Whose Gender Ideology Matters? : A Dyadic Analysis of Gender Ideology and Housework Time in the United Kingdom

Wang, Senhu and Hu, Yang (2024) Whose Gender Ideology Matters? : A Dyadic Analysis of Gender Ideology and Housework Time in the United Kingdom. European Societies. ISSN 1461-6696 (In Press)

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Abstract

Research on gender ideology and housework tends to treat gender ideology as an individual characteristic but has paid less attention to the interactional process in which both spouses’ gender ideologies jointly shape their housework time. Analysing longitudinal dyadic data from the United Kingdom (1993–2020) using the actor-partner interdependence model, we examine the relationship between both spouses’ gender ideologies and their housework time and how the relationship varies with the spouses’ relative income. The results show that traditional gender ideology is associated with longer housework time for wives but shorter housework time for husbands. While wives’ gender ideologies are more closely associated with their own housework time, husbands’ ideologies are more closely associated with their wives’ housework time. Moreover, compared with the husband’s housework time, the wife’s housework time is more susceptible to both spouses’ ideologies, especially when both spouses align in traditional ideology and when the husband’s relative income is high. Our findings highlight the value of a relational perspective and provide new insights into how interactional dimensions of gender ideology intersect with relative resources to shape spouses’ gendered housework time in different-sex couples.