Feminists and the Ideology and Practice of Marital Equality

Abstract

In her 1972 book, The Future of Marriage, and again in second edition (1982), Bernard concluded that future viability of marriage will depend upon upgrading marriage for women. After reviewing literature on marriage, she declared that two marriages exist, his and hers, and that marriage is more attractive and healthier for former than for latter. Bernard (1982) was optimistic that couples were struggling to improve marriage to make it beneficial for both spouses, although achieving an equal division of employment and family work was still more talked about than practiced (p. 300). According to more recent research, equality between marital partners continues to reflect incongruency between ideology and practice. Individual couples may experience more congruency between talk and action, but for majority of married couples, discrepancy remains. Traditional marital and family life, described as patriarchal but father-absent (Luepnitz, 1988, p. 111), is a tenacious script that some couples are attempting to rewrite with much effort and disappointment. Past research has found that when women in traditional marriages assume a feminist identity, they and their relational expectations change a great deal but their husbands have little interest in changing their beliefs and behaviors (Acker, Barry, & Esseveld, 1981). Hochschild (1989) noted incongruency between ideology and practice in marriage when she considered the second (i.e., housework, parental responsibilities, and domestic management). While 18% of men studied shared work of second shift equally with their wives, majority did not. However, even though research such as Hochschild's reports a continued incongruency for majority of couples, it also indicates that, for some couples, congruency between ideology and practice of marital equality is possible (Gilbert, 1993; Jump & Haas, 1987). Among men who subscribed to an egalitarian ideology, 70% shared equally, while only 22% of men subscribing to a traditional ideology and 3% of men subscribing to a transitional ideology shared equally. Certainly an ideology of marital equality increases possibility of sharing family work, although it is not a guarantee. FEMINISM AND MARRIAGE Feminism highlights first and foremost oppressive character of structural inequality based on gender (Osmond & Thorne, 1993). Recent theorizing on gender has examined the process of social construction of maleness and femaleness as oppositional categories with social value (Ferree, 1990, p. 868). Distinctions based on gender require ignoring and even suppression of similarities by the constant and contentious process of en-gendering behavior as separate and unequal (Ferree, 1990, p. 869). Gender becomes, along with race, sexual orientation, class, and age, an organizing category of peoples' lives. Feminist analyses have provided an excellent critique of relationships as gendered constructions. Over past two decades, feminists have demonstrated problematic nature of marital and family life for women (Glenn, 1987). Women are marital partners responsible for a family's emotional intimacy, for adapting their sexual desires to their husbands', for monitoring relationship and resolving conflict from a subordinate position, and for being as independent as possible without threatening their husbands' status (Fishman, 1983; Thompson & Walker, 1989). Feminism has provided a critique of traditional gender-structured marriage, resulting in an awareness of its overwhelming cost to women in financial, emotional, and physical dimensions. The problematic nature of marriage for women has been linked to its centrality in patriarchy, devaluation of women's work, and hierarchy of gender (Ferree, 1990; Glenn, 1987). Previously published research indicates a higher involvement of men in family life when married to women with equal or higher education, income, and status (Jump & Haas, 1987; Perry-Jenkins & Crouter, 1990). …