The Relationship of Egalitarian Gender Role Attitudes between Highly Educated Husbands and Wives: Attitudes and Behavior

This paper aims to clarify the gender relationship between highly educated husbands and wives as mutual 'significant other'. The data was gathered from 163 couples, and the relationship between egalitarian gender role attitudes and work behavior, work consciousness as well as other demographic variables was examined. The results show that (1) wives are more egalitarian than husbands; (2) wives' work behavior (employment status, work participation, work duration) are strongly related to the egalitarian gender role attitudes; (3) however, this characteristic is not seen in husbands - male gender role attitudes are more strongly related to their wives' work behavior than to their own; (4) wives' gender role attitudes are not related to the number of children they have or the children's age; (5) in full-time worker wife couples, the wife's ideal lifecourse highly corresponds to the husband's choice of his spouse's ideal lifecourse. Results of the partial correlation analysis indicate that the most influential factors on the relationship of egalitarian gender role attitudes between husband and wife are husband's choice of wife's ideal lifecourse, the wife's ideal lifecourse, and wife's work participation. These results suggest that future research on gender role attitudes should not focus on separate analysis of male and female attitudes, but rather concentrate on the influence of the mutual 'significant other' relationship. Moreover, consciousness and attitudes should be included as variables in this research.