Gender inequality in housework beyond retirement: Persistence across UK breadwinning arrangements
Year: 2026
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Persistent gender inequality in the intra-couple division of unpaid work has directed attention to life-course events that might challenge it—among them retirement, which alters individuals’ time availability, daily routines, and social roles. Prior research on housework around retirement has largely neglected heterogeneity by breadwinning arrangements, a theoretically salient dimension for assessing the roles of relative economic resources and gender dynamics in the within-couple division of unpaid work. Drawing on panel data for the United Kingdom from the BHPS and UKHLS (1992–2025; 15,747 individuals, 50,237 observations, 2,117 retirement transitions), we examine changes in routine housework around retirement across different breadwinning arrangements. Using a dummy impact function approach, we assess whether and how the absolute and relative contributions to housework of men and women in different-sex couples change around an individual’s own or their partner’s retirement. Across breadwinning arrangements, continuity in gender inequality prevails: both partners adjust their housework around retirement, yet the female share never approaches parity. Relative economic resources shape these adjustments more clearly among women than among men, and signs of gender deviance neutralization and further gender divergence appear in female-breadwinner households. Gendered change, rather than an absence of change, appears to drive continuity in gender inequality.
Author: Anna Zamberlan
Institution: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,070
OpenAlex ID: W7206159174