English abstract

DISABILITY AND GENDER EQUALITY: DIVISION OF HOUSEHOLD WORK IN DISABLED COUPLES

What happens to gender equality when, or if, life takes a turn other than what is presumed to be the «average» or «standard» life course? We analyse the division of housework and child care among Norwegian couples where one or both partners are disabled, and ask whether they apportion the responsibility for household tasks differently from couples with no disability. We take as our point of departure the concept «master status» first described by Everett Hughes, assuming that having a disability triggers, or makes the partners return to, traditional gender roles, so that the division of household tasks is affected differently depending on which of them is disabled, the woman or the man. To a certain extent this seems to be the case. The analysis shows that couples in which the male partner is the disabled person have a more traditional division of housework than couples without disability. When the woman is the disabled partner, the division of housework is no more traditional than in couples without disability. The division of child care, however, is more traditional. Contrary to our expectations, we find that in couples where both the man and the woman are disabled the division of household tasks is less traditional than in couples with no disability.

Keywords: gender equality, division of housework and child care, disability