Annotation 1_The Attitude of Married Men towards Gender Division of Labor _Ethiopia

Zewude, Bewunetu & Habtegiorgis, Tewodros & Melese, Belayneh (2021) The Attitude of Married Men towards Gender Division of Labor and their Experiences in Sharing Household Tasks with their Marital Spouses in Southern Ethiopia, East African Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 6 (2), 101-114.  

Bewunetu et al evaluated married men’s attitudes toward gender-based labour allocation and their experience of  delegating household duties to their spouses. The demands of housework do not affect men and women equally, and women perform more housework than men. Cross-sectional numerical data was  gathered from randomly chosen married men living in Southern Ethiopia, Wolaita Sodo town as part of a quantitative research approach.  403 questionnaires were distributed to randomly selected married men in each kebele and from these, 365 responses were  completed. The gathered data was analysed and presented using descriptive and explanatory research designs. A multi-stage cluster sampling technique was used to determine the participants. 

They found  that the majority of respondents (86.1%) said they shared household responsibilities with their spouses, and 37.2% said they divided household and public tasks equally. Bewunetu et al discovered that the married men had  a positive gender role orientation and were highly experienced sharing household chores with their spouses. While the majority of respondents agreed that it is appropriate for men to share household duties with women, they generally have a more negative attitude toward gender roles. Some roles are always done by women. Most respondents (76.1%), revealed that laundering of clothes is a household task commonly done by women; while 63.6% said cleaning a house , 59.3% feeding children, and 55.4% making shiro wot. Respondents’ attitudes toward gender roles significantly correlate  with the number of children they have, their wives’ employment  and educational status. Men with more children, spouses who work full-time, and wives with more education tend to have a more favourable attitude on gender and family roles. 

Additionally, married men in the study area practised a form of egalitarian gender division of labour, in which couples equally shared both domestic and professional responsibilities. In Ethiopia where most aspects  of social  interactions  are  characterised  by unbalanced  distributions  of  gender   and  family  roles  and  biased  gendered  attitudes,  the recognition that married men have an even-handed attitude toward gender-based labour and have a relatively high level of experience sharing housework with their female counterparts would contribute to bringing a fresh viewpoint to the cross-cultural study of gender and social relationships. However, one drawback of the study is that all the data  was  based on married men’s responses and omitted  women’s perspectives.