De-gender them! Gendered vs cooperative division of housework – cross-cultural comparison of Polish and Norwegian students

Abstract

Domestic work has gendered meaning and content of both masculinity and femininity is strongly embedded in the cultural context. In our article, across three studies we analyse the perception of household duties and their division between partners in two countries differing with regard to gender equality levels: Norway and Poland. In our Study 1, Polish (N = 64, 40 women, Mage = 19.97) and Norwegian (N = 45, 27 women, Mage = 24.46) students rated the typicality of domestic duties for women and men in Poland and in Norway. Our results show that feminine-typed or masculine-typed household duties are perceived as less gendered in Norway than in Poland. In the second Study, using a sample consisting of students and internet users from Poland (N = 207, 92 women, Mage = 27.15) and Norway (N = 126, 85 women, Mage = 26.84 (SD = 10.87), we investigated whether there are Polish-Norwegian differences with regard to willingness to be more involved in household obligations. Overall, Norwegian men and women were more willing to perform household tasks. This result also found confirmation in results obtained with larger representative samples in Study 3. Using European Social Survey records of 889 Poles (429 women, Mage = 47.02) and 990 Norwegians (452 women, Mage = 49.38) we compared data concerning men’s and women’s perception of their and their partners’ contribution to housework. Our results show that cultural context can relate to the perception of household duties that are perceived more gender-neutral in Norway than in Poland.