Perceived fairness and conflicts about home tasks in a gender-equal discourse: a typology of Swedish couples

Eva Bernhardt, Stockholm University
Maria Brandén, Stockholm University
Leah Ruppanner, University of Melbourne

An unequal division of housework is a crucial component of the continued existence of gender stratification. We intend to contribute to the growing area of research on the gendered allocation of housework by a case study of a society where gender equality, both at home and at work, is strongly normative, albeit not always matched by an equally egalitarian situation in the family. This paper explores the relationship between housework sharing, perceived fairness of the division and conflicts about home tasks, as reported by about one thousand couples in the Swedish Young Adult Survey 2009. A high level of conflict is more common among couples where he or she reports an unfair division of housework (she does more). Nevertheless, a substantial minority of these couples indicate that they 'more seldom' or 'never' have conflicts about housework. On the other hand, about one in four among those reporting a fair division say they experience conflicts at least several times a month. We will a apply multinomial logit latent class regression model to identify the couples' (1) latent class membership probabilities, (2) item response probabilities conditional on latent class membership, and (3) logistic regression coefficients for covariates, predicting class membership.