Abstract

SANCHEZ PENA, Landy  and  PEREZ AMADOR, Julieta. Different or equal: the differences between unions and marriages in domestic work of dual earning couples. Estud. demogr. urbanos [online]. 2016, vol.31, n.3, pp.593-634. ISSN 2448-6515.

The gender division of housework has been studied extendedly in Mexico finding socioeconomic differences including those by women's status in the labor market and household income. In this paper, we examine whether the type of union, cohabitation or marriage, affects the gender division of housework in dual-earner couples using survey data from ENIGH 2010 and regression models. We find evidence of cohabiting unions being significantly more egalitarian than marriages, even after controlling for selection into cohabitation. Moreover, as household income increases, the gender gap in housework declines faster for cohabitation than for marriage, suggesting that cohabiting couples at the top of the income distribution are the most egalitarian unions regarding the division of housework. This finding is related, however, to the fact that cohabiting women spent less time in housework than married women, but married and cohabiting men do not differ in their time spent on housework.

Keywords : domestic work; gender division of labor; cohabitation; marriage; dual earning couples.

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