Gender Ideology and Women's Labor Market Transitions Within Couples in the Netherlands

Yassine Khoudja,Fenella Fleischmann

doi:10.1111/jomf.12510

Abstract

ObjectiveThis study examines the role of women's and their partners' gender ideology in shaping women's labor market entries, exits, and changes in hours of employment.BackgroundRecent research argues that women's gender ideology is crucial for understanding women's contemporary labor market participation. However, the role of male partners' gender ideology for partnered women's labor market participation has received less attention.MethodThe analysis uses three waves of a large‐scale household panel survey based on a random sample of individuals within Dutch households. Random‐effect models are applied to study whether women's and their partners' gender ideology are associated with women's labor market transitions and whether relevant household characteristics' associations with women's labor market transitions are conditional on both partners' gender ideology.ResultsWomen's gender ideology is associated with the probability of women's labor market entries and exits, but not with changes in women's hours worked, whereas their male partners' ideology is related only to the probability of women's labor market exits. Furthermore, the negative association of having children with changes in women's hours worked is stronger for traditional compared to egalitarian women. There is no clear evidence that gender ideology moderates the association of the male partner's labor market resources with women's labor market transitions.ConclusionWomen's labor market transitions are not only reactions to economic pressure and institutional constraints but also women's and marginally their partners' gender attitudes.

Highlights

We argue that the degree to which women invest time in child care at the expense of their time in paid employment depends to some degree on their own gender attitudes and those of their partners
As more than half of the Dutch women are active in the labor market, the sample that uses active women as the reference group (n = 2,033) is much larger than the sample that uses women who are inactive as the reference group (n = 748)
We examined whether male partners’ gender ideology affects women’s labor market transitions over and above women’s gender ideology and, whether the gender ideology of both partners moderates the effects of the partner’s labor market resources and of changes in the number of young children in the household

Summary

Objective

This study examines the role of women’s and their partners’ gender ideology in shaping women’s labor market entries, exits, and changes in hours of employment. Renegotiations of couples’ division of paid and domestic work may be sparked by various life course events such as the birth of a child or a change in the household’s income situation (which will both be discussed in more detail later), an aging family member requiring care, children leaving the household, moving to a new city, or one partner retiring while the other is still of working age These (re-)negotiations are more likely to be initiated if attitudes and behavior diverge (among any of the partners), for example, if women have egalitarian (traditional) attitudes but do not (do) participate in the labor market. Our hypothesis is that all of these effects are moderated by gender ideology: The role of children aged younger than 4 in decreasing women’s labor market activity and of children reaching school age in increasing women’s labor market activity should be stronger among couples with more traditional gender attitudes when compared with those with more egalitarian attitudes (Hypothesis 3)

Method

Descriptive Results

Explanatory Results

B RSE B OR B RSE B

Discussion