Cross‐national variations in the division of household labor

Using data from the International Social Justice Project, we describe the division of household labor in married couple households using a sample of 13 nations (N= 10,153). We find significant differences in the division of household labor based upon respondents’ nations of residence. We find support for the time availability approach; households where the wife is employed outside the home for pay are more likely to respond that husbands perform at least half of the household labor. We also find support for the relative resources approach; in households where wives’ education equals or exceeds that of their husbands, husbands are more likely to perform half of the household labor. We find little support for the economic dependence approach. We suggest that future cross‐national research should place individuals in context to determine why there are nation differences in the reported division of household labor.     

Why emotion work matters: sex,gender, and the division of household labor

Attempting to explain why biological sex remains the primary predictor of household labor allocation, gender theorists have suggested that husbands and wives perform family work in ways that facilitate culturally appropriate constructions of gender. To date, however, researchers have yet to consider the theoretical and empirical significance of emotion work in their studies of the gendered division of household labor. Using survey data from 335 employed, married parents, I examine the relative influence of economic resources, time constraints, gender ideology, sex, and gender on the performance of housework, child care, and emotion work. Results indicate that gender construction, not sex, predicts the performance of emotion work and that this performance reflects a key difference in men's and women's gendered constructions of self.     

Exploring the division of household labor outside the family context: utilizing resources for doing gender

This study tests alternative theoretical models of the division of household labor within a non-familial context of men and women operating homes for autistic children and adults. This context makes it possible to disentangle overlapping hypotheses that stem from competing models. A sample of 128 staff members completed extensive questionnaires. The analyses yielded considerably different patterns of results for men and women. The results for the men provided support for the relative resources model, showing that men's contributions to household labor decreased as their resources increased. The results for the women provided support for the human capital model, showing that women's contributions increased as their resources increased. The gender construction approach may account for these gender differences in the determinants of involvement, suggesting that men and women utilize their resources for ‘doing gender’.     

Gender, household labor, and psychological distress: the impact of the amount and division of housework.

Using a national longitudinal survey of a representative sample of 1,256 adults, I assess the impact of the amount of household labor performed and its division within the household on men's and women's depression levels, adjusting for prior mental health status. I test two alternative explanations of the contributions of household labor and the division of household labor to gender differences in depression: differential exposure and differential vulnerability. The results indicate that men's lower contributions to household labor explain part of the gender difference in depression. Inequity in the division of household labor has a greater impact on distress than does the amount of household labor. Employment status moderates the effect of the division of labor on depression. Among those who describe themselves as keeping house, depression was lowest for those who performed 79.8 percent of housework. In contrast, for those employed full-time the minimum level of depression occurs at 45.8 percent of the household labor. Men report performing 42.3 percent of the housework in their homes compared to 68.1 percent reported by women. Thus, on average women are performing household labor beyond the point of maximum psychological benefit, whereas men are not. Social support mediates the effects of the division of household labor. The only gender difference in effects occurred among those who are married, for whom social support was associated with lower levels of depression for women than men.     

Randomized household labor supply

In a multiperson household, indivisibilities or other externalities may imply that optimal decisions involve explicit randomizations. This issue is orthogonal to the standard distinction between unitary and collective models; it arises even when the household aggregates individual utilities through a Samuelsonian index.     

Lesbian women and household labor division: A systematic review of scholarly research from 2000 to 2015

ABSTRACT

Recent studies have begun to attend to distribution of household labor within same-gender couples compared to heterosexual couples, yet much of the available research with lesbian couples has attempted to superimpose division of household labor frameworks developed with heterosexual couples (e.g., gender role socialization, exchange bargaining theories) to fit the experiences of same-gender couples. Using two academic search databases, the present article provides a systematic review of the available 28 peer-reviewed articles published from 2000–2015 about lesbian partnerships and household labor divisions. Results indicate that lesbian couples engage in a more equal distribution of household labor than heterosexual couples, and that lesbian women often opt to eschew traditional gendered divisions of chores in favor of other factors such as quality of task or ability. The systematic review uncovered notable constraints in the demography of participants (e.g., race, socioeconomic status, geographic location) across studies. Strategies for deepening the depth and breadth of this line of work for future researchers, and implications for relationship satisfaction are also discussed.     

The gendered division of labor and family outcomes in germany

The literature on the predictors of the division of household labor continues to expand, but the effect of this division on family outcomes has not been explored. Using the German SocioEconomic Panel (N= 628), I analyze the effect of men's participation in housework and child care on the likelihood of second birth and divorce. Fathers' greater relative child‐care time increases couples' odds of second birth, attenuating the negative effect of mothers' employment. Husbands' relative housework time is insignificant in predicting second birth or divorce among couples with at least one child, but increases the likelihood of divorce among childless couples. This is evidence that the division of domestic labor affects family outcomes, but effects differ depending on the outcome and presence of children.     

The division of labor and the market areas of manufacturing firms

A sociological framework for relating the division of labor to the market areas of manufacturing firms is reformulated. The growth of exchange and the dynamics of differentiation and integration are discussed as key processes that explain changes in these market areas from local to regional to multiregional to national and also the rise of industrial regions. A case study of nineteenth-century plow manufacturing in the United States illustrates the utility of the proposed framework.     

Extracting a revised labor supply theory from Becker's model of the household

Conflicting assumptions about labor supply behavior lie at the nexus of ideological and theoretical debates regarding the reality of involuntary unemployment, the efficacy of Keynesian macro-policy, and the appropriate nature of welfare policy. This can in part be attributed to the fact that orthodox theory is effectively predicated upon describing the behavior of individuals whose level of affluence enables them to voluntarily withhold their labor from the market. Ironically, a means of resolution appears if we extend Gary Becker's utility producing model of the household to recognize two latent behavioral concerns: (1) the ‘need’ of households for money income in order to produce utility, and (2) the presence of work activity in the home. The resulting generalized labor supply model extends Becker's analysis to explicitly encompass both the behavior of the affluent, and the behavior of the poor who need to work in order to sustain their existence.     

Decomposing culture: an analysis of gender,language, and labor supply in the household

Despite broad progress in closing many dimensions of the gender gap around the globe, recent research has shown that traditional gender roles can still exert a large influence on female labor force participation, even in developed economies. This paper empirically analyzes the role of culture in determining the labor market engagement of women within the context of collective models of household decision making. In particular, we use the epidemiological approach to study the relationship between gender in language and labor market participation among married female immigrants to the U.S. We show that the presence of gender in language can act as a marker for culturally acquired gender roles and that these roles are important determinants of household labor allocations. Female immigrants who speak a language with sex-based grammatical rules exhibit lower labor force participation, hours worked, and weeks worked. Our strategy of isolating one component of culture reveals that roughly two thirds of this relationship can be explained by correlated cultural factors, including the role of bargaining power in the household, and the impact of ethnic enclaves and that at most one third is potentially explained by language having a causal impact.     

No exit for wives: sexual division of labour and the cumulation of household demands

Deux thèses opposées sont formuluées sur la division sexuelle du travail domestique: une 'théorie d'associés en adaptation mutuelle' et une 'théorie de travail subordonné.' Des budgets de temps de semaine et de fin de semaine de plusieurs centaines de couples mariés du Grand Vancouver sont analysés de façon à permettre un choix entre les deux thèses. Les résultats de l'analyse sont compatibles avec la théorie du travail subordonné de la femme mariée. lis rendent la théorie d'associés en adaptation peu vraisemblable, vu que la conduite des maris demeure insensible à la cumulation des tâches domestiques causées par l'emploi de la femme, les heures prolongées de travail et les jeunes enfants.
Two conflicting arguments on the sexual division of household labour are formulated: an 'adaptive partnership theory' and a 'dependent labour theory.' Workday and weekend time budgets of several hundred married couples in Greater Vancouver are analysed in order to choose the most adequate of the two arguments. The results of the analysis are consistent with the theory of married women's dependent labour. They make the theory of adaptive partnership implausible, as the conduct of husbands remains insensitive to the cumulation of demands on the household, of wives' employment, extended job hours, and young children.     

Dependence within families and the division of labor: Comparing Sweden and the United States

This article assesses the relative explanatory value of the resource‐bargaining perspective and the doing‐gender approach for the division of housework in the United States and Sweden from the mid‐1970s to 2000. The data used are the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the Swedish Level of Living Survey. Overall results show that housework was truly gendered work in both countries during the entire period. Even so, the results indicate that, unlike Swedish women, U.S. women seem to increase their time spent in housework when their husbands are to some extent economically dependent on them, as if to neutralize the presumed gender deviance on the part of their spouses.     

Revisiting sociology's first classic:The division of labor in society and its actuality

Durkheim's doctoral dissertation can justifiably be called sociology's first classic. Rereading it 100 years later enables us to see major domains of the contemporary world where its analysis remains, of actuality, heuristic or yet to be fully appreciated: for example, its themes of anomieas economic deregulation and corporatism as an institutional arrangement to deal with anomie.At the same time, Durkheim's discourse reflects its historical embeddedness, such as his discussion of the sexual division of labor, which needs to be reworked. A second feature of emergent contemporary social solidarity unforeseen by Durkheim (and the great majority of theorists of change) is what may be termed the return of mechanical solidarity.     

Welfare reform,dependency reduction,and labor market entry

Dependency reduction requires altering the welfare incentive structure: reducing the rewards for nonwork and increasing the rewards for work. Requiring welfare recipients to work in exchange for welfare benefits reduces the attractiveness of welfare and is crucial to dependency reduction. However, most current workfare programs impose minimal requirements on welfare recipients and are ineffectual. This paper proposes methods for improving workfare as well as other reforms.     

The industrial division of labor among immigrants and internal migrants to the Los Angeles economy

This study examined the industrial division of labor among immigrants and in-migrants in the Los Angeles, California, metropolitan area. It addresses debates about channeling of new arrivals into jobs among similar ethnic groups and human capital views. Data were obtained from the 1990 Census on resident native-born, resident foreign-born, in-migrants, and recent immigrants who arrived during 1985-90. Light and Rosenstein's (1995) concepts of groups and their resources were used to organize ideas about ethnic networks and their effectiveness in channeling migrant workers into 15 industrial sectors. Sectoral differences were revealed with the familiarity index of dissimilarity. Findings reveal that social networks were the strongest for Koreans, who supplied work for recent arrivals in the same sectors as Korean-born residents, regardless of education. Mexican new arrivals were less likely to work in the same sectors as their resident Mexican counterparts. Mexican networks placed new arrivals in durable manufacturing in the 1960s and 1970s when it was a key source of employment. By the 1980s and 1990s, the economy shifted and employment went down in durable manufacturing. Mexicans thus found employment elsewhere. Native White and Black in-migrants had the strongest channeling into same sector jobs. This is attributed to the small streams, the ability of the labor market to absorb these workers, and the availability of job vacancies among native out-migrants. Filipino migrants had similar patterns as Whites and Blacks. Mexican and Central American residents had more inter-ethnic competition over jobs than Whites or Blacks.     

Aspects of workplace flexibility and mothers' satisfaction with their husbands' contributions to household labor

This article explores whether mothers’ perceived control over their own workplace flexibility options has any relationship to their satisfaction with their husbands’ contributions to household labor in the United States. We hypothesize that flexibility enhances their ability to more adeptly engage in role management in multiple life areas, thus enabling them to be more satisfied with their partners’ domestic input as well. We use a unique data set of 1,078 randomly sampled women involved in mothers’ organizations that generally attract members based on their current level of participation in the paid labor market. We then link nine distinct workplace flexibility policies with mothers’ satisfaction related to their husbands’ participation in all household tasks, as well as a subset of female-typed tasks. We find that across both arrays of tasks, mothers with more perceived control over work-related schedule predictability and those that had the ability to secure employment again after an extended break had higher levels of satisfaction with their husbands’ participation in household labor. In addition, short-term time off to address unexpected needs was important for all tasks considered together only.