Who Gets Their Preferred Work Hours? Gendered Mismatches in Same‐ and Different‐Sex Couples

Mismatches between preferred and actual work hours are widespread. Previous research has found that they can impact mental health and financial stability and can additionally indicate work–life imbalance. Despite established gendered patterns, little is known about how these vary by gender constellation within couples. Addressing this gap, we examine mismatches among women and men in same‐sex and different‐sex couples through a feminist institutionalist lens. Using German Microcensus data from 2012 to 2019, we first show descriptively that around 10% of respondents in our samples express a wish to change their working hours. Based on pooled OLS regressions, we then find that women experience higher levels of underemployment, whereas men, particularly in different‐sex couples, successfully actualize their preferred hours. Women in same‐sex couples, however, exhibit dampened gender effects, suggesting that gender inequality in mismatches depends on the partner's gender. Conversely, for men, being in a same‐sex couple tends to amplify overemployment slightly. These differences are modest in absolute size, but they are systematically patterned by gender and couple type. In conclusion, we argue that work‐hour mismatches are catalysts of social inequality sustained by engrained gendered dynamics. This implies that gendered institutional mechanisms in the labor market are deeply connected to gender relations in the private sphere, calling for an expansion of the feminist institutionalist perspective.