Women's educational advantage and the gendered division of housework: Couples in France, Germany, Italy and the UK

Objective: This study explores how women's increased educational advantage is associated with gender (in)equality in housework across four different European cultural and institutional contexts. Background: The rising gender gap in educational attainment - favoring women - across rich nations increased educationally hypogamous couples (where her attainment is greater than his). Several theories suggest this might equalize the division of housework by women's relative and absolute level of educational attainment. Method: Couple-level time diary data from the harmonized Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS-X and MTUS) and national time use surveys for opposite-sex couples in France 1985 and 2009, Italy 1989 and 2013, Germany 1991 and 2013, and the UK 1983 and 2014 are used to examine the relationship between women's absolute and relative educational attainment and housework. Results: Women's (and men's) own educational attainment, rather than hypogamy, is strongly associated with lower time spent on housework by women and higher by men, primarily in contexts with more traditional gender roles where housework is more unequally distributed, like in Italy and France in the 2010s, and all examined countries in the 1980s. Conclusion: Results are most consistent with a diffusion perspective, but also suggest the limitations of women's rising educational attainment alone in spurring greater equality in housework.