This article argues that task-specific measures of the division of household labor form a gender hier archy that reflects dimensions of meaning in the organization of household work. We contrast these measures to the commonly used time-share and Likert scale measures, which assume all tasks are interchangeable. Using Guttman scaling, we test the unidimensionality of this task hierarchy. Using odds ratios, we measure relationships between spe cific tasks, and using logistic regression, we see differences in correlates of husbands' participation by task and interrelationships among tasks that persist, controlling for gender ideology and socio economic factors. This should encourage de velopment of measures of change in the segrega tion of household tasks by gender. Many studies have found that women, even when employed, remain responsible for housework (Eng land & Farkas, 1986; Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994). The actual division of housework by gender has been less clearly conceptualized and measured (Blair & Lichter, 1991). Even though researchers no longer assume that all housework is work by definition, the possibility that specific tasks might change gender assignment-the way specific occupations have done-is not explicitly addressed in the literature. Investigating the gender meanings of specific tasks has largely been left to qualitative research (DeVault, 1991; Hochschild, 1989). We suggest several different quantitative approaches to measuring the similarity and differences in household tasks, and we show that the factors that explain husbands' participation differ, depending on the task. We argue that such measures of task hierarchy can complement qualitative research by improving our understanding of both where and why change already is occurring and what task-specific resistances and obstacles to greater participation by husbands exist. Our argument is grounded in the literatures of the gender perspective and occupational sex segregation. LITERATURE REVIEW In the past decade, the literature on the division of household labor has increasingly become guided by the awareness that gender itself plays an important role. Previous has clearly established that despite entry into the labor force in increasing proportions, wives remain disproportionately responsible for household maintenance (Baxter, 1992; Blair & Johnson, 1992; Ross, 1987; Shelton & John, 1993). Moreover, gender-neutral, resourcebased approaches, although important, are not sufficient to explain the unequal division of labor (Ferree, 1990; Thompson & Walker, 1989). The gender perspective offers one explanation for the continuing lopsided division of household labor. From this perspective, performing housework certainly produces material results such as clean clothes and hot meals, but the gendered division of household labor also produces proper gender relations (e.g., Blain, 1994; DeVault, 1991; Fenstermaker Berk, 1985; South & Spitze, 1994) and social identities (Fraser, 1989). Researchers in this perspective argue that all work, including done at home without pay, is dual aspect activity (Fraser) and takes on symbolic meaning, part of which is gendered meaning. From this perspective, both labor-market and household are divided less from considerations of skill, time, or talent, than from efforts to establish boundaries between men's and women's work. Such boundaries affirm and reproduce masculinity and femininity, and doing the sort of defined as inappropriate for one's gender produces demands for accountability or justifications for why such a transgression of normative expectations is warranted (Gerson & Peiss, 1985; West & Zimmerman, 1987). On the one hand, gender boundaries such as those that structure the paid labor market are constructed, in part, through the labeling of specific skills and interests as appropriate for men or for women (Acker, 1990; Reskin, 1993; West & Zimmerman, 1987). …