Working Hard and Hardly Working: Domestic Labor and Marital Satisfaction Among Dual‐Earner Couples

This article examines the effect of domestic labor, gender ideology, work status, and economic dependency on marital satisfaction using data obtained from self‐administered questionnaires for 156 dual‐earner couples. Analytic distinctions were drawn among three aspects of domestic labor: household tasks, emotion work, and status enhancement. The effects of each of these elements of the division of domestic labor on marital satisfaction were tested. We also tested the effects of a respondent's satisfaction with the couple's division of domestic labor on marital satisfaction. Finally, we tested the effects of gender ideology, hours spent in paid work each week, and economic dependency on marital satisfaction. For women, satisfaction with the division of household tasks and emotion work and their contributions to household and status‐enhancement tasks were the most significant predictors of marital satisfaction. Satisfaction with the division of labor around both emotion work and housework were significant predictors for men's marital satisfaction. Partner's status‐enhancement work was also predictive for men. Economic dependency, paid work hours, gender ideology, partner's hours spent on housework, contributions to emotion work, and number of children and preschool‐age children had only indirect effects on women's marital satisfaction. For men, hours spent on housework, contributions to emotion work, partner's emotion work, hours spent in the paid labor force, and number of preschool children had an indirect effect on marital satisfaction.     

Gender deviance and household work: the role of occupation

This article takes a new approach to gender and housework by identifying a new measure of gender deviance--work in gender-atypical occupations--and by arguing that men who do "women's work" and women who do "men's work" in the labor market may seek to neutralize their gender deviance by doing male- and female-typed work at home. Analysis of data from the National Survey of Families and Households and the 2003-7 waves of the American Time Use Survey shows that men who do "women's work" in the market spend more time on male-typed housework relative to men in gender-balanced occupations and their wives spend more time on female-typed housework. Women in gender-atypical occupations also do more female-typed housework than women in gender-balanced occupations. The article provides clearer evidence about the important ways in which cultural conceptions of gender shape and are shaped by economic processes.     

Research on Household Labor: Modeling and Measuring the Social Embeddedness of Routine Family Work

This article reviews more than 200 scholarly articles and books on household labor published between 1989 and 1999. As a maturing area of study, this body of research has been concerned with understanding and documenting how housework is embedded in complex and shifting social processes relating to the well‐being of families, the construction of gender, and the reproduction of society. Major theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to the study of household labor are summarized, and suggestions for further research are offered. In summary, women have reduced and men have increased slightly their hourly contributions to housework. Although men's relative contributions have increased, women still do at least twice as much routine housework as men. Consistent predictors of sharing include both women's and men's employment, earnings, gender ideology, and life‐course issues. More balanced divisions of housework are associated with women perceiving fairness, experiencing less depression, and enjoying higher marital satisfaction.     

The Division of Household Labor in Germany and Israel

We compare the patterns of household division of labor in Germany and Israel—two countries that share key elements of the corporatist welfare regime but differ in their gender regimes—and evaluate several hypotheses using data from the 2002 International Social Survey Program. Although time constraints and relative resources affect the division of household labor and women’s housework in both societies, we find that in Germany the gender order of household labor is more rigid, whereas in Israel the spouses’ linked labor market status exerts distinctive effects. We also find significant relationships between gender ideology and the division of household labor. We discuss the theoretical advantages of approaching the comparative study of gender inequality from the vantage point of family and gender regimes.     

Economic Opportunities and the Division of Labor among Japanese Immigrant Couples in Southern California*

Based on 36 in‐depth interviews conducted with 18 Japanese couples who live in Southern California, this study examines the impact of differential economic opportunities on the division of labor among Japanese immigrant couples. Three main factors facilitate Japanese professional and businessmen’s mobility to and settlement in Southern California: (1) the gender‐based stratification of the workplace in Japan; (2) U.S. immigration policies that favor foreign nationals with strong corporate ties and business experience; and (3) the strong presence of Japanese corporations in Southern California. Whereas these conditions enable men to maintain their earning power, they do not benefit women in employment opportunities. The difference in economic opportunities encourages Japanese couples to preserve a breadwinner and homemaker division of labor, and women continue to do a bulk of housework and childcare even when women reenter the labor force later in their lives.     

Premarital Cohabitation and Housework: Couples in Cross‐National Perspective

The authors examine the effect of premarital cohabitation on the division of household labor in 22 countries. First, women do more routine housework than men in all countries. Second, married couples that cohabited before marriage have a more equal division of housework. Third, national cohabitation rates have equalizing effects on couples regardless of their own cohabitation experience. However, the influence of cohabitation rates is only observed in countries with higher levels of overall gender equality. The authors conclude that the trend toward increasing cohabitation may be part of a broader social trend toward a more egalitarian division of housework.     

Gender,Productivity, and the Marital Wage Premium

Explanations for married men’s wage premium often emphasize greater market productivity due to a gendered division of household labor, though this “specialization thesis” has been insufficiently interrogated. Using data from Wave 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 972), this paper examines the relationship between wages and time spent in paid labor and housework for married women and men with high levels of labor force attachment and their spouses. Scrutiny of couples’ time use finds strong evidence for the gendered division of labor, but little support for the anticipated wage effects of the specialization thesis itself. Less strict sample restrictions point to the need for continued research directed at couples’ joint employment and household labor decisions.     

Perceived Equity in the Gendered Division of Household Labor

Despite huge imbalances in the division of housework between women and men, previous studies have found perceptions of equity on the part of women to be much more frequent than feelings of injustice. Taking a comparative perspective on the basis of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2002 data (N = 8,556), we find that, on the individual level, the explanatory frameworks that have been found to influence the actual inequality of household division of labor (time availability, resource dependence, and gender ideology) contribute to the explanation of perceptions of equity, in that they interact with the inequality of the household division of labor. On the country level, the gender‐wage ratio and the average level of inequality are important predictors.     

Division of Household Labor and Marital Satisfaction in China, Japan, and Korea

In this study, we compared the association of marital satisfaction with the division of household labor in China, Japan, and Korea. Results revealed that wives’ marital satisfaction was negatively associated with their burden of housework in the three Asian countries, as generally observed in Western countries. However, there were noticeable cross-country differences. Chinese couples were relatively in favor of an egalitarian division of household labor. Japanese couples were supportive of traditional specialization, with wives flexibly shifting their efforts between work outside the house and housework. Korean couples were under pressure from conflicts between the wife’s labor force participation and the traditional division of labor. These findings underscored the importance of the socio-institutional context in the study of marital satisfaction.     

Household structure and housework: assessing the contributions of all household members,with a focus on children and youths

Most research into the division of household domestic labor focuses on couple households, treating other household members such as children/youths and other adults as independent variables affecting the domestic work of husbands and wives. We present an integrated analysis of variance/variance decomposition that summarizes the determinants of the housework contributions of, and the housework burden imposed by, all the individuals in four common household types, with a focus on the contributions of older children and youths. We demonstrate the importance of statistical interactions between the contributions of different household members (distinguished by partnership status, gender, and the ages and genders of children/youths), in particular for those households containing children/youths. We conclude that in order to analyze the contributions of all household members jointly, it is necessary to distinguish different household compositions for separate analysis.     

Does Parenthood Strengthen a Traditional Household Division of Labor? Evidence From Sweden

Parenthood is often considered a major factor behind gender differences in time allocation, especially between paid work and housework. This article investigates the impact of parenthood on men’s and women’s daily time use in Sweden and how it changed over the 1990s. The analysis is made using time diary data from the Multinational Time Use Survey (MTUS; N = 13,729) and multivariate Tobit regressions. The results indicate that while parenthood in 1990 – 1991 clearly strengthened the traditional gender division of labor in the household, this was much less the case in 2000 – 2001, when parenthood affected men and women in a more similar way.     

'There just aren't enough hours in the day': the mental health consequences of time pressure

In this paper I examine the association between subjective time pressure and depression and consider whether time pressure mediates the relationship between roles and depression, whether social and economic resources moderate the association between time pressure and depression, and whether time pressure explains gender differences in depression. Results of a telephone survey of 790 respondents indicate that time pressure is significantly associated with distress for men and women, and that subjective time pressure accounts for the significantly higher depression of employed women. Time pressure mediates the impact of housework and the volunteer role among women and it partially explains the differential depression of divorced men. Several resources moderate the impact of time pressure on depression: income among both men and women and perceived co-worker social support among men. Results suggest that the subjective experience of time pressure can be thought of as a potentially important mechanism by which lived experience is transformed into depression. However, in spite of the ubiquity of time pressure in the North American context, the depressing consequences of this subjective experience are not distributed equitably, suggesting that the capacity to manage time pressure and avoid depression may be another benefit associated with strategically advantageous social locations.     

Attitudes Toward Housework and Child Care and the Gendered Division of Labor

Research on the division of household labor has typically examined the role of time availability, relative resources, and gender ideology. We explore the gendered meaning of domestic work by examining the role of men's and women's attitudes toward household labor. Using data from the Dutch Time Competition Survey (N = 732), we find that women have more favorable attitudes toward cleaning, cooking, and child care than do men: Women enjoy it more, set higher standards for it, and feel more responsible for it. Furthermore, women's favorable and men's unfavorable attitudes are associated with women's greater contribution to household labor. Effects are stronger for housework than child care, own attitudes matter more than partner's, and men's attitudes are more influential than women's.     

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.     

Migration,Household Tasks,and Gender: Evidence from the Republic of Georgia

We examine whether migration affects the gender division of household tasks and participation in leisure within origin‐country households using survey data from the Republic of Georgia. Our theoretical framework identifies two sets of mechanisms whereby migration might influence gender differences in home activities: migrant experience effects and migrant absence effects. We test for both types of effects on the probability that men and women perform gender atypical household tasks and engage in leisure activities by comparing households with and without currently absent and return migrants using probit regressions. We find evidence for both migration absence and migration experience effects on gender differences in housework and leisure. However, these effects are complex and contradictory: Generally, male migration tends to exacerbate gender differences in the sending household while female migration tends to ameliorate them.     

Life Course Transitions and Housework: Marriage,Parenthood, and Time on Housework

We examine the effects of transitions in marital and parenthood status on 1,091 men’s and women’s housework hours using two waves of data from an Australian panel survey titled Negotiating the Life Course. We examine transitions between cohabitation and marriage, and from cohabitation or marriage to separation, as well as transitions to first and higher‐order births. We find extraordinary stability in men’s housework time across most transitions but considerable change for women in relation to transitions in parenthood. Our results suggest that the transition to parenthood is a critical moment in the development of an unequal gap in time spent on routine household labor.     

Editorial

Most gender and development researchers and practitioners are not used to focusing upon men, men's sense of masculinity, and the relevance of that for development. While discussion of gender has tended to dwell upon women as they relate to various issues, only recently have debates on economic and social policy, as well as the future of the family, begun to examine and accommodate men's gender identity. Men and masculinity, however, need to be studied if power relations between men and women are to be changed for the better, and the potential of individuals of both sexes is to be realized. Development research and practice have tended to marginalize the issues of men and masculinity, while researchers from other disciplines such as sociology, cultural studies, and anthropology have increasingly shown interest in studying men's gender identity and roles. This article discusses some of the relevant published literature in sections on linking the practical with the ideological; men's roles as biological fathers, economic providers for families, and social fathers; status, power, and violence; readjusting the sexual division of labor; men's attitudes on fertility; and harnessing men's potential.     

Reconsidering the Division of Household Labor: Incorporating Volunteer Work and Informal Support

The gendered division of household labor is more multifaceted than the allocation of paid work and domestic work. People also engage in volunteer work and informal support. I investigate the applicability of household labor allocation theories—specifically the time constraints, economic, and “doing gender” perspectives—to all unpaid work. I analyze the 1997 Australian Time Use Survey diaries of 1,797 married couples using logistic, ordinary least squares, and seemingly unrelated regressions. Analyses show that volunteer work and support work are substantial expenditures associated with paid work and housework, but they do not create a “third shift.” Volunteer work and support work are part of the gendered household labor allocation process determined, in part, by time constraints and by gender.     

Economic Dependence,Gender, and the Division of Labor in the Home: A Replication and Extension

The fundamental question in the study of the gendered division of household labor has come to be why, in the face of dramatic changes in women's employment and earnings, housework remains “women's work.” As a possible answer to this question, Brines (1994) presented a provocative conceptual model of the relationship between economic dependence and the performance of housework by wives and husbands. She concluded that the link between economic dependence and housework follows rules of economic exchange for wives, but among husbands, a gender display model is operative. This paper replicates and extends Brines' model by (a) replicating her work using a different data set; (b) adding additional controls to the model, including a measure of gender ideology; and (c) modeling a distributional (as opposed to absolute) measure of housework. For a measure of hours spent doing housework, the results of my analyses are consistent with Brines' suggestion of separate gender‐specific processes linking economic dependence and amount of housework performed. For a distributional measure of housework, on the other hand, my analyses contradict Brines' findings and suggest that both husbands and wives are acting to neutralize a nonnormative provider role when they do housework. Further analyses suggest that the phenomenon is more likely one of deviance neutralization than of gender display.     

The Impact of Domestic Work on Men's and Women's Wages

Past research has consistently found that the negative relationship between housework and wages is stronger for women than for men. This article tests a potential explanation for this difference by focusing on the fact that men and women typically perform different types of household chores. Traditionally “feminine” and “masculine” task types are likely to interfere with work differently, because they vary as to when and how often they must be performed. Based on longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and Households, fixed‐effects regression results show that only time spent in female housework chores has a negative effect on wages. Furthermore, gender differences in the effect of housework disappear upon disaggregating housework into task types. This research suggests that a more equitable distribution of not only the amount, but also the type, of housework performed by men and women in the home may lead to a narrowing of the gender gap in wages.