Gender implications of new assortative mating patterns: mating down and sharing more equally the domestic work?

Abstract The expansion of female education in recent decades has reshaped assortative mating patterns in Western societies, reinforcing educational homogamy and fostering educational hypogamy. Despite the reversal of the gender gap in education, housework remains a woman’s task. Using data from Understanding Societies and adopting a cohort and couple-based perspective, we argue that because women generally experience lower returns on education than men do, education often covers the underlying socioeconomic hypergamy of women, contributing to the persistent uneven division of housework. The study employs multinomial logistic regression and hierarchical linear mixed models (HLMMs). The results indicate that men remain more likely to hold advantageous occupational positions and earn higher incomes, factors associated with more unequal divisions of housework. Additionally, while the combined effects of hypergamy in education, occupational status, and income lead to pronounced inequalities in housework time, combined hypogamy results in a smaller yet persistent gender gap, revealing a gender asymmetry in the impact of relative resources and the perpetuation of traditional gender roles. Notably, well-educated couples consistently exhibit the most egalitarian behaviours across all union configurations and cohorts. Overall, the study highlights the critical role of women’s achievements in relative status and income in fostering more egalitarian divisions of housework within couples while emphasising the transformative impact of tertiary education in challenging traditional gender roles.