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Gender inequality is embedded in men's greater labor force participation and women's greater assumption of domestic roles. These inequalities are at the same time rooted in people's projections about their future lives, which influence future behaviors and values. The current research analyzes factors that influence these projections about the gender division of labor. A sample of 230 male and female Spanish university students reported their expectations about gender equality in their own future life. Data are also presented from 113 female university students from the United States, who completed the same measures. In an experimental design, these participants were also assigned to envision a possible future self as a married parent who was employed full-time, part-time, or not at all and whose educational attainment was a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree. When reporting expectations for their own future lives, more female than male Spanish participants expected part-time work, marriage, and parenthood. In most aspects, the experimental conditions, with their assignments to particular future situations, yielded the same expectations for the male and female participants. Notably, as hypothesized, participants of both sexes estimated that greater employment would enhance their attainment of career and respect goals but compromise family goals. We discuss the effects of employment expectations on the division of labor and gender equality, and additionally provide a cross-cultural interpretation of the differences observed between Spain and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain's evolution from an authoritarian regime to a well-established multi-governed democracy in a short period of time, has been accompanied by incredibly rapid social change and a varied (depending on the governmental period), but overall steady, consideration of gender equality as a political priority. This has also led to the rapid development and consolidation of women's and equality machineries-state feminism-and well-established policies devoted to promoting gender equality over the last three decades, both at national and regional governmental levels. This article aims to present a consolidated policy area which has enough elements to survive and to keep on developing, although in an increasingly fragmented manner, among regions, despite the ongoing economic crisis and the conservative political turn. Based on theories of state feminism and discursive politics, this article analyzes four important elements for understanding this claim and the evolution of national and regional Spanish gender policies and institutions during the last three decades: women's machinery, the relations between that machinery and women's and feminist movements, the policy discourses present in gender equality policies, and the policy instruments used by those machineries and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]