Still a “Stalled Revolution”? Work/Family Experiences,Hegemonic Masculinity,and Moving Toward Gender Equality

Hochschild described the “stalled revolution” in the late 1980s: women made great gains in labor force opportunities, particularly in stereotypically “masculine” fields, yet men did not move comparably into “feminine” roles. This article examines the current “stalls” in the gender equality movement regarding gendered experiences at work and home, including occupations, the gender wage gap, career trajectories, and the division of household labor. This article also discusses efforts to “unstall” the gender revolution. Pop culture solutions on the individual‐level and academic research on structural/cultural barriers often focus on women's access to historically “masculine” roles (e.g. representation in STEM fields). There is far less emphasis on men's involvement in historically “feminine” roles. Gender scholars examine hegemonic masculinity as the narrowly constrained expectations for men's “appropriate” behavior. While efforts to “unstall” the gender revolution focus largely on expanding women's opportunities, this article addresses why the gender revolution will remain incomplete and “stalled” without redefining hegemonic masculinity. Cross‐national research demonstrates that changing views of masculinity are critical for greater gender equality at work and home.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Are women less career centric than men? Structure,culture, and identity investments

Some work/family scholars assume that gender differences in career centrality (i.e. the importance of career to one's identity) are a result of differential job characteristics and family demands; others trace these differences to pre-existing cultural orientations. Using the 2010 Generations of Talent data from 9210 employees working in 11 countries for 7 multinational companies, this study verifies the existence of gender differences in career centrality and explores structural and cultural explanations. Gender disparities in career centrality are modest, indicating that women's and men's identification with careers is more similar than is commonly asserted; the most pronounced (but still relatively small) disparities are observed in Japan and China. A large portion of the gender gap is explained by job characteristics, supporting structural explanations. Family demands contribute to explaining the gap as well, but the findings are unexpected: having minor children is associated with higher career centrality for both women and men. In support of cultural explanations, however, traditional gender beliefs are associated with lower career centrality, especially for women, while two job characteristics (job variety and peer relations) have distinct links to career centrality for women and men. Findings challenge the common assumption that family identities compete against work identities.     

Men and infertility: Insights from the sociology of gender

This review explores the framing of men and infertility in recent interdisciplinary social science research. I illustrate how men's diverse institutional roles surrounding medicalized experiences of infertility are critical for understanding inequality in reproduction. Situating research on men and infertility in the theoretical framework of gender as social structure shows how men's secondary position in reproduction can be seen across institutional roles, which include men as patients, men as partners, men as sperm donors, and men as doctors. Men's experiences with reproductive medicine often reinforce men's marginal position in reproductive medicine through institutionalized arrangements; yet, men are intimately and structurally involved in reproductive decisions. I argue that bringing gender to the center of research on infertility could make clear the many structural ways women and women's bodies are controlled, regulated, and treated by reproductive medicine.     

When Women are Right: THE INFLUENCE OF GENDER,WORK AND VALUES ON EUROPEAN FAR-RIGHT PARTY SUPPORT

Far-right political party support in Western Europe has been examined primarily in terms of the men who constitute the majority of party membership. However, few have examined why women are less likely than men to be drawn to these movements. This article attempts to bridge the quantitative–qualitative divide and assess what brings women to support the far right. Looking at five European countries using the 1999–2002 World Values Survey, results indicate that men have a slightly higher propensity to vote for the far right. This gender gap cannot be explained by value differences, but is partially a result of differences in men's and women's occupational location. Thus, this article provides some support to Mayer's contention that women's support of the far right is largely to do with their being less likely than men to be employed in blue-collar work.     

Gender inequality in the one percent: A look under the hood of high incomes in Germany

Gender differences in economic outcomes are important topics in social science research. However, the study of gender differences among economic elites—“the top one percent”—has received surprisingly little attention, likely also due to a lack of empirical data. This paper investigates gender differences in individual and household income among the top one percent of individual monthly net incomes and top two percent of net household incomes using data from the German Microcensus from 2006 to 2016 covering more than 3.3 million individuals. I find that women account for only around 14% of the one percent in individual incomes. Additionally, regarding the household level, women's incomes are sufficient to achieve two percent status in fewer than 10% of all households. Both numbers did hardly change over the decade from 2006 to 2016. Furthermore, women's pathways to belonging to a high-income household are far more dependent on their partner's education and employment status than men's. Overall, the findings thus show dramatic gender differences among the German economic elite that do not narrow over time.     

Women's Work: A Challenge to the Sociology of Work

This article confronts the Sociology of Work with the nature of women's work, arguing that this long-standing sociological speciality is threaded through with numerous ontological conceptions that make it difficult not only to understand women's work, but also the changing contours of men's work. On the basis of three key areas in the Sociology of Work — the definition of work, the nature of the firm/organization and the definition of skill — the disjunctures with the nature of women's work are underlined. Feminist research — on housework, homeworking, the link between the productive and reproductive spheres, the sexuality of organization, the gendered nature of skill and on emotional labour, to mention only a few examples — is argued to have contributed profoundly to our rethinking of the workplace for both women and men. Examples of recent feminist conceptualizations of work are provided as illustrations of the direction in which the Sociology of Work could proceed.     

‘The Mighty Pillar of the Family’: Young People's Vocabularies on Household Gender Arrangements in the Asia‐Pacific Region

In the light of women's increased labour force participation and the demands of western feminism for men's participation in housework and childcare, this article analyses vocabularies on these issues among young people in Australia, USA and Canada and seven countries in Asia. While very few young people in any of the samples use explicitly feminist justifications for their statements, there is high support for sharing housework when both partners are in paid work. By contrast, the strong support for role reversal — for men being ‘house husbands’— is confined to the western samples. The article explores reasons for these differences based in respondents’ domestic experiences and national family policies. Where many of the western respondents rely on equality or individualism, the Asian respondents are more likely to understand the role of the husband and wife in the context of their duties to each other and the nation or to assert the existence of gender differences between men and women.     

Dynamics of Domestic Labor Across Short‐ and Long‐Distance Family Relocations

Family relocations within developed countries are argued to have gendered consequences for paid employment, with men's careers improving and women's careers deteriorating. However, little is known about their potential relationships with outcomes in other life domains, including partnered men's and women's relative shares of domestic labor. The authors addressed this gap in knowledge by theorizing and examining how within‐couple gender gaps in domestic work evolve across short‐ and long‐distance family relocations over the life course, paying attention to the over‐time dynamics before and after event occurrence. To accomplish this, they used 12 years of panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and panel regression models. The results indicated that family relocations widen the within‐couple gender gap in weekly housework hours, largely because of shifts in women's employment situation and fertility episodes that accompany residential relocations.     

Fertility and social change: the neglected contribution of men's approaches to becoming partners and parents

Attitude survey and interview data are mobilised to address neglect of men's contribution to low fertility and wider social change in families and relationships. Men's attitudes are as relevant as women's to understanding fertility behaviour. However, fertility behaviour can only be understood in the context of a package of changes in gender relations and family life. Data from a random sample of men aged 18–49 surveyed in the Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey 2005/06 are combined with in‐depth interviews conducted in 2007 with 75 men aged 25–44 identified through the Scottish Household Survey as not living in co‐resident partnership arrangements. Both datasets encompass the age span conventionally associated with having children and men who were the potential partners of women delaying a first child until their 30s. They allow consideration of the impact of social contact with parents and children on men's fertility intentions and how the role of provider features in men's views about parenting. The interviews focus on men who have fallen out of, or have not entered, co‐resident partnerships and examine the relationship between partnering and parenting. In combination the data suggest how men act as a complementary or contradictory downward drag on women's fertility and that their role has been underestimated in understanding the package of family change of which low fertility is a part.     

The Diverse Fathering Practices of Men Who Perpetrate Domestic Violence

Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from in-depth interviews with 17 Australian fathers who were participating in a men's behaviour change program. The study found that men's fathering varied and posed significant, yet different, risks to women, children, and young people. Variations were particularly evident when analysing narratives of masculinity with perceptions of control over the use of domestic violence. Other aspects of men's identities such as class, culture, and health intersected with gender and contributed to the diversity of harmful fathering practices. This paper spotlights the substantive issue of men's domestic violence and its impact on all aspects of family life, rather than current practices which frequently focus on women and their mothering practices.     

Social Support to Parents‐in‐Law: The Interplay of Gender and Kin Hierarchies

Using data from a representative sample of middle‐aged married persons, we compare men's and women's contact and assistance to older parents‐in‐law and parents. Women have more visits and phone contact with their parents than do men, and men talk on the phone more with their in‐laws than do women. There are no gender differences in assistance patterns. Multivariate analysis shows that women contact and help parents more than in‐laws, whereas for men there are no such differences. There is little direct evidence that the presence of one set of parents affects relations with the other. Our findings suggest that although women clearly give priority to relations with their own parents, men experience pulls in both directions.     

Gender,Anticipated Family Formation,and Graduate School Expectations Among Undergraduates

From a life course perspective, young adults' anticipations of future family formation transitions may shape their present‐day educational trajectories. Given gender unequal divisions of paid caretaking and domestic labor in heterosexual families, anticipations of family formation may affect women's educational expectations more or differently than men's. We analyze Online College Social Life Survey (OCSLS ) data from undergraduates at 22 U.S. colleges and universities (N= 16,152) to examine how existing and anticipated family formation shapes expectations to earn a graduate or professional degree. Family formation is more consistently related to women's educational expectations than to men's, with existing and anticipated parenthood affecting only women's expectations. While existing parenthood lowers women's expectations to advanced degrees, anticipated future parenthood elevates them. Anticipated age at parenthood is positively associated with all students' expectations to graduate or professional degrees.     

Which social contacts with natives matter? Attitudes towards gender roles of Muslim immigrants and their children in Western Europe

Social contacts with mainstream individuals play a central role in acculturation. Yet, research has paid little attention to examining whether social contact with natives is linked to egalitarian gender role attitudes among Muslim immigrants and their children. Using a unique data set including 4584 Muslim immigrants and the second generation in six western European countries (EURISLAM), the study investigates whether public- and private-sphere social contacts with natives are associated with attitudes towards women's employment and men's domestic roles. The findings show that immigrants and their children who report stronger private-sphere social ties, that is native friends and family members, hold more egalitarian attitudes towards women's employment and men's domestic roles. However, public-sphere social contacts (at the workplace and in the neighbourhood) are not associated with these attitudes. These results support theories stating that private-sphere social contact with natives is important in gender role ideology acculturation among Muslim families.     

Transition to fatherhood: New perspectives in the global context of changing men's identities

The proposed thematic session aims to highlight the main challenges that the cultural and structural changes within the families and in gender relations and the changing social expectations about men's involvement in the care of children and about fatherhood pose to men's and fathers’ identity. Fathering in contemporary society requires men to be simultaneously provider, guide, household help and nurturer. The difficulties of these roles, and the tensions they sometimes produce, challenge men's relationships with their female partners, the meaning and place of work in their lives and their sense of self as competent adults. We will also explore the relationship between transitions to fatherhoods and the challenges of balancing work and family obligations. How to balance paid work, other interests and relationships with responsibilities, anxieties and pleasures of childrearing are today concerns for both men and women.     

‘Knowing one's place’: gender,mobility and shifting subjectivity in Eastern Indonesia

Abstract In this article I analyse the gendered space of transnational mobility by problematizing migrant subjectivity in everyday practices. In line with feminist perspectives I highlight the significance of the micro‐scale experience of female migrants from Eastern Indonesia in acquiring mobility as a struggle for new subjectivity. I frame this migration as a production of the subjective space of power. Based on in‐depth interviews with returned migrants, I present reflexive accounts of two migrants on contract domestic work abroad to illuminate the changing contours of the relationships between gender, mobility and shifting subjectivity. Households take into account the cultural meanings of space in everyday life including local relations in the decisions on mobility. Strategies of ‘knowing one's place’ reflect women's agency in negotiating alternative roles and positions within the intra‐household dynamics and in the workplace. Women's personal accounts have the potential to illuminate spatial processes of migration as a contested space for the repositioning of self in networks of family, kin, local and global relations.     

Chinese Male Peasant Workers and Shifting Masculine Identities in Urban Workspaces

A key feature of China's internal rural–urban migration is the transformation of work from a rural‐based agricultural sector to urban‐based industrial and service sectors. This article critically examines the interplay between urban work and accompanying social relations in the workplace (that is, service and low‐skilled manual jobs) and the (re)construction of male peasant workers' subjectivities and identity formation. The qualitative data from the men's life histories suggest that familial gender practices, conceptualized as an appropriation of the traditional Confucian ‘father–son’ relationship, are of importance in shaping the men's occupationally located shifting identities in traditional urban ‘female’ jobs. This exploratory study aims to examine complex and multilayered accounts of rural–urban labour migration, in terms of how the men accommodate themselves to the city, involving both material constraints (structure) and creative cultural practices (agency). Their biographical transformations are located within wider socioeconomic and political transformations associated with China's current modernization project, of which they are a major constitutive component.     

Gender,Spousal Caregiving,and Depression: Does Paid Work Matter?

Studies have shown that spousal caregiving leads to psychological distress, but few have analyzed the moderating effect of paid work. Using the 2000 to 2012 Health and Retirement Study and two‐stage least squares regression models, this study found that caregiving increased women's and men's depressive symptoms. Ordinary least squares models showed that caregiving had more adverse effects on women's mental health than on men's, but these differences were eliminated in two‐stage least squares models that accounted for the bidirectional effects of depression and caregiving. The current study also found that for women, part‐time work attenuated the depressive effect of spousal caregiving, whereas for men, part‐time work exacerbated it. These gender differences persisted even for intensive spousal caregivers. The authors suggest that caregiving women who work part‐time may benefit from work‐related resources. Caregiving men who work part‐time, however, may feel distressed, as their work–family experiences conflict with traditional gender norms.