“If I don’t expect to have a fair division of labor, then I can’t be disappointed,” said sociologist Christine Geserick, explaining the results to the APA.
We know from studies such as Statistics Austria’s most recent time use survey that it is still predominantly women in partnerships who take care of private households in Austria. This is also confirmed by a new online study by the University of Vienna, in which a total of 1,577 people between the ages of 16 and 88 living in this country took part in May 2022. The same study also showed that, even if work in the household is distributed unequally, a large proportion of men and women are satisfied with the division, as long as no particular emphasis is placed on a fair division.
“This is about wishes,” said Geserick, who led the project and works at the Austrian Institute for Family Research (ÖIF). It’s about the perceived and realized claim to justice. “If I don’t need a fair division of labor in the household to be happy, then in practice an unfair division is not as disappointing as if a fair division is important to me but I don’t get it,” says the sociologist.
89.6 percent satisfied with division of labor
The research she led found that there are more people who consider a fair division of labor to be important (91.5 percent) than those who actually rate their division of labor as fair (80.2 percent). Nevertheless, the majority of those surveyed, namely 89.6 percent, are very or somewhat satisfied with the division of labor they practice. For a high level of satisfaction, the exchange on an emotional level also plays a role, for example whether caresses are exchanged in everyday life or whether small gifts are brought home with you when you are out and about. “The more affection I receive, the more I agree with an unequal division of the household,” says Geserick. However, this applies more to women than to men. “The assumption is that because women are the ones who do more unpaid work in the home and family, they also need to be paid more, on an emotional level.”
When it comes to the 17 activities examined here, for example “buying groceries” or “taking out the household trash,” more than half of those surveyed said they do both “about the same way.” But in heterosexual partnerships, the majority still falls to the woman because she is more often solely responsible than the man: in 72.5 percent of the partnerships she alone takes on the ironing of the clothes, in 66.7 percent the washing and in 51.6 percent that Cook. There was one job that is more often attributed to men: looking after TV and the Internet. “62 percent of those surveyed said that the man does it alone,” said the researcher.
The division of labor is often more classic than you might think. “But it’s getting better and better,” said the sociologist. Young people expect a “fairer distribution than their parents”, a trend that could lead to more partnerships. “We see a difference between 28- to 55-year-olds compared to those over 65,” emphasized Geserick, “and we see the difference not only in expectations, but also in practice.”
