scholarly journals Gendered division of labor during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown: Implications for relationship problems and satisfaction

2021 ◽  
pp. 026540752199647
Author(s):  
Nina Waddell ◽  
Nickola C. Overall ◽  
Valerie T. Chang ◽  
Matthew D. Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Relationship Satisfaction ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Working Parents ◽  
Relationship Problems ◽  
Personal Time ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor ◽  
Relationship Outcomes ◽  
Paid Labor

COVID-19 lockdowns have required many working parents to balance domestic and paid labor while confined at home. Are women and men equally sharing the workload? Are inequities in the division of labor compromising relationships? Leveraging a pre-pandemic longitudinal study of couples with young children, we examine gender differences in the division and impact of domestic and paid labor during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown ( N = 157 dyads). Women did more of the parenting and housework, whereas men engaged in more paid work and personal time, during the lockdown. Couple members agreed that women’s share of parenting, housework and personal time was unfair, but this did not protect women from the detrimental relationship outcomes associated with an inequitable share of domestic labor. A greater, and more unfair, share of parenting, housework and personal time predicted residual increases in relationship problems and decreases in relationship satisfaction for women. Exploratory analyses indicated that men who were the primary caregiver or were not working fulltime also experienced negative relationship outcomes when they did more housework and parenting. These results substantiate concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic may undermine advances toward gender equality by reinforcing inequitable divisions of labor, thereby damaging women’s relationship wellbeing.

scholarly journals Gendered Division of Labour during a Nationwide COVID-19 Lockdown: Implications for Relationship Problems and Satisfaction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Waddell ◽  
Nickola Overall ◽  
Valerie Chang ◽  
Matthew Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Relationship Satisfaction ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Working Parents ◽  
Relationship Problems ◽  
Personal Time ◽  
Relationship Outcomes ◽  
Domestic Labour

COVID-19 lockdowns have required many working parents to balance domestic and paid labour while confined at home. Are women and men equally sharing the workload? Are inequities in the division of labour compromising relationships? Leveraging a pre-pandemic longitudinal study of couples with young children, we examine gender differences in the division and impact of domestic and paid labour during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown (N = 157 dyads). Women took on more of the parenting and housework, whereas men engaged in more paid work and personal time, during the lockdown. Couple members agreed that women’s share of parenting, housework and personal time was unfair, but this did not protect women burdened with an inequitable share of domestic labour from experiencing detrimental relationship outcomes. A greater, and more unfair, share of parenting, housework and personal time predicted residual increases in relationship problems and decreases in relationship satisfaction for women. Men who were not working full-time or were the primary caregiver also experienced negative relationship outcomes when they did more housework and parenting. These results substantiate concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic may undermine advances toward gender equality by reinforcing inequitable divisions of labour, thereby damaging women’s relationship wellbeing.

A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

2019 ◽  
pp. 31-62
Author(s):  
Gina Schouten
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
Gender Egalitarianism ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter reviews the empirical literature on the gendered division of labor, demonstrating that paid work and unpaid caregiving labor remain unequally distributed according to gender and that political interventions can be effective in inducing families to share work more equally. The main goal in this review of the empirical literature is to motivate the project. I then set out the menu of gender-egalitarian interventions that would be, if implemented, promising strategies for eroding the gendered division of labor. Finally, I explore political liberalism’s commitment to mutual respect, working to get more precise about what the gender-egalitarian interventions in question do, why they are appropriately regarded as subsidies for gender-egalitarian lifestyles, and why subsidizing gender egalitarianism seems, intuitively, to be at odds with mutual respect. The goal here is to build a rough understanding of the reciprocity considerations embedded in the ideal of mutual respect.

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gina Schouten
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Liberal Society ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Gender Egalitarianism ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
Political Intervention

The trend toward gender equalization in domestic and paid labor allocations has stalled, and a growing number of scholars argue that, absent political intervention, further eroding of the gendered division of labor will not be forthcoming anytime soon. Certain political interventions could jumpstart the stalled gender revolution, but beyond their prospects for effectiveness, such interventions stand in need of another kind of justification. In a diverse, liberal state, reasonable citizens will disagree about what makes for a good life and a good society. Because a fundamental commitment of liberalism is to limit political intrusion into the lives of citizens and allow considerable space for those citizens to act on their own conceptions of the good, questions of legitimacy arise. Legitimacy concerns the constraints we must abide by as we seek collective political solutions to our shared social problems, given that we will disagree, reasonably, both about what constitutes a problem and about what costs we should be willing to incur to fix it. The interventions in question would subsidize gender-egalitarian lifestyles at a cost to those who prefer to maintain a traditional gendered division of labor. In a pluralistic, liberal society where many citizens reasonably resist the feminist agenda, can scarce public resources be used to finance political interventions to subsidize gender egalitarianism? This book argues that they can, and moreover, that they can even by the lights of political liberalism, a particularly demanding theory of liberal legitimacy.

Social Norms, Choice, and Work

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor

In modern liberal democracies, the gendered division of labor is partially the result of men and women making different choices about work and family life, even if such choices stem from social norms about gender. The choices that women make relative to men’s disadvantage them in various ways: such choices lead them to earn less, enjoy less power and prestige in the labor market, be less able to participate in the political sphere on an equal basis, make them to some degree financially dependent on others, and leave them at a bargaining disadvantage and vulnerable in certain personal relationships. This chapter considers if and when the state should intervene to address women’s disadvantage and inequalities that are the result of gender specialization. It is argued that political liberals can and sometimes must intervene in the gendered division of labor when persons’ interests as free and equal citizens are frustrated.

Mobilized Yet Contained: Popular Women, Feminisms, and Organizing around Venezuela’s 2012 Organic Labor Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 0094582X2110130
Author(s):  
Rachel Elfenbein
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor ◽  
Women's Organizing ◽  
State Adoption ◽  
Las Mujeres ◽  
The Revolution

Venezuela’s state-led national-popular Bolivarian process opened up a new political field for feminism—an approach that was both institutional and popular, aiming to combine forces from above and from below and use state gender institutions to foment popular women’s organization. Yet this field was conflictual, containing contesting popular feminist projects with different implications for the gendered division of labor. Analysis of popular women’s organizing around Venezuela’s 2012 organic labor law shows that state adoption of feminism marked a gendered political opening for popularizing feminism while also presenting risks of state co-optation of popular women’s organizing. The state understood popular women’s organization and mobilization as central to the revolution, yet it generally attempted to limit their autonomy and organizing to challenge the gendered division of labor. El bolivarianismo nacional-popular liderado por el estado venezolano abrió un nuevo campo político para el feminismo: un enfoque que era tanto institucional como popular y cuyo objetivo era combinar fuerzas tanto de arriba como de abajo, así como utilizar las instituciones estatales de género para fomentar las organizaciones populares de mujeres. Sin embargo, este campo resultó conflictivo, y parte de su contenido impugnaba proyectos feministas populares con diferentes implicaciones para las divisiones de género en el trabajo. El análisis de la organización popular de las mujeres en torno a la ley orgánica del trabajo de Venezuela de 2012 muestra que la adopción estatal del feminismo marcó una apertura política de género con intenciones de popularizar el feminismo a la vez que presentaba el riesgo de que la organización popular de las mujeres fuera cooptada por el estado. El estado consideraba la organización y movilización popular de las mujeres como esenciales a la revolución. Sin embargo y hablando generalmente, se abocó a limitar su autonomía y organización cuando se trataba de desafiar las divisiones de género en el trabajo.

Hours of Paid Work and Volunteering: Evidence From Danish Panel Data

2021 ◽  
pp. 089976402199166
Author(s):  
Hans-Peter Y. Qvist
Keyword(s):  
Panel Data ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Time Constraint ◽  
Integration Theory ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Constraint Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
The Relationship

The nature of the relationship between the time people spend on paid work and volunteering remains debated in the social sciences. Time constraint theory suggests a negative relationship because people can allocate only as much time to volunteering as their work responsibilities permit. However, social integration theory suggests a more complex inverse U-shaped relationship because paid work not only limits people’s free time but also plays a key role in their social integration. Departing from these competing theories, this study uses two-wave panel data from Denmark to examine the relationship between hours of paid work and volunteering. In support of time constraint theory, the results suggest that hours of paid work have a significant negative effect on the total number of hours that people spend volunteering, not mainly because paid work hours affect people’s propensity to volunteer but because they affect the number of hours that volunteers contribute.

scholarly journals Relationship satisfaction and concordance in attitudes to maternal employment in British couples with young children

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (7) ◽  
pp. 2184-2204
Author(s):  
Lauren Bird ◽  
Amanda Sacker ◽  
Anne McMunn
Keyword(s):  
Relationship Satisfaction ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Maternal Employment ◽  
Potential Association ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
Representative Cohort

Changes in paid labor in families have occurred within the wider context of societal changes in gendered attitudes to work. However, changes in behavior and attitudes are not necessarily correlated with each other, and their associations with family relationships are complex. This study uses data from over 12,000 two-parent families in the U.K.’s Millennium Cohort Study, a nationally representative cohort of children born during 2000–2002. The study investigates the potential association between relationship satisfaction and discordance between attitudes to maternal employment and mothers’ actual participation in paid labor, as well as agreement in attitudes within couples. Results show that attitudes in favor of maternal employment and actual maternal employment are generally associated with better relationship satisfaction for both mothers and fathers. In addition, discordance between an individual’s attitudes and behavior in relation to maternal employment, and discordant attitudes within couples, is both associated with significantly lower relationship satisfaction compared with concordant couples.

Gender, Parenting, and The Rise of Remote Work During the Pandemic: Implications for Domestic Inequality in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-205
Author(s):  
Allison Dunatchik ◽  
Kathleen Gerson ◽  
Jennifer Glass ◽  
Jerry A. Jacobs ◽  
Haley Stritzel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Single Parents ◽  
The United States ◽  
Child Care Centers ◽  
Remote Work ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Working Parents ◽  
Nationally Representative

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.

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