The stalled gender housework revolution in the United States
2026-07-23
Prior studies document a declining but persistent gender housework gap since the 1960s, with declines in women’s housework time far exceeding increases in men’s. Yet scholars differ in their assessment of what these trends mean about the pace and extent of gendered change in family life. Using individual-level longitudinal data from the 1976–2023 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study addresses this theoretical impasse by asking whether housework has become fundamentally degendered over time. I assess degendering using two novel indicators: the residual gender housework gap relative to the total gap and gender symmetry in associations between key predictors and housework. Results show that although the overall gender housework gap has declined substantially, the share of the total gap accounted for by theoretically relevant observed predictors remains small and has not increased over time. Individual fixed-effects models further show that cohabitation, marriage, and children remain much more strongly associated with increases in women’s housework than men’s across periods. Associations of paid work hours and earnings with housework, in contrast, attenuate over time, with less consistent evidence of gender asymmetry. Overall, these findings indicate limited progress in degendering housework and are more consistent with a stalled gender housework revolution.