Marital Selectivity, Gender Roles and Housework Division in Comparative Perspective: Does National Context Matter?

The second demographic transition describes, among other phenomena, the transformations that have occurred in societies regarding fertility and new family configurations in terms of more symmetrical gender relations (e.g., Lesthaeghe, 2010). However, studies show that this is not a linear and synchronous process across different countries. Comparative research indicates that, regardless of the national context and its indicators of fertility, Human Development Index (HDI), and Gender Inequality Index (GII) (Picanço, Covre-Sussai, Sento-Sé, and Araújo, 2024), women continue to assume the majority of domestic and care work, with variations arising from having more egalitarian gender attitudes. This article aims to analyze the relationship between educational marital selectivity and the number of children, gender attitudes, the housework and care work division, and work-family conflict, as well as any variations across national contexts. The data comes from the “Family and Changing Roles” module (2012) of the International Social Survey (ISSP), from which we propose indicators to measure gender attitudes, the housework and care division, and work-family conflict. To measure contextual characteristics, we use the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Gender Inequality Index (GII). To analyze educational marital selectivity, we classify marital arrangements into the following categories: homogamous with high education (when a person with a higher education degree is married to another person with a higher education degree), homogamous with medium and low education, hypogamy I (when a person with a higher education degree is married to someone with medium education or below), hypogamy II (when a person with medium education is married to someone with low education), and hypergamy (when a person with low or medium education is married to someone with a higher education degree). Preliminary results indicate that homogamous couples with high education distribute tasks more symmetrically than other couples.