Caring for the home in Iberoamérica: a cross-country comparison

Abstract

Communities around the world face conflicting forces that affect the work-family interface. New work dynamics as well as new care needs influence how individuals perceive domestic chores (Freedman, Cornman & Carr, 2014) and the developing and performing of the different home-making skills. At the same time, this perception differs along life span (Leopold & Skopek, 2015) impacts family satisfaction and life satisfaction in different ways (Chelsey & Flood, 2016), and is affected in turn by the perception and beliefs that communities hold in regard to those tasks and skills (Blair-Loy et al, 2015; Domínguez-Folgueras et al, 2016; Kossek, 2015). This study looks at how housework is perceived at the individual level: its importance and dedication and how it helps develop skills in 10 Latin American countries and Spain. It also looks at how national (HDI) and cultural (Global Gender Gap Index GGI) context is related to that perception. Data (n=2750) was collected on-line through a questionnaire developed for this purpose. Results show certain general homogeneity in their perception but with some statistical significant differences among some of them and when considering gender. Moreover, when introducing HDI or GGI no differences among the countries were found.