Gender gap in housework time: how much do individual resources actually matter?

Abstract

Using data from the 2003–2019 American Time Use Survey Extract (ATUS-X), we analyze the gender gap among heterosexual married Americans of working age in four categories of housework: cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, and home maintenance. The results show that in the division of housework, the explanatory power of resource factors increased over time. Still, less than a half of the gender gap in housework time could be explained by the gender differences in resources. Thus, despite the recent developments in housework research, a considerable part of the gender gap in housework remains unexplained. The explanatory power of resource-based models increased unevenly over the analyzed years. It strengthened in more traditionally ‘feminine’ tasks, such as cooking and cleaning, but not in grocery shopping or home maintenance. The results highlight the limits of the resource-based (and generally individual-level) theories and the pervasiveness of gender inequality in housework.

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