National Context and Spouses’ Housework in 34 Countries

By focusing on how national context and individual factors affect spouses’ absolute and relative contributions, social scientists are better able to understand couples’ organising and sharing of housework. Previous studies have suggested a linkage between female empowerment and the division of housework; however, documented effects have proven inconsistent. The authors propose that a less pronounced cross-national pattern for relative efforts reflects the fact that national context affect wives’ and husbands’ total involvement in the same direction. A reinterpretation of the ‘discount’ hypothesis is also suggested, relating interaction effects for relative efforts to non-interaction for spouses’ total contributions. Moreover, extending the causal model to include economic development as a macro-level explanatory variable permits a nuanced account of how different aspects of national context affect wives’ and husbands’ housework decisions. Within this extended framework the initially weak female empowerment - relative division linkage appears stronger. Based on a multilevel analysis of recently released data from 34 countries in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), this article, on a wider basis than hitherto possible, jointly analyses spouses’ absolute and relative contributions, and investigates the interplay between macro-level forces and individual-level factors in influencing couples’ domestic labour.