Policy, Preferences, and Patriarchy: The Division of Domestic Labor in East Germany, West Germany, and the United States |
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Authors: | Cooke Lynn Prince |
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Institution: | Lynn Prince Cooke is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Social and Behavioural Science at University of Queensland. |
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Abstract: | Individual agency observed in the gendered division of laboris shaped by structural factors, but only recently has evidenceemerged that the effect of womens resources varies systematicallyin its sociopolitical context. Here we use the 1994 InternationalSocial Survey Program to assess whether the relative effectof a proxy for womens and mens preferenceshallmarkof individual choicevaries as well across three countrieswith divergent historical policy approaches regarding the privatesphere. East German socialist policies required and supportedwomens employment; West German policy promulgated a malebreadwinner model, and U.S. policy primarily remains silenton the private sphere. The division of domestic tasks and relativestrength of individual preferences on shifting it vary by region.In the former East Germany the division of domestic labor ismore egalitarian and the effect of preferences is small butequal for the genders. In West Germany the division is moretraditional and preference effects are greater, but gender differencesin these are insignificant. The U.S. division of domestic taskfalls between the two German regions, and the gender differencein preference effects is the greatest, with U.S. menspreferences predicting significantly more variance than do U.S.womens. Consequently, allowing the market to dominatedoes not yield equal strength of preferences in the individual-levelmodels used to predict the division of domestic tasks. Thissupports the dual-system feminist claims that capitalism canexacerbate nonmarket patriarchal hierarchies. |
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