Flexible work arrangements, gender ideology, and housework time among dual-earner couples

Abstract

The potential of flexible work arrangements (FWAs) to reduce gender disparities in domestic labor has been a topic of considerable debate. Scholars posit that the extent of this equalizing impact hinges on how couples, when employing FWAs, allocate their time between work and family domains based on their prevailing gender ideologies. Analyzing longitudinal couple-level dyadic data in the United Kingdom and using the actor-partner interdependence model, this study contributes to the debate by investigating how the relationship between the use of FWAs and housework time among couples depends on the combination of their gender ideologies. The results reveal that a wife's adoption of FWAs notably amplifies her housework responsibilities and diminishes her husband's, when at least one spouse in a couple holds a traditional gender ideology. In contrast, a husband's use of FWAs boosts his own housework hours, only when both spouses have a more egalitarian gender ideology. However, a husband's use of FWAs does not reduce his wife's housework duration regardless of couple's gender ideology. Notably, it is couple's gender ideology, rather than FWAs usage, that has greater predicting power in housework time especially for the wife. Overall, these results underscore the necessity of contextualizing the effects of FWAs through the lens of prevailing gender ideology within couples to understand their influence on gender disparities in domestic labor.