Mechanisms producing gender inequality in copreneur businesses are revealed.

Findings identify connections between female copreneur business/family orientations and the context of gender regimes, state policy and employment practices in a post-socialist country. Also revealed are changing orientations across family and business stages.

This paper aims to explore how couples reflect gender role–related attitudes in their family formation process and whether these processes could be described through the lens of ambivalence. Using qualitative methods, semi-structured interviews with Estonian married and cohabiting couples were conducted (all together 24 interviewees). Analysis revealed themes of ambivalence toward gender roles among married and cohabiting couples. The present study could be classified as exploratory in identifying ambivalence, with open-ended and emergent analysis.

It is known that Estonians have adopted Western values and their family behavior resembles that of Nordic countries. However, our interviews showed that on the level of the individual, gender role–related attitudes in relationships have remained traditional. The reason for this might lie in the rapid change of values that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Western lifestyle was seen as an ideal, and copied in behavior before the actual family or gender role values could undergo the transformation needed to support egalitarian family values.

Our study reveals that the societal context of a rapid change in values and norms might create confusion and ambivalence in attitudes. Therefore, a high proportion of cohabiting couples might not be the product of egalitarian gender role–related attitudes but a product of ambivalent couple relations where the couple has not discussed thoroughly the vision and expectations they have for each other and their relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the background as well as methodological and epistemological aspects to, and the effects of, a follow‐up study 30 years later of the work‐sharing couples project, which is a Norwegian, experimental research project in the early 1970s. The aim of the project is to promote gender equality and a better work/life balance in families. In this paper the variation in work‐sharing and post work‐sharing trajectories over the life‐course is explored, mainly focusing on the impact of the work‐sharing arrangement on the couples' relations, their work/life balance and the well‐being of participants, the core objectives of the original project.

The original project has a small scale, interventionist design based on couples working part‐time and sharing childcare and housework; effects on family life and gender equality are documented by questionnaires and time diaries. In the follow‐up study, retrospective life‐course couple interviews with the original participants are used.

Revisiting the original project produced new insights into, the subversive and radical use of sex‐role theory in early Norwegian family sociology as an instrument of changing gender relations. In the follow‐up study, the high level of participation and the long duration of the arrangement would seem to qualify for a heightened level of expectation as to the effects of the experiment on the participants' lives. A high proportion of the couples are still married, and the work‐sharing arrangement has been regarded by the majority of participants to have had a positive impact on their marital relation, work/life balance and well‐being.

Insights gained from revisiting this project may prove fruitful when confronting contemporary dilemmas of work/life balance, as well as demographic and environmental challenges.

The original project is unique internationally owing to its theoretically subversive, interventionist design and reformatory ambition. The longitudinal follow‐up of the experiment is also unique in family research, and of great value for researchers into gender equality and the family.

The purpose of this study is to examine how female expatriates mobilise couples’ dual-career coordination strategic choices to achieve their own and their partners’ desired career goals.

This qualitative research is based upon in-depth interviews with 20 dual-career female expatriates working in two case study oil and gas organisations.

Female expatriates use a series of tactics ranging from cooperation in maintaining a dual-career hierarchy, through to coordinating aspects of their own and their partners’ assignments, undertaking compatible industry roles and co-working (working together in the same organisation) to attempt to achieve a greater egalitarian international dual-career strategic outcome.

This case analysis was based on a relatively small sample of female expatriates in heterosexual relationships working in oil and gas exploration. Further research in different sectors, with larger samples, and with male expatriates is also needed.

Employers should minimise periods of separation by focussing on coordinated assignment timings for both partners, facilitate suitable employment for both partners who wish to work abroad, and prioritise securing partner work visas.

The inability to pursue desired dual-careers together while undertaking international assignments can be detrimental to couples’ relationships, potentially leading to unwillingness to expatriate and thereby deliver necessary skills in the host country.

The originality lies in identifying the tactics women use to enact dual-career coordination strategies, including coordinating assignment timings and locations to reduce separation and pursuing compatible roles to achieve egalitarian career and relationship outcomes. While women expected co-working in the same firm to facilitate dual-career mobility, its career outcomes were disappointing.