Division of Household Labor Between Spouses: How Do Central and Eastern Europe Differ from the West?

The aim of this article is to assess the difference between East and West European countries with respect to women’s involvement in housework. I use the rational choice theory to model individual-level mechanisms that determine what share of the household’s chores is done by the female partner, and perform a multilevel regression test using European Social Survey (Round 2, 2004) data. The absolute involvement of women in housework in postcommunist countries does not differ much from the rest of the Europe. However, after accounting for the mechanisms determining the level of women’s involvement in housework, a significant difference becomes visible between postcommunist and other countries.