“Money Talks” or “Gender Trumps Money”? Explaining the Division of Unpaid Family Work among Dual Earner Parents in an Italian Metropolitan Area

The female employment rate in Western countries has risen dramatically in recent decades, but the division of unpaid family work remains strongly unequal. Clear solutions to this puzzle have proven elusive. This study aims to add new information from Italy to the knowledge concerning the division of domestic activities. To this end, two competing theoretical frameworks are tested, namely the relative resources perspective and the gender role attitudes perspective, using ordinary least squares regression models. The analysis is based on a well-suited dataset confined to the city of Turin. The predictions from the relative resources perspective are poorly supported, whereas it is very difficult to draw a clear-cut conclusion as regards the gender role attitudes perspective. Further research is required to deepen these results.