Gender Inequalities in Household Management: Mapping of Mental Labour as an Invisible Dimension of Social Reproduction

Ksenija Klasnić, PhD, Anita Dremel, PhD and Mirjana Adamović, PhD are the authors of the paper “Gender Inequalities in Household Management: Mapping of Mental Labour as an Invisible Dimension of Social Reproduction”. The paper is published in “Sociology and Space”.

The aim of the paper is to analyse the gender dimension of mental labour in households in Croatia based on the first nationally representative research of this topic. The quantitative data were collected in the end of 2022 on a sample of 1,000 persons living with an intimate partner. The results point to a strong gender inequality in doing mental labour: most activities are done by women, a smaller number of duties are typically reserved for men, while certain segments of the work are divided relatively evenly. Furthermore, significant gender differences were identified in the perception of egalitarity, with men more often than women assessing the distribution of mental labour as equal. The findings contribute to the understanding of mental labour as a crucial, albeit insufficiently recognised, dimension of unpaid work and social reproduction.

The paper is available at the link.