Gender equity and fertility intentions in Italy and the Netherlands

By M. Mills, Letizia Mencarini, M. Tanturri, K. Begall. 2008

262 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Fertility levels have fallen drastically in most industrialized countries. Diverse theoretical and empirical frameworks have had difficulty in explaining these unprecedented low levels of fertility. More recently, however, attention has turned from classic explanations, such as women’s increased labour market participation, to gender equity as the essential link to understand this phenomenon. The increase in women’s labour market participation did not prompt an increase in men’s domestic duties, which is often referred to women’s ‘dual burden’ or ‘second shift’. Institutions and policies within countries also facilitate or constrain the combination of women’s employment with fertility. This paper provides an empirical test of gender equity theory by examining whether the unequal division of household labour leads to lower fertility intentions of women in different institutional contexts. Italy constitutes a case of high gender inequity, low female labour market participation and the lowest-low fertility. The Netherlands has moderate to low gender inequity, high part-time female labour market participation and comparatively higher fertility. Using data from the 2003 Italian Multipurpose Survey - Family and Social Actors and the 2004/5 Dutch sample from the European Social Survey, a series of logistic regression models test this theory. A central finding is that the unequal division of household labour only has a significant impact on women’s fertility intentions when they already carry the load of high paid work hours or children, a finding that is particularly significant for working women in Italy.

Subfields: Demography, Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0f5fc669ebc0dbca61c4cb101337466613477a61

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Citations in the corpus

Gender Equality and Fertility: Which Equality Matters? (2013, unknown): “The results tend to depend on the country studied, on the burden of work put on women through employment or through the number of children, and on the share of fathers’ involvement (Cooke 2004; Torr and Short 2004; Esping-Andersen et al. 2007; Mills et al. 2008; Craig and Siminski 2010, 2011).”
Why do people postpone parenthood? Reasons and social policy incentives. (2011, background): “only focus on higher order fertility transitions (Oláh, 2003; Miller Torr and Short, 2004; Tazi-Preve et al., 2004; Mills et al., 2008).”
Family policy and fertility: fathers’ and mothers’ use of parental leave and continued childbearing in Norway and Sweden (2010, background): “Mills et al. (2008) show a negative correlation between an asymmetrical division of household labour in Italy and the Netherlands and fertility intentions, especially among working women and mothers.”
Gender‐Role Ideology, Labor Market Institutions, and Post‐industrial Fertility (2016, background): “Ironically, many of the countries with very low birth rates have conventionally been regarded as the most family-oriented within the post-industrial world (Dalla Zuanna and Micheli 2004; De Rose, Racioppi, and Zonatta 2008; Frejka, Jones, and Sardon 2010; Livi-Bacci 2001; Mills et al. 2008; Ochiai 2”
Future fertility in low fertility countries (2014, background): “Additional research has shown that unequal gender roles in the household and, specifically the perpetuation of the male breadwinner/female homemaker model, force women to choose between a career without children or remaining in the home (Oláh 2003; Miller et al. 2004; Mencarini and Tanturri 2004; Co”