Disagreement about Division of Household Labour and Experiences of Work-Family Conflict in Different Gender Regimes

Abstract

This article focuses on the level of disagreement about how to divide household labour as well as on the experience of work-family conflicts among cohabiting women and men living in different gender regimes. The German speaking countries Germany, Switzerland and Austria represent a typical conservative gender regime while the Scandinavian countries Sweden, Denmark and Norway are representatives of a typical egalitarian gender regime. The data used comes from the International Social Survey Program 2002. Results support the notion that people living in a context characterised by an egalitarian gender regime to a higher extent report disagreement about the division of household work and work-family conflict than people living in a context characterised by a more traditional gender regime. The results indicate that these differences can be explained by the fact that people in an egalitarian gender regime have a more egalitarian gender ideology than people in a more conservative context.