Division of Household Labor

Gender & Society in the Classroom: Division of Household Labor

Organized by: Fang Fang, Virginia Tech
Updated by: Erielle Jones, University of Illinois – Chicago

Several studies published in Gender & Society since 2000 have focused on the change of division of labor at home and the change of gender relations and norms embedded in such division in the era of globalization. The intersectionality of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and other important social characteristics and its influence on individual women and men’s family experiences are the new development in the research of division of household labor published in the journal during this period of time. In addition, household activities are no longer examined isolated from the public sphere. The shrinking gap of financial contributions to households between men and women, which is caused by women’s increasing participation in paid work and men’s reduced earning power in the current economic transitional era, have led to the transformation of family structure, from breadwinner-homemaker model to dual-earner arrangement. However, the revolution is stalled as listed studies indicate. First, the women’s housework burden is not reduced in proportion with their increased paid work time, even though men are doing more housework than their fathers’ generation. This “stalled revolution” also refers to the persistence of traditional gender norms of men’s breadwinning role and women’s homemaking role at home where its new structure indicates more gender equality. The incompatibility between structure and ideology explains the persistence of gender inequality of both paid work and unpaid work.

Hsiung, Constance. 2022. “Gender-Typed Skill Co-Occurrence and Occupational Sex Segregation: The Case of Professional Occupations in the United States, 2011–2015.” Gender & Society 36 (4): 469–497.
Studies of occupational sex segregation rely on the sociocultural model to explain why some occupations are numerically dominated by women and others by men. This model argues that occupational sex segregation is driven by norms about gender-appropriate work, which are frequently conceptualized as gender-typed skills: work-related tasks, abilities, and knowledge domains that society views as either feminine or masculine. The sociocultural model thus explains the primary patterns of occupational sex segregation, which conform to these norms: Requirements for feminine (masculine) skills increase with women’s (men’s) representation in the occupation. However, the model does not adequately explain cases of segregation that deviate from these norms or investigate the ways in which feminine and masculine skills co-occur in occupations. The present study fills these gaps by evaluating two previously untested explanations for deviations from the sociocultural model. The findings show that requirements for physical strength (a masculine skill) increase with women’s representation in professional occupations because physical strength skills co-occur with substantially higher requirements for feminine skills that involve helping and caring for others. These results indicate that the sociocultural model, and more generally explanations for how gender norms drive occupational sex segregation, can be improved by examining patterns of gender-typed skill co-occurrence.

Kan, Man-Yee; Muzhi Zhou; Kamila Kolpashnikova; Ekaterina Hertog; Shohei Yoda; and Jiweon Jun. 2022. Revisiting the Gender Revolution: Time on Paid Work, Domestic Work, and Total Work in East Asian and Western Societies 1985–2016”. Gender & Society, 36(3): 368-396
We analyze time use data of four East Asian societies and 12 Western countries between 1985 and 2016 to investigate the gender revolution in paid work, domestic work, and total work. The closing of gender gaps in paid work, domestic work, and total work time has stalled in the most recent decade in several countries. The magnitude of the gender gaps, cultural contexts, and welfare policies plays a key role in determining whether the gender revolution in the division of labor will stall or continue. Women undertake more total work than men across all societies: The gender gap ranges from 30 minutes to 2 hours a day. Our findings suggest that cultural norms interact with institutional contexts to affect the patterns of gender convergence in time use, and gender equality might settle at differing levels of egalitarianism across countries.

Kuperberg, Arielle; Pamela Stone; and Torie Lucas. 2022. “He’s a Mr. Mom”: Cultural Ambivalence in Print News Depictions of Stay-at-Home Fathers, 1987–2016.” Gender & Society, 36(3): 313-341.
Stay-at-home fathers challenge norms related to masculinity and gendered divisions of parenting roles. We conduct a content analysis of 94 print news articles about at-home fathers published 1987–2016 in the United States, identifying key themes and comparing results with our earlier research on news depictions of at-home mothers. We also analyze national trends in fathers staying home using Current Population Survey data to understand contexts in which articles were published. Articles were family-centric and disproportionately focused on economic elites, emphasizing their “choice” to stay home, but economic reasons for fathers staying home were described more commonly than in portrayals of mothers. Stigmatization experiences were pervasive in articles, appearing more commonly when staying home was reported as discretionary, but less commonly when staying home resulted from involuntary unemployment in recent periods. Portrayals reflect, reinforce, contribute to, and challenge father-as-provider norms, mirroring changes in masculinity norms over time and revealing cultural ambivalence toward at-home fathers.

Çineli, Beyda. 2022. “Who Manages the Money at Home? Multilevel Analysis of Couples’ Money Management Across 34 Countries.” Gender & Society, 36(1): 32–62.
Women’s and men’s predominant social practices in managing employment and unpaid work are influenced by both family policies and society’s predominant cultural family models. Comparative approaches integrating macro-level and micro-level variables are increasingly used to study gendered dynamics in intimate relationships. Yet similar comparative approaches to the study of money management in intimate relationships are lacking. Using data from 34 countries surveyed in International Social Survey Programme 2012 data (N = 13,645), I explore how variation in institutional and cultural factors concerning gender expectations shapes money management decisions in intimate relationships. The results highlight the importance of contextual gender-egalitarian beliefs and institutional practices to the likelihood of using joint and individualized systems of money management over the traditional system. While macro-level gender ideology was associated with both joint and individualized system (vs. traditional), the institutional practices were found to have a stronger relationship with couples’ individualized money management.

Agarwal, Bina. 2021. “Reflections on the Less Visible and Less Measured: Gender and COVID-19 in India.” Gender & Society 35 (2): 244-255.
The gender effects of COVID-19 are complex, and extend much beyond the issues of care work and domestic violence that have captured global attention. Some effects have been immediate, such as job losses, food shortages, and enhanced domestic work burdens; others will emerge in time, such as the depletion of savings and assets and pandemic-related widowhood, which would make recovery difficult. I use examples from India to outline the complexity of such outcomes, the limitations of the many telephone surveys conducted during the pandemic, and the importance of anticipating both the immediate and the sequential effects.
We can anticipate these effects by drawing on our knowledge of preexisting gender inequalities and people’s coping strategies under crises, as well as real-time media alerts. Prior conceptualization can help us design better surveys for capturing both the visible and less visible impact of the pandemic, as well as formulate more effective policies for mitigating the adverse effects. I also highlight the advantages of group-based approaches for protecting women’s livelihoods during such crises, and emphasize the need to create a synergy between feminist theory, evidence gathering, and policy formulation.

Chung, Heejung, Holly Birkett, Sarah Forbes, and Hyojin Seo. 2021. “Covid-19, Flexible Working, and Implications for Gender Equality in the United Kingdom.” Gender & Society 35 (2): 218-232.
We examine the role flexible working has for gender equality during the pandemic, focusing on arrangements that give workers control over when and where they work. We use a survey of dual-earning working parents in the United Kingdom during the peak of the first lockdown, namely, between mid-May and mid-June 2020. Results show that in most households in our survey, mothers were mainly responsible for housework and child care tasks both before and during the lockdown period, although this proportion has slightly declined during the pandemic. In households where fathers worked from home during the pandemic, respondents were less likely to say that mothers were the ones solely or mostly responsible for housework and child care. Fathers who worked from home were more likely to say that they were doing more housework and child care during the lockdown period than they were before. Finally, we explore what we expect to happen in the postpandemic times in relation to flexible working and gender equality. The large expansion of flexible working we expect to happen may help reduce some of the gender inequalities that have exacerbated during the pandemic, but only if we reflect on and change our existing work cultures and gender norms.

Collins, Caitlyn, Leah Ruppanner, Liana Christin Landivar, and William J. Scarborough. 2021. “The Gendered Consequences of a Weak Infrastructure of Care: School Reopening Plans and Parents’ Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Gender & Society 35 (2): 180-193.
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended in-person public education across the United States, a critical infrastructure of care that parents—especially mothers—depend on to work. To understand the nature and magnitude of school closures across states, we collected detailed primary data—the Elementary School Operating Status database (ESOS)—to measure the percentage of school districts offering in-person, remote, and hybrid instruction models for elementary schools by state in September 2020. We link these data to the Current Population Survey to evaluate the association between school reopening and parents’ labor force participation rates, comparing 2020 labor force participation rates to those observed prepandemic in 2019. We find that, across states, the maternal labor force participation rate fell to a greater extent than that of fathers. In 2019, mothers’ rate of labor force participation was about 18 percentage points lower than fathers’. By 2020, this gap grew by 5 percentage points in states where schools offered primarily remote instruction. We show that schools are a vital source of care for young children, and that without in-person instruction, mothers have been sidelined from the labor force. The longer these conditions remain in place, the more difficult it may be for mothers to fully recover from prolonged spells of nonemployment, resulting in reduced occupational opportunities and lifetime earnings.

Craig, Lyn, and Brendan Churchill. 2021. “Unpaid Work and Care During COVID-19: Subjective Experiences of Same-Sex Couples and Single Mothers in Australia.” Gender & Society 35 (2): 233-243.
This paper draws on data from Work and Care During COVID-19, an online survey of Australians during pandemic lockdown in May 2020 (n = 2,722). It focuses on how subsamples of lesbian, gay, and bisexual mothers and fathers in couples (n = 280) and single mothers (n = 480) subjectively experienced unpaid work and care during lockdown compared with heterosexual mothers and fathers in couples, and with partnered mothers, respectively. During the pandemic, nonheterosexual fathers’ subjective reports were less negative than those of their heterosexual counterparts, but differences between heterosexual and lesbian/bisexual mothers were more mixed. Unlike their partnered counterparts, more single mothers reported feeling satisfied than before with their balance of paid and unpaid work and how they spent their time overall during the pandemic, perhaps because they avoided partnership conflicts and particularly benefited from relaxed commuting and child care deadlines.

Dunatchik, Allison, Kathleen Gerson, Jennifer Glass, Jerry A. Jacobs, and Haley Stritzel. 2021. “Gender, Parenting, and the Rise of Remote Work During the Pandemic: Implications for Domestic Inequality in the United States.” Gender & Society 35 (2): 194-205.
We examine how the shift to remote work altered responsibilities for domestic labor among partnered couples and single parents. The study draws on data from a nationally representative survey of 2,200 US adults, including 478 partnered parents and 151 single parents, in April 2020. The closing of schools and child care centers significantly increased demands on working parents in the United States, and in many circumstances reinforced an unequal domestic division of labor.

Fuller, Sylvia, and Yue Qian. 2021. “Covid-19 and the Gender Gap in Employment Among Parents of Young Children in Canada.” Gender & Society 35 (2): 206-217.
Economic and social disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic have important implications for gender and class inequality. Drawing on Statistics Canada’s monthly Labour Force Survey, we document trends in gender gaps in employment and work hours over the pandemic (February–October 2020). Our findings highlight the importance of care provisions for gender equity, with gaps larger among parents than people without children, and most pronounced when care and employment were more difficult to reconcile. When employment barriers eased, so did the gender–employment gap. The pandemic could not undo longer-standing cultural and structural shifts motivating contemporary mothers’ employment. The pandemic also exacerbated educational inequalities among women, highlighting the importance of assessing gendered impacts through an intersectional lens.

Kukreja, Reena. 2021. “Colorism as Marriage Capital: Cross-Region Marriage Migration in India and Dark-Skinned Migrant Brides.” Gender & Society 35 (1): 85-109.
This article, based on original research from 57 villages in four provinces from North and East India, sheds light on a hitherto unexplored gendered impact of colorism in facilitating noncustomary cross-region marriage migrations in India. Within socioeconomically marginalized groups from India’s development peripheries, the hegemonic construct of fairness as “capital” conjoins with both regressive patriarchal gender norms governing marriage and female sexuality and the monetization of social relations, through dowry, to foreclose local marriage options for darker-hued women. This dispossession of matrimonial choice forces women to “voluntarily” accept marriage proposals from North Indian bachelors, who are themselves faced with a bride shortage in their own regions due to skewed sex ratios. These marriages condemn cross-region brides to new forms of gender subordination and skin-tone discrimination within the intimacy of their marriages, and in everyday relations with conjugal families, kin, and rural communities. Because of colorism, cross-region brides are exposed to caste-discriminatory exclusions and ethnocentric prejudice. Dark-skin shaming is a strategic ideological weapon employed to extract more labor from them. The article extends global scholarly discussion on the role of colorism in articulating new forms of gendered violence in dark-complexioned, poor rural women’s lives.

Laster Pirtle, Whitney N., and Tashelle Wright. 2021. “Structural Gendered Racism Revealed in Pandemic Times: Intersectional Approaches to Understanding Race and Gender Health Inequities in COVID-19.” Gender & Society 35 (2): 168-179.
The pandemic reveals; the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has brought the historically rooted inequities of our society to the forefront. We argue that an intersectional analysis is needed to further help peel back the veil that the pandemic has begun to reveal. We identify structural gendered racism—the totality of interconnectedness between structural racism and structural sexism in shaping race and gender inequities—as a root cause of health problems among Black women and other women of color, which has been amplified during the pandemic. We show that women of color occupy disadvantaged positions within households, occupations, and health care institutions, and therefore face heightened risk for COVID-19 and lowered resources for mitigating the impact of the deadly virus. Intersectional analyses and solutions must be centered to also reveal, we hope, a new way forward.

Misra, Joya, Alexandra Kuvaeva, Kerryann O’meara, Dawn Kiyoe Culpepper, and Audrey Jaeger. 2021. “Gendered and Racialized Perceptions of Faculty Workloads.” Gender & Society 35 (3): 358-394.
Faculty workload inequities have important consequences for faculty diversity and inclusion. On average, women faculty spend more time engaging in service, teaching, and mentoring, while men, on average, spend more time on research, with women of color facing particularly high workload burdens. We explore how faculty members perceive workload in their departments, identifying mechanisms that can help shape their perceptions of greater equity and fairness. White women perceive that their departments have less equitable workloads and are less committed to workload equity than white men. Women of color perceive that their departments are less likely to credit their important work through departmental rewards systems than white men. Workload transparency and clarity, and consistent approaches to assigning classes, advising, and service, can reduce women’s perceptions of inequitable and unfair workloads. Our research suggests that departments can identify and put in place a number of key practices around workload that will improve gendered and racialized perceptions of workload.

Rao, Aliya Hamid. 2021. “Gendered Interpretations of Job Loss and Subsequent Professional Pathways.” Gender & Society 35 (6): 884–909.
While we know that career interruptions shape men’s and women’s professional trajectories, we know less about how job loss may matter for this process. Drawing on interviews with unemployed, college-educated men and women in professional occupations, I show that while both men and women interpret their job loss as due to impersonal “business” decisions, women additionally attribute their job loss as arising from employers’ “personal” decisions. Men’s job loss shapes their subsequent preferred professional pathways, but never in a way that diminishes the importance of their participation in the labor force. For some women in this study, job loss becomes a moment to reflect on their professional pathways, often pulling them back from paid work. This study identifies job loss as an event that, on top of gendered workplace experiences and caregiving obligations, may curtail some women’s participation in paid work.

Ruppanner, Leah, Caitlyn Collins, Liana Christin Landivar, and William J. Scarborough. 2021. “How Do Gender Norms and Childcare Costs Affect Maternal Employment Across US States?” Gender & Society 35 (6): 910–939.
In this article, we investigate how state-to-state differences in U.S. childcare costs and gender norms are associated with maternal employment. Although an abundance of research has examined factors that influence mothers’ employment, few studies explore the interrelationship between maternal employment and culture, policy, and individual resources across U.S. states. Using a representative sample of women in the 2017 American Community Survey along with state-level measures of childcare costs and gender norms, we examine the relationship between these state conditions and mothers’ probability of employment. We pay careful attention to differences in mothers’ level of education. Our results suggest that expensive childcare is associated with lower maternal employment, particularly for those with less education. For the college educated, expensive childcare is negatively associated with maternal employment in states with traditional gender norms that uphold mothers as primary caregivers. Among mothers with lower levels of education, gender norms have a limited association with employment. These findings suggest that highly educated mothers mobilize resources to remain in the labor force when paid work is supported by local gender norms. For less-educated mothers, expensive childcare predicts lower employment regardless of gender norms, indicating that structural constraints outweigh normative expectations among those with fewer resources.

Yaish, Meir, Hadas Mandel, and Tali Kristal. 2021. “Has the Economic Lockdown Following the Covid-19 Pandemic Changed the Gender Division of Labor in Israel?” Gender & Society 35 (2): 256-270.
The economic shutdown and national lockdown following the outbreak of COVID-19 have increased demand for unpaid work at home, particularly among families with children, and reduced demand for paid work. Concurrently, the share of the workforce that has relocated its workplace to home has also increased. In this article, we examine the consequences of these processes for the allocation of time among paid work, housework, and care work for men and women in Israel. Using data on 2,027 Israeli adults whom we followed since the first week of March (before the spread of COVID-19), we focus on the effect of the second lockdown in Israel (in September) on the gender division of both paid and unpaid work. We find that as demand for housework caused by the lockdown increases, women—especially with children—increase their housework much more than men do, particularly when they work from home. The consequences of work from home and other flexible work arrangements for gender inequality within the family are discussed.

Ahmed, Sarah. 2020. “Women Left Behind: Migration, Agency, and the Pakistani Woman.” Gender & Society 34 (4): 597-619.
This article examines how migration impacts power dynamics and gender norms for women left behind living in rural Southern Punjab, Pakistan, a site where patriarchal customs and religion are interwoven to confine women’s mobility and agency. Based on qualitative interviews and focus groups with women left behind from 2015 through 2018, this article explores how local rural-to-urban male migration patterns impact the decision-making powers of women who are left behind and must make sense of the family structure and gender dynamics in their homes after their husbands’ exit. This study finds that in the absence of her migrant husband, a woman left behind is still subject to patriarchal norms and surveillance by the remaining in-laws, including other women. Citing specific examples from the field, I explain why women left behind remain close to the very families that confine and monitor their movement, and why, in some cases, women left behind turn a blind eye toward their husband’s second or third marriage. Through an examination of behind-the-scenes negotiations that women left behind make, I argue that women maintain for themselves at surface level the gendered expectations that patriarchy sets for them, but given the opportunity, they can negotiate and bargain their positionality in subtle ways without disrupting the status quo that could otherwise jeopardize their physical safety and social reputation (honor).

Yu, Sojin. 2020. “Gendered Nationalism in Practice: An Intersectional Analysis of Migrant Integration Policy in South Korea.” Gender & Society 34 (6): 976-1004.
In this article, I investigate how gendered nationalism is articulated through everyday practices in relation to immigrant integration policy and the intersectional production of inequality in South Korea. By using ethnographic data collected at community centers created to implement national “multicultural” policy, I examine the individual perspectives and experiences of Korean staff and targeted recipients (marriage migrants). To defend their own “native” privileges, the Korean staff stressed the gendered caretaking roles of marriage migrants and their contribution to the nation as justification for state support. The migrants, while critical of the familial responsibilities imposed on them in Korea, underscored their gendered value to the nation (as mothers to “Korean” children) to offset their subjugated position. The diverging perspectives of the two groups are informed by “everyday” nationalism, generated through constantly gendered terms and effects. Bringing together the literature on nationalism and migration through a focus on reproductive labor, I expose how national boundaries are drawn through quotidian practices of gendered nationalism, with significant implications for gender and ethnic hierarchies.

Preisner, Klaus, Franz Neuberger, Ariane Bertogg, and Julia M. Schaub. 2019. “Closing the Happiness Gap: The Decline of Gendered Parenthood Norms and the Increase in Parental Life Satisfaction.” Gender & Society 34 (1): 31-55.
In recent decades, normative expectations for parenthood have changed for both men and women, fertility has declined, and work–family arrangements have become more egalitarian. Previous studies indicate that the transition to parenthood and work–family arrangements both influence life satisfaction and do so differently for men and women. Drawing on constructivism and utility maximization, we theorize how gendered parenthood norms influence life satisfaction after the transition to parenthood, and how decisions regarding motherhood and fatherhood are made in order to maximize life satisfaction. We hypothesize that the rise of gender-egalitarian patterns has contributed to closing the parental happiness gap, and that the effects of motherhood and fatherhood on life satisfaction have converged. We test these assumptions by drawing on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2015) and applying a series of hybrid panel regressions to estimate motherhood and fatherhood effects on life satisfaction in Western Germany over the last three decades. We then trace trends in these effects back to changing parenthood norms. The results indicate that the implications of parenthood have converged for men and women. As support for a gendered division of labor has lost ground, the transition to parenthood has become increasingly conducive to life satisfaction for both genders, and the parental happiness gap has vanished.

Rehel, Erin M. 2014. “When Dad Stays Home Too: Paternity Leave, Gender, and Parenting.” Gender & Society 28 (1): 110-32.
Drawing from 85 semi-structured interviews with fathers and mothers in three cities (Montreal, Toronto, and Chicago), the author argued that when fathers in heterosexual couples experience the transition to parenthood in ways that are structurally comparable to mothers, they come to think about and enact parenting in ways that are more similar to mothers. Leave-taking fathers gained a broader understanding of parenting than fathers who did not take leave. She considered the specific role played by extended time off immediately after the birth of a child in structuring that experience. By drawing fathers into the daily realities of child care, free of workplace constraints, extended time off provides the space necessary for fathers to develop the parenting skills and sense of responsibility that then allows them to be active co-parents rather than helpers to their female partners. This article also demonstrates the promising ways government supported paternal leave-taking can lead to men becoming active and responsible co-parents. The shift from a manager-helper dynamic to that of co-parenting creates the opportunity for the development of a more gender-equitable division of labor.

Chesley, Noelle. 2011. “Stay-at-Home Fathers and Breadwinning Mothers: Gender, Couple Dynamics, and Social Change.” Gender & Society 25 (5): 642-64.
The author examines experiences of married couples to better understand whether economic shifts that push couples into gender-atypical work/family arrangements influence gender inequality. She draws on in-depth interviews conducted in 2008 with stay-at-home husbands and their wives in 21 married-couple families with children (42 individual interviews). She finds that the decision to have a father stay home is heavily influenced by economic conditions, suggesting that men’s increased job instability and shifts in the relative employment conditions of husbands and wives push some men into at-home fatherhood. However, this shift in family arrangements can promote change toward greater gender equality even in couples that initially hold traditional gender-role beliefs. The data indicate that at-home fathers come to value their increased involvement in children’s care in ways. This type of change might reduce gender differences in parenting and have the potential to translate into institutional change, particularly when fathers reenter the labor force. Furthermore, at-home father arrangements generally appear to provide increased support for women’s employment and promote changes in women’s work behavior that may reduce inequities that stem from traditionally gendered divisions in work/family responsibilities.

Hoang, Lan Anh, and Brenda S. A. Yeoh. 2011. “Breadwinning Wives and ‘Left-Behind’ Husbands: Men and Masculinities in Vietnamese Transnational Family.” Gender & Society 25 (6): 717-39.
This article explores an aspect of women’s transnational labor migration that has been understudied in many labor-sending countries: how men experience shifts in the household labor division triggered by women’s migration. In so doing, it sheds light on the diverse ways notions of masculinity and gender identities are being reworked and renegotiated in the transnational family. Drawing on qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews with carers of left-behind children in Northern Vietnam, this article shows how men are confronted with the need to take on child care duties, which have traditionally been ascribed to women, while at the same time being under considerable pressure to live up to locally accepted masculinity ideals attached to the breadwinner role. Instead of applying pressure on the woman to remit, they worked longer hours (and thus spent less time with and for the children) or borrowed money from other people to pay for daily expenses (if possible). Its findings contradict the portrayal in the literature of men falling into pieces or resorting to hypermasculinity in the face of losing their economic power and challenge the assumption that women’s increased mobility and economic power leads to a “crisis” of masculinities. The study also reemphasizes the complexity and malleability of lived gender relations and identities.

Legerski, Elizabeth Miklya, and Marie Cornwall. 2010. “Working-Class Job Loss, Gender, and the Negotiation of Household Labor.” Gender & Society 24 (4): 447-74.
Scholars see the gendered division of household labor as a stronghold of gender inequality. This article explores changes in household labor and gender relations when conservative, working-class families experience employment disruptions. Using data from 49 qualitative interviews conducted with men and women following the forced unemployment of breadwinning husbands, the authors observe some change in gendered household labor but conclude that a significant degendering of housework is thwarted by institutional-, interactive-, and individual-level processes. At the institutional level, the lack of well-paying jobs for both men and women, and the persistent pattern of gendered division of household tasks discourage change. At the individual level, when no new gender ideologies emerge, challenges to gendered identities of both men and women encourage a reinforcement of traditional gender ideologies. At the interactional level, since neither of spouses press hard for the role change, women’s responsibility for care work and the meaning of paid work for unemployed husbands forestall the adjustment of tasks.

Thébaud, Sarah. 2010. “Masculinity, Bargaining, and Breadwinning: Understanding Men’s Housework in the Cultural Context of Paid Work.” Gender & Society 24 (3): 330-54.
This research uses data from 18 countries to investigate cross-national differences in the effect that men’s income relative to their spouses has on their involvement in housework. The author hypothesizes that gender expectations will be more salient in men’s household bargaining in contexts where the traditionally masculine and breadwinning-related activities of paid work and earning income are highly valued. Results from analyses of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data support this hypothesis: Men’s behavior is more consistent with a gender deviance neutralization account than an exchange-bargaining account in cultural contexts where paid work and income are highly valued. In other words, men are more likely to withdraw from housework rather than perform more housework if their wives earn more. The analyses point to the role that expectations about masculinity play in men’s involvement in housework and highlight the significance of cultural context for understanding the link between paid and unpaid work.

Civettini, Nicole H.W., and Jennifer Glass. 2008. “The Impact of Religious Conservatism on Men’s Work and Family Involvement.” Gender & Society 22 (2): 172-93.
The social conservatism of evangelical and fundamentalist supports premarital sexual restraint, husband leadership, and father involvement. The authors explore whether religious conservatism affects work–family outcomes of men using the National Survey of Families and Households, 1988 and 1993 waves. The authors hypothesize that men from conservative households will make earlier transitions to adulthood, work fewer hours, and earn less money. Moreover, the belief in strong paternal involvement should lead religiously conservative men to spend more time in housework and child care. Results show that conservative religious affiliation does not hasten the transition to adulthood among men. Current religious conservatism results in lower wages but not reduced work hours, and religious affiliation does not affect division of housework or child care between men and women in religious conservative households.

Kenney, Catherine T. 2006. “The Power of the Purse: Allocative Systems and Inequality in Couple Households.” Gender & Society 20 (3): 354-381.
Research in the Unites States concerning the relative access of women and men to financial resources has focused on the influence of women’s increasing market work but has largely overlooked the also critical issue of what happens to money after it enters couple households. To fill this gap, this article employs a typology of household allocative systems developed in Great Britain to analyze money management and control in a sample of U.S. couples drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. I find that the use of these systems varies substantially across socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and relationship status groups, as well as by partners’ relative household contributions. The patterns suggest that many women, already disadvantaged in earnings, either absolutely or relative to their partners, are in couples in which men’s control over or withholding of income may reproduce or exacerbate their earnings disadvantage. 

Sullivan, Oriel. 2004. “Changing Gender Practices Within the Household a Theoretical Perspective.” Gender & Society 18 (2): 207-222.
While recent emphasis has been placed on transformations of gender in the public sphere, changes in gender relations between heterosexual couples in the domestic sphere have been less fully developed in the theoretical literature. The author presents evidence for change at various levels, from the discursive to the quantitative. She outlines a theoretical framework for the analysis of such change based on the “doing gender” and gender consciousness perspectives, readdressed in the light of the new emphasis on discourses of reflexivity and intimacy. She argues for a conception of change that is slow and uneven, in which daily practices and interactions are linked to attitudes and discourse, perhaps over generations.

Lan, Pei-Chia. 2003. “Maid or Madam? Filipina Migrant Workers and the Continuity of Domestic Labor.” Gender & Society 17 (2): 187-208.
This article examines the complexity of feminized domestic labor in the context of global migration. In this article, unpaid household labor and paid domestic work are not viewed as dichotomous categories but as structural continuities across the public and private spheres. Based on a qualitative study of Filipina migrant domestic workers in Taiwan, the author demonstrates how women travel through the maid/madam boundary-housewives in home countries become breadwinners by doing domestic work overseas, and foreign maids turn into foreign brides. While migrant women sell their domestic labor in the market, they remain burdened with gendered responsibilities in their own families as mothers and wives. Their simultaneous occupancy of paid and unpaid domestic labor is divided into distinct spatial settings. The article also presents women’s agency, which is how they articulate their paid and unpaid domestic labor and bargain with the monetary and emotional value of their labor.

Dalton, Susan E., and Denise D. Bielby. 2000. “‘That’s our kind of constellation’: Lesbian Mothers Negotiate Institutionalized Understandings of Gender Within the Family.” Gender & Society 14 (1): 36-61.
This article examines some of the ways that sex, gender, and sexual orientation intersect in lesbian-headed two-parent families, affecting how they construct their roles as mothers. The authors’ analysis of interviews from 14 lesbian mothers remedies this deficiency by focusing both on how they draw upon and transform dominant cultural scripts, practices, and understandings of family roles and relations in order to organize parenting based on the premise of mothering by two women. Their findings reveal how these mothers reinscribed gendered understandings while simultaneously challenging heteronormative ones in their efforts to construct and maintain socially viable two-parent families.