Search

Since Voas and Crockett (2005), a consensus has emerged in the sociology of religions on the fact that secularization is largely due to a cohort effect. That is, each birth cohort is less religious than the previous one. We use data from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), a multi-thematic survey based on a random sample representative of the general population since 1999, to understand what is the cohort effect in Switzerland on three indicators of religiosity: religious affiliation, frequency of religious service attendance, and personal prayer, taking into account the socio-demographic characteristics of individuals, which could interfere with cohort, period, or age effects. A first general observation can be drawn from the SHP: for the three religious indicators, a cohort effect is a key factor in explaining the decline of religiosity. Each birth cohort is less religious on all three indicators, that is, younger individuals are less affiliated, practice less often, and pray less than the older cohort. More subtly, we also observe an effect of age or life cycle, especially on the practice, and a period effect on the religious disaffiliation of individuals. Each birth cohort shows a more religious profile of individuals at the start of the cohort than at the end. There is, therefore, an initial movement of distancing from religion by birth cohorts, but this is further accentuated by a period effect for disaffiliation and sometimes accelerated and, at other times, slightly contained by a life-cycle effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A longitudinal analysis of data from the Swiss Household Panel shows that satisfaction with the division of household tasks decreases when children aged 0-17 are present in the household, subsequently increases, and then drops again after retirement. This W-shaped pattern over time varies across individuals, however, as the sense of satisfaction is a construct that is gendered and generational, individual and interactional. Although the effect is small, men's satisfaction is more influenced by the number of hours spent on housework than that of women, so despite large inequalities, women often report being satisfied with household organization. Women's satisfaction depends on a larger number of factors, notably increasing expectations of equality over the generations. It is correlated above all with their partner's practical and emotional involvement. Overall, men's and women's satisfaction with the division of household tasks depends primarily on their perception of a number of aspects of common life which go beyond the domestic sphere, such as their partner's feelings. Thus, to fully capture the sense of satisfaction, an analysis must include not only the type of household tasks concerned, as is often the case, but also the context within which they are divided and the individuals involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Longitudinal analyses, which track particular individuals through time, are few, and look mainly at changes in the division of household tasks between partners. They emphasize the increased time that women devote to housework when the couple and the family are formed, but they do not say whether this phenomenon is reversible. Does the opposite occur at the end of the relationship? What is the pattern for men? Longitudinal analysis of the data of the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) shows that the end of a conjugal relationship (after separation or death) leads to a reduction of the time that women devote to housework, whereas it has little effect on men's investment. Discussion of the various factors behind these results suggests that the theory of "doing gender," widely evoked in studies on the division of household tasks within couples, may provide only a partial explanation. This theory seems more appropriate to explain the behaviour of women than that of men. The household involvement of the latter seems to depend less on the people with whom they interact than on cultural factors such as normative references concerning housework division and investment which are specific to each generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the gender division of housework show that women spend more time on domestic tasks than men, and that the gender gap widens following entry into union and the birth of children. But what happens after a relationship ends? Do women spend less time on housework if they no longer have a man to look after? And are men obliged to devote more time to such tasks? Using individual data from eleven successive waves of the Swiss Household Panel, Boris WERNLI and Caroline HENCHOZ analyse changes in the amount of time devoted to basic household tasks (washing, cooking, cleaning) by men and women in the year following the end of a conjugal relationship. For comparable characteristics, women whose partnership has ended spend less time on housework, refl ecting a certain reversibility of the effect of union formation. By contrast, union dissolution does not have such a clear impact on men's investment in housework, which increases only for the pivot generations (persons born between 1935 and 1954) and among men in the younger generations who go from family life to living alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence, in the Swiss context, of a new category of ecologically oriented 'spiritual' activists. The authors look at empirical studies conducted internationally on the link between religion and environmentalism and argue that 'spiritually oriented activists' are rarely investigated in quantitative studies. The authors then examine the ndings of a case study of local milieus in two Swiss cities and nationwide data collected as part of the Swiss Household Panel (SHP). They close the gap between results coming from case studies, on the one hand, and representative studies, on the other, by introducing the variable of spirituality into quantitative research. The results suggest that an ecological milieu is emerging comprised of people who are located politically on the left, do not self-identify as religious, but nonetheless practice meditation and have holistic feelings. The forms of spirituality practiced by these ecologists are 'subtle' in the sense of being adaptable, located in the background, and supportive of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]