Although the ratio of women’s to men’s housework hours has declined, women still spend more time than men doing household tasks in most high-income contexts. This article examines one of the hypothesized mechanisms underlying the persistence of housework disparities—fairness perceptions—via a survey experiment in the United States. We ask: What factors contribute to fairness assessments of unequal divisions of housework in different-sex couples? Given increasing trends in gender-egalitarian attitudes, do people still think it is more fair for women to do a larger share of the housework? To address these questions, we relied on a multi-factorial vignette experiment on a nationally representative sample of 1,502 adults, in which respondents rated the fairness of the divisions of housework among hypothetical couples. Our results demonstrate that respondents engage in trade-off calculations that, to some extent, justify unequal divisions of housework. Spouses’ relative earnings and work time were assessed as contributions that justify doing fewer housework chores for both men and women. Contrary to our expectations, we find that people perceive arrangements where women perform a higher proportion of housework as less fair than scenarios where men do so. These results suggest a shift in public opinion regarding prescriptive gendered norms about housework divisions, contrasting with the decreasing but persistent gender gap in housework disadvantaging women.

中文翻译：

---

夫妻分工的感知公平性：来自美国多因素实验的证据

尽管女性与男性的家务劳动时间之比有所下降，但在大多数高收入环境中，女性花在做家务上的时间仍然比男性多。本文通过美国的一项调查实验，探讨了家务劳动差异持续存在的假设机制之一——公平感知。我们问：哪些因素有助于对不同性别伴侣中家务劳动分配不平等的公平性评估？鉴于性别平等态度的趋势日益增加，人们是否仍然认为女性承担更多家务劳动更公平？为了回答这些问题，我们依赖于对 1,502 名成年人的全国代表性样本进行的多因素小插图实验，其中受访者对假设夫妇之间家务劳动分配的公平性进行了评分。我们的结果表明，受访者进行了权衡计算，这在一定程度上证明了家务劳动的不平等分配是合理的。配偶的相对收入和工作时间被评估为证明男性和女性都减少家务劳动的贡献。与我们的预期相反，我们发现人们认为女性承担较高比例家务的安排比男性承担家务劳动的安排更不公平。这些结果表明，公众对家务劳动分工的规定性性别规范的看法发生了转变，这与家务劳动中不断缩小但持续的性别差距形成鲜明对比，使女性处于不利地位。