WeEqualize, will take a historical and comparative approach to address the intertwined implications of the gender revolution—including changing gender beliefs, rising labor market insecurity, and the increasing retreat from partnerships—in shaping social inequalities in work-family strategies among different-sex couples across countries and time. WeEqualize proposes a new theoretical framework to identify and disentangle the distinct and changing drivers of work-family strategies by couples’ education and across 24 industrialized countries. This framework will identify barriers and solutions to gender inequality within partnerships. WeEqualize will provide the first comprehensive characterization and quantification of social inequalities in work-family strategies across industrialized countries and over the long run. It aims to: identify a couple-level typology of work-family strategies; examine the prevalence of these strategies by education and across countries; evaluate the role of contextual factors in shaping work-family strategies; assess how historical and contemporary estimates of work-family strategies are shaped by changing demographic trends, and project future trends in work-family strategies for the coming decades; as well as collect and leverage new survey-based experimental data across different contexts to disentangle the role of gender beliefs from labor market constraints in shaping what type of work-family strategies couples choose and why.

WeEqualize was funded by the European Research Council as part of the ERC Starting Grant 2023 funding scheme and will start in September 2024.

Project Description (ERC document B1)