Perceived Fairness and Satisfaction with the Division of Housework Among Dual-Earner Couples in Italy

Abstract

A well-documented paradox in family literature is that most married women and men consider the division of household labor to be fair, although its distribution is quite uneven. In this article I report results from a survey on 404 dual-earner couples with young children living in Torino, Italy. A small proportion of wives and husbands (13.6% and 5.7%, respectively) reported both unfairness and dissatisfaction with the division of housework. The absolute majority (55%) of both wives and husbands perceived fairness and satisfaction, even if most of the chores (about two-thirds) fell on wives’ shoulders. To explain these judgments, elements of Thompson's distributive justice theoretical framework were operationalized and tested. A critical reassessment of these elements is provided, based on empirical findings.

KEYWORDS:

• distributive justice
• division of labor
• fairness
• housework

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was mainly funded by Fondazione CRT with a “Progetto Alfieri” grant. An earlier version of this article was presented to the Equalsoc network final conference held in Amsterdam (4–5 June 2010) as well as to other workshops of that research network. I am grateful to Gianluca Manzo for helpful comments on a draft of the manuscript.

Notes

Percentage share of core housework performed shown in parentheses.

Percentage share of core housework performed shown in parentheses.

N = 381.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

N = 388.

⁺ p < .1. *p < .05. **p < .01.

N = 381.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

N = 388.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

N = 381.

⁺ p < .1. *p < .05. **p < .01.

N = 388.

⁺ p < .1. *p < .05. **p < .01.

I use “wife” and “husband” to refer to both married and cohabiting persons.

Kaufmann (1993, cp. 5) also recognized the problematic nature of the difference between her standards and his, acknowledging that a “separation of territories” (i.e., a specialisation in the tasks that one cares more about) is functional to the preservation of harmony.

Indeed, from the time-use survey mentioned in the text, it turns out that women in dual-earner couples living in the South are slightly less satisfied with the division of housework than women living in the North or in the Center.

This choice may have led to some selection bias toward more highly educated people. Telephone directory coverage for the target population is not known for the period in which fieldwork was conducted. Though the most recent estimate (2003, based on data provided by ISTAT) was 95%, it is likely that coverage was lower at the end of 2008.

Because it is unlikely that all unknown refusals were out of target, the true response rate is likely to be higher than 28%.

Micro-data and survey documentation are freely available from the website www.torinosociallab.org. English versions of the questionnaire are available upon request from the author.

The values I attributed to the weekly frequency of execution are as follows: 14 (every day, more than once), 7 (once a day), 4.5 (4–5 times per week), 2.5 (2–3 times per week), 1 (once a week), and 0.25 (less often). For the sharing of tasks I use the following proportions: 1(always me), 0.85 (much more often me), 0.65 (slightly more often me), 0.5 (equally shared with my partner), 0.35 (slightly more often my partner), 0.15 (much more often my partner), and 0 (always my partner).

I used the index derived from wives’ answers to household items to analyse wives’ judgments and husbands’ answers to analyse husbands’ judgments. Men's and women's perceptions about the frequency of task execution are different at the couple level, and it seemed better and more consistent to use the same source of information for regressing fairness and satisfaction ratings.

This model specification style—looking for the effects of a given cause—is at odds with approaches that try to include all the possible “determinants” of a given effect (Gelman & Hill, 2007, part 1B; Sobel, 1996). In any case, the moderate sample size would not make it possible to include many predictors in the models, considering that in multinomial logistic regression the number of parameters to be estimated grows with the number of response variable categories.

To borrow terminology from Wright and Tropp (2002), perceived unfairness with satisfaction can be described as cognitive relative deprivation and unfairness with dissatisfaction as affective relative deprivation.

Interpersonal comparisons have not received much attention in the housework literature. With few exceptions (for instance, Buunk et al., 2000; Gager, 1998) comparisons were usually treated as “exogenous” (e.g., something to which individuals are simply exposed), whereas they could be “endogenous” as well (e.g., something individuals actively seek to justify their feelings). Agent-based simulation is a technique that seems particularly well suited for studying the role of social comparisons in the genesis of relative deprivation sentiments (for an example see Manzo, 2011).