Gender Role Belief Predictors of Husbands' and Wives' Involvement in Household Labor in Kuwaiti and Qatari Families

Abstract

Couched within the bioecological systems theory, this paper examined 1) whether Kuwaiti and Qatari husbands and wives differed in their sex-role belief structure regarding the spousal distribution of household labor in the family, and 2) the influence of sex-role beliefs on their involvement in five domains of household labor (housework, meal preparation, laundry, shopping, and maintenance). Couples from 137 Qatari and 125 Kuwaiti families participated in the study and were interviewed separately to collect the data. Multivariate Analysis of Variance revealed husbands and wives differed significantly in their sex-role beliefs in both countries. Compared to husbands, wives showed stronger personal and cultural sex-role beliefs but similar religious beliefs toward the spousal distribution of household labor in Kuwait. In Qatar, wives showed higher personal, cultural, and religious sex-role beliefs than husbands did. Regression analyses showed personal, cultural, and religious belief structures did not uniformly influence husbands' and wives' involvement in housework, meal preparation, shopping, laundry, keeping track of expenses, and maintenance in both countries. Broadly speaking, personal beliefs positively but religious or cultural beliefs negatively influenced husbands' and wives' involvement in various household labor. The findings are discussed within the changing sociocultural contexts of sex roles in understudied Arab communities.