Who bears the burden? Couples' resources, gender ideology and women's contraceptive labor in Germany

Preventing undesired pregnancies in different-sex relationships requires ongoing actions and decisions from both partners. However, the burden of contraception is not equally shared. Most modern contraceptive methods are designed for female bodies, and women are typically responsible for managing contraception, from obtaining prescriptions to dealing with side effects. This contraceptive labor encompasses financial, time, physical and emotional costs – forming an often-overlooked aspect of unpaid labor that parallels housework and childcare in its gendered distribution.Using 2021 data from the German Family Demography Panel (FReDA), we build on the “ContraIndex” to quantify the costs and risks of different contraceptive methods. Situating contraception within the framework of the gendered division of labor, we examine how women’s relative resources and gender ideology shape their contraceptive labor using OLS-regression techniques. Our findings suggest that higher-educated women use contraception requiring more contraceptive labor, while those working equal or greater hours than their male partners perform less contraceptive labor. Traditional gender ideology is linked to higher contraceptive labor, also for women who inherit higher relative resources than their male partners. Our results highlight a complex interplay between within-couple predictors and contraceptive behavior, underscoring the need for further research on contraceptive labor as an overlooked dimension of gender inequality.