And roses too: How “Better Work” facilitates gender empowerment in global supply chains

Women's increasing entry into paid work has not been accompanied by a corresponding change in the gender division of unpaid labor in the household and community. Though women participate in the labor market, the expectation is that they will also take responsibility for the household. To what degree does women's waged work in the garment industry transform gender norms and dynamics in their home lives? To what extent do the choices they make translate to their household-level empowerment? This practice-focused article examines these questions by looking at data collected on gender dynamics at work and at home in the clothing industries of Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya, Lesotho, and Vietnam. While women's empowerment through garment sector employment remains circumscribed by low wages, financial insecurity, and gendered expectations, we find that international interventions, namely the International Labor Organization's Better Work program, has expanded women's abilities to exert agency over their earnings within the context of household resource allocation and has decreased the negative effects of ongoing and systemic financial precarity.     

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.     

Gendered Divisions of Fertility Work: Socioeconomic Predictors of Female Versus Male Sterilization

Domestic labor researchers have examined a multitude of duties disproportionately performed by women, yet the responsibility associated with navigating a couple's fertility—fertility work—has been overlooked. Using data from the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth (N = 1,415), the author examined how racial and socioeconomic factors affect the division of contraceptive fertility work among married and cohabiting women who rely on either their partners' vasectomies or their own sterilizations. Drawing theoretical connections between fertility work and housework, resource‐ and gender‐based perspectives were used to assess whether women's or their partners' characteristics are stronger predictors of sterilization type, and whether women's absolute or relative education level has a greater impact. Findings suggest that White and socioeconomically privileged women are more likely to have vasectomized partners than disadvantaged women. Male partners' characteristics were more closely associated with sterilization type than women's characteristics, lending greater support for the gender‐based hypotheses.     

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.     

Wives' Relative Wages,Husbands' Paid Work Hours,and Wives' Labor‐Force Exit

Economic theories predict that women are more likely to exit the labor force if their partners' earnings are higher and if their own wage rate is lower. In this article, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,254) and discrete‐time event‐history analysis to show that wives' relative wages are more predictive of their exit than are their own or their husbands' absolute wages. In addition, I show that women married to men who work more than 45 hours per week are more likely to exit the labor force than are wives whose husbands' work approximately 40 hours per week. My findings highlight the need to examine how women's partners affect women's labor‐force participation.     

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.     

Economic Penalties and Rewards of Family Formation,Gender and Education in the Low‐income Sector in Germany1

This article examines the differential effects of changes in family formations on men's and women's economic vulnerability. The motivating question is whether investments in education provide sufficient resources to escape the risk of poverty in the low‐income sector or if changes in household characteristics are more important determinants of one's living standard. Changes in household characteristics are defined in terms of partners' entry into and exit from households and partners' different labour market profiles. The analysis focuses on households in the low‐income sector in Germany, a population that is at high risk of poverty in a social welfare state that is expected to mitigate the effects of changes in family formation independent of gender. Findings from panel regression analysis demonstrate that women, in contrast to men, benefit economically as much as or more from investing in traditional family formations than in their own labour market position. This is especially the case for women with lower levels of education.     

Explaining the Decline in Women's Household Labor: Individual Change and Cohort Differences

Women's hours of housework have declined, but does this change represent shifts in the behavior of individuals or differences across cohorts? Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys, individual and cohort change in housework are examined over a 13‐year period. Responsibility for household tasks declined 10% from 1974–75 to 1987–88. For individual women, changes in housework are associated with life course shifts in time availability as well as with changes in gender attitudes and marital status, but are not related to changes in relative earnings. Cohort differences exist in responsibility for housework in the mid‐1970s and they persist over the 13‐year period. Overall, these findings suggest that aggregate changes in women's household labor reflect both individual change and cohort differences.     

Dairy Livestock Interventions for Food Security in Uganda: What are the Implications for Women's Empowerment?*

Women are increasingly the target of agricultural development programs aimed at reducing poverty and food insecurity, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Some feminist scholars argue that such efforts are driven more by concerns about the efficient use of resources than the rights of women and do little to transform gendered power relations. We examine how development interventions that target women affect household well-being, especially food insecurity, empower women, and transform gendered power relations. Our study uses the case of the Gates Foundation funded East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) program in Uganda. Our methods include the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index survey and in-depth interviews of women farmers and key informants, within the EADD program. We argue that the livestock sector provides critical insights into women's empowerment because livestock are not “socially neutral” in their gendered effects. Our study found that: (1) ownership of dairy cows enhanced important dimensions of women's empowerment and gender equity that benefited women and households; (2) women's labor responsibilities for dairy cows disempowered some women by increasing their time poverty and; (3) ownership of dairy cows provided a means for women to disrupt entrenched social norms related to gender roles within the household and agriculture.     

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.     

Tending to the Emotions of Children: Predicting Parental Performance of Emotion Work with Children

Scholars, recognizing emotion work as a type of domestic labor, have examined whether domestic labor theories explain emotion work. Few studies, however, have investigated the predictors of emotion work with children. In this study, the authors examine the usefulness of 3 domestic labor theories (i.e., time availability, relative resources, and gender ideology) in explaining relative emotion work with children. Data are from a random sample of couples with children (N = 96 couples). The results suggest that men's labor force hours are negatively related to men's relative performance of emotion work with children and positively related to women's relative performance. Further, women's traditional gender ideologies are related to increased relative emotion work performance with children for women and decreased relative performance for men. Relative income is also a significant predictor of women's performance of emotion work with children. The authors discuss the implications of the study.     

Convergence or Continuity? The Gender Gap in Household Labor After Retirement

This research examined 2 hypotheses about the effect of retirement on couples' division of household labor. The continuity hypothesis posits that the gender gap in household labor remains unaffected by retirement, whereas the convergence hypothesis expects it to close. The authors tested these hypotheses using longitudinal data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel Study (N = 1,302 couples). Fixed effects models revealed that male breadwinners doubled up on total hours of household labor across their transition to retirement. This rise was accompanied by a concurrent, albeit less pronounced, decline in wives' hours. As a result, the gender gap in household labor was cut in half. This convergence involved a moderate trade‐off in female‐typed tasks of routine housework and an increase in husbands' hours spent on male‐typed tasks of repairs and gardening. The study concludes that gendered patterns of time use change substantially after retirement, rendering couples' division of household labor more equitable in later life.     

The impact of early life-course transitions on equality at work and home

This paper investigates two aspects of the paid employment relationship between female and male partners aged 23. It is argued that in order to understand women's position in the home and the labour market it is necessary to consider employment relationships in the context of the household. The impact of children on women's labour force participation is already well known and in this paper we show that marriage also has an independent effect on hours worked. The second aspect of the paper concerns the relative financial contribution of each partner to the family income from their labour market earnings. It is recognised that power and equality within the home are to some extent derived from the relative contribution of partners to the family income. It is shown that women are economically dependent on men even in the early stages of their partnership before children and that this dependence is greater among women with children.     

Decomposing Gender Beliefs: Cross‐National Differences in Attitudes Toward Maternal Employment and Gender Equality at Home

Few cross‐national studies distinguish between different aspects of gender egalitarianism and compare them systematically. In this study, we examine cross‐national differences in attitudes toward mothers' participation in the labor market and toward gender equality within the household, using a multilevel analysis of individual data from 33 nations. The results indicate greater support for employed mothers, but a lower level of approval of gender equality at home, among residents of countries that offer women more educational and economic opportunities. We argue that macrolevel gender equality increases individuals', particularly women's, incentives to support female labor force participation. Because of a persistent belief in gender differentiation, however, macrolevel gender equality has the opposite relationship with attitudes toward altering gendered practices beyond enabling women's public sphere participation. The fewer explicit barriers to women's achievement in society, the more likely individuals will feel a need to defend gendered roles in the private sphere. That the potential harm of advocating gendered practices in the private sphere is smaller in societies with fewer impediments for women is also likely to account for the negative association between macrolevel gender equality and support for egalitarian gender roles at home.     

Source‐Country Gender Roles and the Division of Labor Within Immigrant Families

The authors examined the relationship between source‐country gender roles and the gender division of paid and unpaid labor within immigrant families in the host society. Results from Canadian Census of Population (N = 497,973) data show that the 2 indicators of source‐country gender roles examined—female/male labor activity ratio and female/male secondary education ratio—are both positively associated with immigrant wives' share in their family labor supply and negatively associated with their share in housework. The association between source‐country gender roles and women's share in couples' labor activities weakens over time. Moreover, the relationship between source‐country female/male labor activity and immigrant couples' gender division of labor is reduced when immigrant women have nonimmigrant husbands, indicating that husband's immigration status matters.     

What Women Do,Believe in,and Financially Contribute—What Matters More in Couples' Decision Making? Gender Inequality in Ghana's Small-Scale Fisheries☆

Studies of couple's decision-making power consistently show that women disproportionately occupy subordinate positions. Using survey data (N = 400) from an ethnographic study on Ghanaian female fisherfolk, we examine the influences of women's financial contributions, ownership of production assets and gender role attitudes, and how they interact with the bodily capacities required to perform different fishery tasks to shape women's decision-making power. Findings show that financial contributions and ownership of production assets remain salient determinants of women's fishery decision-making power. However, their participation in strenuous tasks dampens the positive relationship between their financial contributions, gender role attitudes and decision-making power, such that financial contributions become insignificant. Women's decision-making power varies according to the sex-typed division of labor in small-scale fishing, and those who violate it are ‘punished’—as evident in their decreased decision-making power. Attention to the co-implications of socio-economic forces and material factors such as women's embodied experiences highlights (1) the specificities of occupational sex segregation and decision-making in agricultural sectors of developing economies and (2) how such entanglements can be reconfigured to enhance women's decision-making power in such contexts.     

Micro‐ and Macrolevel Determinants of Women's Employment in Six Arab Countries

We analyzed determinants of women's employment with data for 40,792 women living in 103 districts of 6 Arab countries. We tested a new theoretical framework that addresses the roles of needs, opportunities, and values at multiple levels. At the microlevel (individual, family), socioeconomic factors, care duties, and traditionalism were important; at the macrolevel (district), economic development and societal norms were important. Women's education seemed most influential. Interaction analyses showed that returns on women's education depended on their partner's education and on the economic development, labor market structure, urbanization, and strength of traditional norms in the district in which women live. Our results stress the importance of a comprehensive approach toward women's employment in these countries.     

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.     

Culture,Intermarriage, and Immigrant Women's Labor Supply

We examine the impact of culture on the work behaviour of second‐generation immigrant women in Canada. We contribute to the literature by analysing the role of intermarriage in intergenerational transmission of culture and its effect on labour market outcomes. Using female labour force participation and total fertility rates in the country of ancestry as cultural proxies, we find that culture affects the female labour supply. Cultural proxies are significant in explaining number of hours worked by second‐generation women with immigrant parents. The impact of culture is significantly larger for women with immigrant parents who share the same ethnic background than for those with intermarried parents. The weaker effect of culture for women raised in intermarried families stresses the importance of intermarriage in assimilation process. Our findings imply that government policies targeting women's labour supply may have differential effects on the labour market behaviour of immigrant women of different ancestries.

Policy Implications

• The result that culture has statistically significant impact on second‐generation immigrant women's labour supply has policy implications in terms of the government programmes and benefits that target the labour supply of women and immigration policies in general.
• Our findings imply that government policies targeting women's labour supply may have differential influence on the labour market behaviour of second‐generation immigrant women of different ancestries.

     

Analyzing Politics and Change in Women's Organizations

Research on women's political action too often passes over women's organizations that do not officially adopt a feminist ideology and do not explicitly set out to change gender power relations. Based on implicit notions that such women's organizations are nonpolitical (or less interesting), the research often supports a false dichotomy between feminist and nonfeminist organizations rather than illuminates women's common political ground. This study addresses women's collective action, politics and change by focusing on the case of Nicaraguan Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs - women who lost a son or daughter in the revolution or Contra War. Although some members in Matagalpa critiqued male domination, the organization itself did not set out to challenge the gendered division of labor; indeed, their collective demands relied upon and in many ways reinforced traditional gender identities. I argue that such movements are important to feminist political analysis. As I demonstrate in this article, an organization's lack of an official feminist ideology does not mean that individual members do not express interests, identities and ideals that challenge the gendered status quo. Such research, however, requires a nuanced approach, recognizing women as both accommodating and resisting gendered social structures. Thus, this study challenges the dominant feminist-feminine dichotomy by demonstrating that women's collective action is not only per se political (and politically important) but may also challenge as well as reinforce gendered power structures.