Perceived fairness and conflicts about home tasks in a gender-equal discourse: A typology of Swedish couples

Housework allocation from a gender perspective has been the focus of extensive research over the past decades, as the gender division of household labour is a crucial component of the continued existence of gender stratification. Couples often experience conflicts in relation to household work. In Sweden this has been explained by the fact that gender equality, both at home and at work, is strongly normative, but not always matched by an equally egalitarian situation in the family. Perceived fairness of housework sharing can therefore differ from the ‘objective’ share of total housework hours. If the sharing of housework is perceived as unfair, the level of conflict about home tasks is also likely to increase. The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between housework sharing (egalitarian/non-egalitarian), perceived fairness of the division and frequency of conflicts about home tasks. Our research approach is explanatory and we will develop a typology using latent class analysis. The analysis will be based on data from the 2009 round of the YAPS survey of 1054 Swedish young people living with a partner.