Gender Ideology and Women's Labor Market Transitions Within Couples in the Netherlands
| Author | Fenella Fleischmann,Yassine Khoudja |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12510 |
| Published date | 01 October 2018 |
| Date | 01 October 2018 |
Y K F F Utrecht University
Gender Ideology and Women’s Labor Market
Transitions Within Couples in the Netherlands
Objective: This study examines the role of
women’s and their partners’ gender ideology
in shaping women’s labor market entries, exits,
and changes in hours of employment.
Background: Recent research argues that
women’s gender ideology is crucial for under-
standing women’s contemporary labor market
participation. However, the role of male part-
ners’ gender ideology for partnered women’s
labor market participation has received less
attention.
Method: The analysis uses three waves of a
large-scale household panel survey based on
a random sample of individuals within Dutch
households. Random-effect models are applied
to study whether women’s and their partners’
gender ideology are associated with women’s
labor market transitions and whether rele-
vant household characteristics’ associations
with women’s labor market transitions are
conditional on both partners’ gender ideology.
Results: Women’s gender ideology is asso-
ciated with the probability of women’s labor
European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic
Relations, Utrecht University,Padualaan 14, 3584 CH
Utrecht, The Netherlands (y.khoudja@uu.nl).
© 2018 The Authors. Journal of Marriage and Familypub-
lished by WileyPeriodicals, Inc. on behalf of National Coun-
cil on Family Relations.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu-
tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.
Key Words: children, employment, gender roles, partner,
women.
market entries and exits, but not with changes in
women’s hours worked,whereas their male part-
ners’ ideology is related only to the probability
of women’s labor market exits. Furthermore,
the negative association of having children with
changes in women’s hours worked is stronger
for traditional compared to egalitarian women.
There is no clear evidence that gender ideology
moderates the association of the male partner’s
labor market resources with women’s labor
market transitions.
Conclusion: Women’s labor market transitions
are not only reactions to economic pressure and
institutional constraints but also women’s and
marginally their partners’ gender attitudes.
The increase in female labor force participation
since the 1950s is often considered one of the
great successes of female emancipation. Women
in paid work continued to be an exception in
the rst part of the 20th century, but dual-earner
families and women in full-time employment
are now widely accepted in all Western coun-
tries (Blossfeld & Drobniˇ
c, 2001). However,
gender inequalities persist in labor force par-
ticipation rates and number of hours worked,
and many women continue to be economically
dependent on their partners (Merens, Hartgers,
& Van Den Brakel, 2012). Recent research even
suggests a “stalled” gender revolution as the
development toward gender equality has slowed
or even stopped (England, 2010; Hochschild,
1989; Thébaud & Pedulla, 2016).
Some scholars have argued that women’sown
preferences and attitudes for the household divi-
sion of paid and unpaid work—shaped by their
Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (October 2018): 1087–1106 1087
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12510
1088 Journal of Marriage and Family
gender ideology—are central to understanding
the contemporary labor market behavior of
women (Charles, 2011; Hakim, 2000). How-
ever, most women do not make decisions about
their involvement in child care, household tasks,
and paid work within a social vacuum. Instead,
these decisions are negotiated with partners
whose allocation of time and resources are also
affected. Because partnerships take a greater toll
on women’s labor market careers than men’s
(Bianchi & Milkie, 2010), and men are more
likely than women to seek a traditionally gen-
dered division of paid and domestic work (Davis
& Greenstein, 2009), the role of male partners’
gender ideology should not be neglected in
studying women’s labor market outcomes. We,
therefore, examine the effect of gender ideology
on women’s labor market transitions at the cou-
ple level, also taking into account male partners’
gender ideology.
We make two main contributions to the lit-
erature. First, ours is among the rst studies
to test whether male partners’ gender ideology
has a direct effect on women’s labor force tran-
sitions net of women’s own gender ideology
and other relevant factors, including the pres-
ence of children and the partners’ labor market
resources. Although extreme divergence in gen-
der attitudes within couples is rare and partners’
attitudes become more similar over time (with-
out achieving complete convergence, on aver-
age; Johnson & Huston, 1998; Kalmijn, 2005),
it is clear that important differences exist. On
average, men have more traditional gender atti-
tudes than women (Kalmijn, 2005) even within
couples (Poortman & VanDer Lippe, 2009), and
the partner’s attitudes are likely an important,
although neglected, inuence on women’s labor
market decisions. Our study advances research
by using direct measures of gender ideology for
both partners. This approach allows us to more
precisely assess the inuence of gender ideology
on women’s labor market transitions compared
to earlier research that has relied on proxies such
as education or religion.
Second, we consider how women’s labor
market transitions are shaped by the interaction
of both partners’ gender ideology with the fol-
lowing two important couple-level conditions:
the male partner’s labor market resources and
the presence of young children in the household.
Previous research on the effect of male part-
ners’ labor market resources on women’s labor
market participation has been contradictory as
some studies nd negative effects (Baker &
Benjamin, 1997; Bernardi, 1999; Bernasco,
de Graaf, & Ultee, 1998; Henz & Sundström,
2001; Long, 1980; Verbakel & de Graaf, 2009)
and other positive effects (Brekke, 2013; Van
Tubergen, 2008), and again others do not nd
much evidence for any of the two (Verbakel,
2010). Predictions of household specialization
and exchange theory are often conrmed in
older studies, whereas social capital theory is
mostly supported in analyses with more recent
data. Moreover, studies with a longitudinal
design often nd that an originally negative
relation between the male partner’s labor market
resources and women’s labor market participa-
tion weakens over time (Henz & Sundström,
2001; Verbakel, 2010; Verbakel & de Graaf,
2009). This change in the relation of the male
partner’s labor market resources and women’s
labor market participation could be attributed
to the increasing support for women’s employ-
ment during the past decades (Bolzendahl &
Myers, 2004; Cunningham, 2008a; Kraaykamp,
2012)—a factor that has rarely been incorpo-
rated directly in these studies on partner effects.
We therefore argue that considering both part-
ners’ gender ideology as moderators of the asso-
ciation between the male partner’s labor market
resources and women’s labor market involve-
ment may reconcile the opposing positions.
Gender ideology may also shape the
well-established inuence of children on
women’s labor force participation. Prior
research has shown that the consequences
of having children for women’s labor market
activity depend on institutional arrangements,
including maternal leave and child-care supply
(Begall & Grunow, 2015; Sainsbury, 1996;
Van Der Lippe & Van Dijk, 2002). However,
women’s decisions to reduce their involvement
in the labor market after giving birth might also
be shaped by their gender ideology and that of
their partners.
We analyze the rst three waves of the
Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS),
which allows us to measure three outcomes
related to women’s labor market participa-
tion: labor market entries, labor market exits,
and changes in the number of hours worked.
Women’s labor force participation in the Nether-
lands has increased slowly but steadily during
the past 2 decades, from 43.5% in 1990 to 55.0%
in 2000 and 63.4% in 2010 (Statistics Nether-
lands, 2016a). Employment policies make it
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