Gender equality for whom? : the changing college education gradients of the division of paid work and housework among US couples, 1968–2019

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dc.contributor.authorPESSIN, Léa
dc.date.accessioned2025-05-14T09:31:38Z
dc.date.available2025-05-14T09:31:38Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.descriptionPublished: 26 February 2024
dc.description.abstractIn response to women’s changing roles in labor markets, couples have adopted varied strategies to reconcile career and family needs. Yet, most studies on the gendered division of labor focus almost exclusively on changes either in work or family domain. Doing so neglects the process through which couples negotiate and contest traditional work and family responsibilities. Studies that do examine these tradeoffs have highlighted how work–family strategies range far beyond simple traditional-egalitarian dichotomies but are limited to specific points in time or population subgroups. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and latent-class analysis, this article provides the first population-based estimates of the couple-level tradeoffs inherent in work–family strategies in the United States, documents trends in the share of couples who fall into each of these strategies, and considers social stratification by gender and college education in these trends. Specifically, I identify seven distinct work–family strategies (traditional, neotraditional, her-second-shift, egalitarian, his-second-shift, female-breadwinner, and neither-full-time couples). Egalitarian couples experienced the fastest increase in prevalence among college-educated couples, whereas couples that lacked two full-time earners increased among less-educated couples. Still, about a quarter of all couples adopted “her-second-shift” strategies, with no variation across time, making it the modal work–family strategy among dual-earner couples. The long-run, couple-level results support the view that the gender revolution has stalled and suggest that this stall may be caused partly by strong traditional gender preferences, whereas structural resources appear to facilitate gender equality among a selected few.
dc.identifier.citationSocial forces, 2024, Vol. 103, No. 1, pp. 129-152
dc.identifier.doi10.1093/sf/soae028
dc.identifier.endpage152
dc.identifier.issn0037-7732
dc.identifier.issn1534-7605
dc.identifier.issue1
dc.identifier.startpage129
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/92639
dc.identifier.volume103
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherOxford University Press
dc.relation.ispartofSocial forces
dc.subjectGender
dc.subjectHousework
dc.subjectInequality
dc.subjectCollege education
dc.subjectWork–family
dc.titleGender equality for whom? : the changing college education gradients of the division of paid work and housework among US couples, 1968–2019
dc.typeArticle
dspace.entity.typePublication
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-1665-2527
person.identifier.other56141
relation.isAuthorOfPublicationd99edb36-de5d-4776-b681-5a7c5444699d
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscoveryd99edb36-de5d-4776-b681-5a7c5444699d
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