Analyzing the division of household labor within spanish families

Abstract

Do all women experience a labor "double burden"? Are women responsible for domestic tasks in all households? What explains variation in patterns of distribution of household labor across families? In this article, I approach these questions from the perspective of two opposing theoretical approaches: the New Home Economics framework, and the Social Capital or sociological framework. I test the validity of these two frameworks with data from the Spanish Fertility and Family Survey of 1995. The results point towards the validity of the sociological perspective: those families in which the husbands have medium labor status present more egalitarian patterns of household labor distribution. Additionally, the results confirm the importance of attitudinal variables such as religiosity to explain domestic labor division patterns: women with more traditional values experience a more severe double burden.