Gender, ethnicity and the division of household labour within heterosexual couples in Australia

Abstract

Women continue to undertake substantially more unpaid labour than men, with the gaps closing if women bring economic resources to the household, spend time in paid work, or both partners hold egalitarian gender-role attitudes. Some attention has been given to how these patterns vary across ethnic groups, but the research is sparse and dominated by US studies. We examine the relationships between gender, ethnicity and housework supply within heterosexual couples in Australia using longitudinal data and individual-and couple-level panel regression models. We find large and statistically significant ethnic differences in gender divisions of household labour in Australia, with particularly egalitarian arrangements within Indigenous couples. These results have implications for understanding the processes underlying gender divisions of household labour, and highlight important, previously unknown, issues in Indigenous family processes. Particularly, our findings constitute first-time evidence of positive gender-equality outcomes for this subpopulation and call for further research on this topic.

Who Is Doing the Housework in Multicultural Britain?

“…One potential limitation of the domestic labour measures is they may not be interpreted in the same way across all ethnic groups. We have no way of assessing this in this study but others have suggested the definition of what constitutes domestic labour may vary across groups making direct comparisons problematic ( Sayer and Fine, 2011 ; Ting et al, 2015 ). A future qualitative study to understand potential differences of interpretation could shed some light on this issue.…”

“…They suggest differences in domestic labour across ethnic groups may be due to cultural differences in how domestic tasks are defined producing variations in egalitarian attitudes and behaviours. Ting et al (2015) compared the time spent on domestic labour across different immigrant and ethnic groups using Australian panel data. While all women spend more time on housework than men, they find significant gender gaps in housework hours by ethnic group that are not explained by observable socio-economic characteristics.…”

“…While all women spend more time on housework than men, they find significant gender gaps in housework hours by ethnic group that are not explained by observable socio-economic characteristics. Ting et al (2015) conclude theoretical approaches used to understand the gendered division of household labour in majority populations may not be appropriate across all ethnic groups where distinct meanings or cultural definitions of what constitutes domestic work may differ.…”

Data politics and Indigenous representation in Australian statistics

“…For example, Ting et al (2015), in their examination of the division of household labour, found that not only did Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women do less housework per week than a non-Indigenous Australian-born sample, but also the division of labour was more egalitarian in Indigenous Australian households. The problem for the researchers was that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sample in their dataset-the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey-is small and groups Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households into one base category.…”

Gender in Secondary Students' Creative Writing: Changes in Representation Over Time

“…As McLeod and Yates (2006) argue regarding changes in gender relations, "many theoretical accounts tend to overstate the extent of such processes [of feminist and gender reform, and] neglect the ways in which new forms of gender traditionalism are being reinscribed" (p. 189). Thus, and for example, despite the gender reform progress evident in the availability of broader, higher paid career options for many females, studies such as that of Ting, Perales and Baxter (2015) have found that women in heterosexual couples who take up these options continue to typically spend more time on unpaid housework and nurturance than their male partners (although patterns of labour vary according to ethnicity and class). The possibility and experience that gender equity changes on which we as educators and citizens may like to congratulate ourselves are not as advanced as one would imagine from looking only at departmental policy, is an important subject for feminist and educational research.…”