Fairness and Housework: A Cross-National Comparison*

INTRODUCTIONThe division of household labor is a source of dissatisfaction in many marriages (Glass & Fujimoto 1994; Rosenfield 1992). If household arrangements are viewed as inequitable, wives report lower levels of marital and personal happiness (Pina & Bengtson 1993), increased marital discord (Rogers & Amato 2000) and higher rates of depression (Bird 1999). As women begin to allocate more time to labor force participation, they come to expect more spousal involvement in household labor than they are currently receiving (Pyke & Coltrane 1996). However, women, including those in dual-earner households, perform twice-as-much housework as do men (Baxter 1997; Bianchi et al., 2000; Bird 1999). Although most couples have an unequal division of labor, few women perceive this inequality as unfair (Bianchi et al., 2000; DeMaris & Longmore 1996; Lennon & Rosenfield 1994). Research has focused on this paradox for women living in countries with high female labor force participation rates (Baxter 2000; DeMaris & Longmore 1996; Lennon & Rosenfield 1994; Nordenmark & Nyman 2003 ; Sanchez 1 994). Little is known about fairness and housework in low female labor force countries where women are more likely to be financially dependent on their husbands and thus expect husbands to participate less in household chores (Lennon & Rosenfield 1994; Sanchez & Thomson 1997); more dependent wives report greater fairness (Lennon & Rosenfield 1994). Thus, including both high and low female labor force participation countries provides an important comparison.This paper examines perceptions of fairness on the division of household labor for married women living in three countries - Sweden, the Netherlands, and Hungary - where women's disproportionate involvement in housework has been documented (Nordenmark & Nyman 2003; Panayotova & Brayfield 1997; van der Lippe 1994). Sweden is a country with high female labor force participation rates (Spain & Bianchi 1996) and strong governmental support for managing conflicts between work and family with generous parental leave and child care policies (Evertsson & Nermo 2004). Lacking policies to reconcile work and family, The Netherlands is a conservative welfare state that is considered a "part-time society" because of its high rates of part-time employment (Treas & Widmer 2000) . Despite a socialist legacy of female employment, Hungary remains a conservative society regarding gender roles (Haller & Hoellinger 1994) and has been identified as a "motherhood centered" society based on attitudes favoring mothers to stay home with pre-school aged children (Treas & Widmer 2000). These three countries also vary in their overall levels of societal gender equality with Sweden and the Netherlands being high and Hungary being low (UNDP 2002). These three countries were chosen strategically on the basis of their differing patterns of female labor force participation and gender equality, two contextual variables argued to be important for judgments of fairness of domestic arrangements.This study is distinct in two important ways. First, most previous research examines wives' perceptions of fairness in a single country applying one theoretical approach; this study tests two theoretical approaches to fairness, the distributive justice and relative resources perspectives, in three country contexts. Second, while previous studies have applied these theoretical approaches to countries with high female labor force participation, namely Sweden (Nordenmark & Nyman 2003) and the United States (DeMaris & Longmore 1996; Lennon & Rosenfield 1994), little is known about how these theoretical models apply to countries with lower female labor force participation rates where women lack the work-family time pressures that may generate dissatisfaction with husbands' contributions to household work. To test the theoretical models in countries with varying levels of female labor force participation and gender equality, this paper considers Sweden, the Netherlands and Hungary, three countries with different female labor force regimes and varying levels of societal gender equality. …