Gender specialization in paid and unpaid work in married and cohabiting couples

Using time diary data from France, Italy and the United States, we assess gender specialization in the time men and women devote to paid and unpaid work in cohabiting and married couples. We show that gender specialization is greater for married than for cohabiting women in all countries. Cohabiting women are more likely than married women to be employed and when employed, cohabiting women spend more time in paid work than married women. We argue that this in part reflects the fact that specialization is “riskier” in cohabitation than in marriage. Risks should vary by context, however, with larger differences between cohabiting relationships and marriages in countries where cohabitation is less institutionalized and where those in cohabiting relationships have relatively fewer legal protections should the relationship dissolve. We examine three countries that provide a useful diversity in marital regimes for testing these expectations: France where cohabitation is most “marriage like” and where partnerships can be registered and carry legal rights; the United States where cohabitation is common but tends to be short-lived and unstable and where legal protections vary somewhat across states; and Italy where cohabitation is not common and where such unions are less socially approved than in either France or the United States. Our expectations about country differences are only partially borne out by the findings. Greater gender specialization in the division of labor in the market and in the home is found for Italy than for either France or the U.S. But gender specialization in the French and U.S. contexts is more similar than different. Hence, we cannot conclude that gender specialization is least likely in France where differences between marriage and cohabitation are smallest.