Divisions of Household Labor

Abstract

AbstractDivision of household labor refers to the allocation of duties implicated in keeping a family running smoothly in the private sphere, including tasks such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, and childcare. Traditionally, in the public sphere, men were the family breadwinners, while in the private sphere women were the housework experts, doing between three fourths and two thirds of routine household labor. Breadwinning is paid, valued, and empowering; housework is unpaid, devalued, and disempowering and the disadvantages accruing to women doing the bulk of the housework shade over into their paid labor force participation. Over the course of the twentieth century, women's housework contribution declined while their labor force participation increased, and men's household labor contribution increased, even as women continued to do the majority of household labor. Time availability, relative resources, and gender ideology are three popular theoretical explanations for the gender gap in household contribution at the family level, while new theoretical perspectives examine work–family and gender policy at the national level as contexts within which the family distribution of household labor is embedded.