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Professors, Ideology and Housework

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Abstract

This paper presents, for the first time, multivariate analyses of Canadian national data and tests the relationship between class-based egalitarianism and housework for married and cohabiting male and female university professors in 2000. Consistent with evidence in the general population, gender accounts for more variation in housework than a host of other predictors (i.e., class- and gender-based ideology, institutional contexts and resources, available time, presence of children, age, minority racial status, and religiosity). Nevertheless, these forces play important roles in increasing or decreasing domestic labor contributions of both male and female academics. Among these, professors who possess class-based egalitarian views do more housework, and egalitarianism increases domestic labor contributions of males and decreases that of females.

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Notes

  1. A basic weight was created that is equal to the inverse of the probability of selection for each sample record. Thus: WT = 1/f = Nij/nij; where Nij = the total population of academics in region i and university size stratum j; nij = the sample population of academics in region i and university size stratum j; and f = the sampling fraction. Second, the statistical weights of the responding academics were adjusted by uniformly distributing among them the statistical weights of non-respondents, based on the assumption that the two groups are similar in characteristics of interest. Thus: NRCF = nij/rij. Where NRCF = the non-response correction factor; and rij = the number of responding academics in region i and university size strata j. Finally, population weight was calculated by: POPWT = WT × NRCF and then a sample weight (SAMWT) was applied to the analyses: SAMWT = POPWT/mean of the POPWT (see Lennards 1987). Separate analysis using unweighted data produced substantially similar results.

  2. The low response rate could be due to the respondents’ level of interest in the subject. Professors with an interest in the ethnic and political culture of universities may have been more prone to return the questionnaire than those who were not interested in the subject.

  3. Tests indicated that the assumptions of the model were not violated; in particular the multi-collinearity across predictors was always at acceptable levels, as measured by the variation inflation factors (VIF). VIF ranged from 1.06 to 3.61, with 85% of the VIF ranging between 1 and 2.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by a grant from the Social Science Humanities Research Council of Canada. I thank Sandra Bortolin for her assistance with this paper.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, N9B-3P4, Canada

    M. Reza Nakhaie

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Nakhaie, M.R. Professors, Ideology and Housework. J Fam Econ Iss 30, 399–411 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-009-9162-y

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