Gender Ideology and the Sharing of Housework and Child Care in Sweden

Abstract

We use the Swedish Young Adult Panel Study to study spouses’ gender ideology and women’s and men’s division of routine housework and child care. The results show that men with an egalitarian gender ideology spend 1 hour more in housework per week than do other men and that their spouses spend approximately 2 hours less in housework than do other women. Women’s gender ideology, in contrast, only seems to influence women’s own time spent in housework (and not their spouses’). Couples wherein the woman and/or the man have a strong egalitarian ideology display a more gender-equal division of child care. Equality in child care and housework are linked and men spend more time in housework when they live in a family with a gender-equal division of child care. In sum, an articulated gender consciousness is a prerequisite for a gender-equal division of unpaid work, even in gender-egalitarian Sweden.