Housework as a Woman's Job? What Looks Like Gender Ideologies Could Also Be Stereotypes

We question the validity of standard measures of gender ideology. When asked about “men” and “women” in general, respondents may imagine women (men) with lower (higher) labor market resources. Therefore, standard measures may conflate gender ideologies (injunctive norms) with stereotypical beliefs (descriptive norms). We test this hypothesis with an experiment in the German family panel pairfam: ∼1,200 respondents rated the appropriate division of housework in ∼3,700 hypothetical couples. By gradually adding information about labor market resources, we were able to override respondents’ stereotypical beliefs. We find that with more information, even “traditional” respondents support egalitarian housework arrangements. The main difference between “traditional” and “egalitarian” respondents is not in their ideologies (as previously thought), but in their interpretation of vague items. This leads us to conclude that standard measures overestimate traditional gender ideologies. Our study also illustrates how varying the amount of information can help identify respondents’ implicit beliefs.

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