Does what the man studies affect what he does at home? Field of education and gender division of housework and childcare in Norway, Austria and Poland

Abstract

Using data from the Generations and Gender Survey, this study explores the association between men’s fields of education and the gender division of unpaid work among co-residential heterosexual couples in Norway, Austria and Poland. Fathers’ relative contribution to childcare is higher than it is to domestic work in all three countries, suggesting that men have increasingly become more involved fathers than egalitarian partners. Moreover, the scant contribution to housework is lower for men when they are fathers in Austria and in Poland, not in Norway. Also the impact of the field of education is context-embedded. Although the results are not clear-cut and diverge among countries, men choosing ‘softer’, more nurture-oriented and more female-dominated fields tend to exhibit a more symmetrical division of housework and childcare. These associations persist after controlling for his and her labour-market position, suggesting that field of education captures something more than time availability, cost opportunity and monetary returns. Yet Polish men are those most differentiated by level and field of education. In Poland, gender segregation in education is high, and support for the dual earner-dual carer model is still very low both institutionally and culturally, so that men studying in typically female fields are highly selected.