Till death do us part. The gender division of housework across the life course.

Abstract

The within-couple division of unpaid domestic work remains one of the most persistent dimensions of gender inequality, showing far slower convergence than progress in women's paid employment and labor market outcomes. This presentation brings together three related studies that adopt a life-course perspective to examine how key life transitions reshape—or fail to reshape—the gender division of housework, drawing on long-running British panel data (BHPS and UKHLS, 1991–2024) and an impact function approach. Moving through the life course, the first study focuses on the transition from solo living to cohabitation with a partner as a formative moment at which gendered domestic arrangements may first emerge and consolidate. The second examines how within-couple homeownership asymmetries—a largely overlooked wealth-based resource—shape bargaining power over housework as couples navigate housing transitions. The third turns to retirement as a later-life juncture with the potential to disrupt long-established domestic patterns. Across these transitions, the studies speak to a common question: at what points in the life course does gendered housework inequality take root, and what drives its persistence?

Bio speaker 

Anna Zamberlan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at LMU Munich, an Associated Researcher of the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" at the University of Konstanz, and a Collaborator of the Centre for Social Inequality Studies (CSIS) at the University of Trento. Her main research interests include gender inequalities in the division of paid and unpaid work, labor market discrimination, and the intersections between different dimensions of inequality. Her studies have been published in peer-reviewed international journals, including Sociological Science, European Sociological Review, The British Journal of Sociology, and Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.

Discussant

Mariya Lenko, Università di Trento

Registration

Please send an email to csis@unitn.it by 13 May 2026