Traditional Gender Division Of Labor Research Articles

When dating shows encounter parents: A reception study of Chinese Dating among Chinese young female audiences

ABSTRACT Chinese Dating, a TV dating show that premiered on Shanghai Dragon TV by the end of 2016, highlighted the role of parents in their children’s mate selection process. By conducting in-depth interviews with 40 never-married, heterosexual, and educated women between the ages of 20 and 30 in urban China, this study discusses how the young female audiences interpret the show and how they relate it to their lived experiences. The results indicate that the female audiences strongly criticize the traditional gender division of labor emphasized by the parents on Chinese Dating. Celebrating individual freedom and self-actualization, young women today have made every effort to break down stereotyped gender roles and strive for an egalitarian marriage. However, the results show that the interviewees agree with the young guests on Chinese Dating and widely accept parental interference in mate selection due to the Confucian doctrine of filial piety and strong emotional bonds with parents. This study concludes that there has been little attempt to challenge patriarchal parental authority in contemporary China. The younger generation still has a long way to go before achieving full autonomy and including individualized marriage.

The Dilemma of Motherhood Duties in the Context of Involution: Responsibilities and Expectations

The traditional gender division of labor assumes that men should be primarily responsible for the financial duties of the household, while women are responsible for the more elaborate tasks of family care, including the birth and education of children. American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild discovered that women suffered from both physical and emotional stress caused by the great tension between professional and family responsibilities in 1989. Although women can join the public workforce, the traditional burden of housework does not diminish. Based on existing research findings, this paper focuses on the Haidian District of Beijing, China, where there is a unique group of women called "Haidian mothers" who have to cope with the pressure of educational involution, high self-imposed demands and social expectations. This paper analyzes the causes of these dilemmas at three levels: individual, family and society, and proposes feasible suggestions in terms of institutional construction and conceptual renewal, hoping to provide certain referential information for academic research on the gender revolution and the solidification of gender concepts.

Racial/Ethnic Variation in the Relationship Between Educational Assortative Mating and Wives' Income Trajectories

Prior work has examined the relationship between educational assortative mating and wives' labor market participation but has not assessed how this relationship varies by race/ethnicity. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we estimate group-based developmental trajectories to investigate whether the association between educational assortative mating and wives' income trajectories varies by race/ethnicity. The presence, prevalence, and shapes of prototypical long-term income trajectories vary markedly across racial/ethnic groups. Whites are more likely than Blacks and Hispanics to follow income trajectories consistent with a traditional gender division of labor. The association between educational assortative mating is also stronger for Whites than for Blacks and Hispanics. White wives in educationally hypogamous unions make the greatest contribution to the couple's total income, followed by those in homogamous and hypergamous unions. Black and Hispanic wives in hypogamous unions are less likely than their peers in other unions to be secondary earners. These findings underscore the need for studies of the consequences of educational assortative mating to pay closer attention to heterogeneity across and within racial/ethnic groups.

Gender, Class, and the Gig Economy: The Case of Platform-Based Food Delivery

Drawing on original survey and interview data on platform-based food delivery workers, we deploy an intersectional lens to analyze the ways in which the white working-class women who predominate in this sector of the gig economy interpret their work experience. With a focus on the gender–class nexus, we explore the reasons why these workers, especially mothers and other caregivers, self-select into this sector. These include: scheduling flexibility, which facilitates balancing paid work and family care; the opportunity to use previously unpaid food shopping skills to generate income, a neoliberal form of “wages for housework”; and the emotional rewards of serving elderly and disabled customers who cannot easily shop for themselves. Although these workers embrace the traditional gender division of labor and normative femininity, at the same time they express strong class resentment of both the companies they work for and the class and gender entitlements of their most privileged customers.

The Gendered Discourse of Work-Family Balance in the Oil and Gas Industry

U.S. corporations have been slow to adopt family-friendly workplace accommodations, despite decades of research demonstrating their value. Some hope that the millennial generation will spur corporate change because, compared with older generations of workers, young people purportedly strive for more balanced lifestyles and gender equality in their relationships. This study examines the experiences of early career scientists and engineers employed by a major oil and gas corporation that has not implemented family-friendly accommodations, asking whether these highly trained workers seek work-family balance and whether they parlay these desires into requests for accommodation from their employer. Interviews reveal a gendered discourse of work-family balance at this firm: mothers and prospective mothers describe intense work-family conflict, but they blame themselves and not their employer. A number of men, in contrast, express satisfaction with their work-family balance, yet their narratives reveal that their achievement of balance depends on a traditional gender division of labor in the home. Some men and women seek alternative forms of balance that do not involve family; if thwarted from pursuing this goal, they are inclined to exit the company. These discourses of balance reflect neoliberal assumptions, reproduce gender inequality, and suggest the need for an alternative to the voluntary approach to promoting work-family policies.

Male involvement in maternal healthcare through Community- based Health Planning and Services: the views of the men in rural Ghana

BackgroundThe need to promote maternal health in Ghana has committed the government to extend maternal healthcare services to the door steps of rural families through the community-based Health Planning and Services. Based on the concerns raised in previous studies that male spouses were indifferent towards maternal healthcare, this study sought the views of men on their involvement in maternal healthcare in their respective communities and at the household levels in the various Community-based Health Planning and Services zones in Awutu-Senya West District in the Central Region of Ghana.MethodsA qualitative method was employed. Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with married men, community health officers, community health volunteers and community leaders. The participants were selected using purposive, quota and snowball sampling techniques. The study used thematic analysis for analysing the data.ResultsThe study shows varying involvement of men, some were directly involved in feminine gender roles; others used their female relatives and co-wives to perform the women's roles that did not have space for them. They were not necessarily indifferent towards maternal healthcare, rather, they were involved in the spaces provided by the traditional gender division of labour. Amongst other things, the perpetuation and reinforcement of traditional gender norms around pregnancy and childbirth influenced the nature and level of male involvement.ConclusionsSustenance of male involvement especially, husbands and CHVs is required at the household and community levels for positive maternal outcomes. Ghana Health Service, health professionals and policy makers should take traditional gender role expectations into consideration in the planning and implementation of maternal health promotion programmes.

Social bias within the institution of hired domestic care: global interactions and migration

O artigo apresenta uma análise crítica da instituição da cuidado doméstico contratado no contexto do capitalismo global. A autora começa por esboçar o contexto da sociedade moderna tardia nas regiões europeias e anglo-americanas em que as desigualdades globais e o aumento intensivo do capitalismo reforçam um modelo de mercado de cuidados e, consequentemente, também a instituição de cuidados domésticos contratados que cada vez mais envolve migrantes. Do ponto de vista da teoria crítica, ela analisa as possíveis variações das relações entre trabalhador doméstico e empregador dentro da instituição de cuidado doméstico contratado. E ela conclui que a instituição de cuidados domésticos contratados envolve necessariamente preconceito social que reproduz as desigualdades sociais, bem como a tradicional divisão do trabalho de gênero e a servidão institucionalizada.

Analysis of Women’s Image in Iranian TV Commercials Based on Barthes Visual Semiotic

Media affect the lives of people. By producing a particular kind of advertisement or message, media can control and influence people’s opinions and attitudes. In almost all modern societies, one of the major television genres is advertising (Cook, 2005). It not only gives information about services and products, but also builds a secondary discourse about society and power relations. Advertising has an important role in the representation of gender in a society. Thus For this study, five TV commercials broadcasted in Iran by IRIB in 22th May- 21th June 2014 were selected. These advertisements were chosen since they have significance in gender roles. Then in order to study women’s image in Iranian TV commercials, Barthian semiological analysis describing the image on both levels of significance- denotative and connotative level- was utilized. The results demonstrated that the TV advertisements selected in this paper represent gender stereotypes and traditional gender division of labor. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s1p415

Combining Egalitarian Working Lives with Traditional Attitudes: Gender Role Attitudes in Taiwan, Japan, and Korea

AbstractIn a simple theoretical framework, egalitarian gender role attitudes emerge as more and more women participate in the labor market. Most advanced Western nations enjoy relatively gender‐egalitarian working environments, and consequently more egalitarian gender attitudes than their East Asian counterparts. Women in East Asian societies, on the other hand, are said to support both the conditions resulting in stagnant female labor‐force participation and traditional attitudes toward gender roles. In Taiwan, however, women are more economically active than in two other East Asian societies—Japan and South Korea—even though women in all three societies favor the traditional gender division of labor. Thus, in Taiwan, women experiencing inconsistencies between their active working lives and their traditional values. This study hypothesizes that this inconsistency, or the coexistence of the old and the new, is reflected in the very mind‐set of women. Using comparative data from the 2006 East Asian Social Survey, we analyzed the gap between responses to questions on gender attitudes in relation to working conditions, and other general gender role attitudes. We found there were significant differences in the size of these gaps. Taiwanese women expressed more egalitarian views insofar as the questions were concerned with practical economic interests, while they retained their basic traditional attitudes towards gender roles in their homes. This gap is larger in Taiwan than in Japan or South Korea.

The Origin and Nature of Traditional Gender Division of Labour among the Berom of the Jos Plateau in Northern Nigeria

The Origin and Nature of Traditional Gender Division of Labour among the Berom of the Jos Plateau in Northern Nigeria

The Changing Role of Women’s Earnings in Marriage Formation in Japan

Japan is one of a few developed countries in which marriage and higher earning potential among women are negatively associated. Previous studies have suggested that a traditional gender division of labor is at the root of this negative relationship, but this study suggests that the relationship is changing. In this article, I examine the latest marriage behavior among Japanese women from 1993 to 2008, focusing on the relationship between women’s economic emancipation and marriage in a gender-traditional society. Using the longest panel survey available in Japan, this study first demonstrates that the effects of women’s earnings have reversed, and are now in fact positive in the 1970s cohort. This suggests that Japanese marriage behaviors now resemble more than in the past those of Western countries, where wives’ economic contributions to the family are considered important. I argue that changes in young adults’ gender ideology have been the major force in facilitating this shift.

Darbo rinkos segregacija pagal lytį ar lyčių vaidmenų detradicionalizacija?

Profesorė, socialinių mokslų (edukologijos) daktarėVytauto Didžiojo universiteto Socialinio darbo katedraK. Donelaičio g. 58, LT-44248 Kaunas. Tel. +370 37 327 967El. paštas: n.mazeikiene@adm.vdu.ltSociologijos doktorantėKauno technologijos universiteto Socialinių mokslų fakulteto Sociologijos katedraK. Donelaičio g. 20, LT-44239 KaunasEl. paštas: agne_dorelaitiene@yahoo.comStraipsnyje diskutuojama, kaip socialinio konstravimo procese per lyčių socializaciją, habituaciją ir nematomojo, paslėptojo ugdymo programą sukuriamos horizontalios profesinių sričių segregacijos prielaidos: moterys dominuoja pagal skaičių švietimo sistemoje, socialinio darbo, slaugos, paslaugų srityje; vyrai – pramonės, technologijų, vadovavimo srityse. Aptariamas socialinių darbuotojų vyrų, dirbančių tradiciškai moteriška laikomoje socialinio darbo srityje, edukacinės patirties ir profesinio identiteto formavimosi atvejis. Biografinio tyrimo metodu atskleidžiama asmeninių naratyvų ir socialinių struktūrų kuriamų dominuojančių diskursų sąveika.

Who Gets the Daddy Bonus?

Using the 1979-2006 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we investigate how the earnings bonus for fatherhood varies by characteristics associated with hegemonic masculinity in the American workplace: heterosexual marital status, professional/managerial status, educational attainment, skill demands of jobs, and race/ethnicity. We find the earnings bonus for fatherhood persists after controlling for an array of differences, including human capital, labor supply, family structure, and wives’ employment status. Moreover, consistent with predictions from the theory of hegemonic masculinity within bureaucratic organizations, the fatherhood bonus is significantly larger for men with other markers of workplace hegemonic masculinity. Men who are white, married, in households with a traditional gender division of labor, college graduates, professional/managerial workers and whose jobs emphasize cognitive skills and deemphasize physical strength receive the largest fatherhood earnings bonuses.

Do Women Really Fare Better When Working Part-time?

As married women enter the labor market and the traditional gender division of labor is being undermined, concerns with gender equality have been soaring in terms of the distribution of total work between men and women. In solving the difficulties of accommodating needs of employed married women, part-time employment is being promoted as a strategy enhancing labor force participation of married women with children. Part-time work may have positive effects of reducing the burden imposed on married women who manage both paid work and family responsibilities. This study purports to offer better understandings of whether female part-time employment helps women reduce their workload. This study takes advantage of a nationally representative time use survey collected in 2004. The analysis shows that had women not worked part-time, the gender gap in the total work would have been much greater, but that the gender gap still remains intact even if women’s part-time employment reduces the gap in the total work. And women’s part-time employment hardly affects women’s share of the total work out of the household total work within households. That is, holding other things constant, women who work part-time perform almost the same share of total work within households as do women working who work full-time. But the fact that the sign of the coefficient is positive implies that women who work part-time could undertake a higher share than women who work full-time.

Cleaning the sink: exploring the experiences of Australian lesbian parents reconciling work/family responsibilities

In many households across Australia the question ‘Who cleans the sink?’ symbolises an undertow of disquiet. The gendered patterning of household tasks remains resolutely resistant to feminist challenges. Despite three decades of research and policy interest in assisting Australian families reconcile work and family life, this interaction continues to be a source of stress and conflict. This paper aims to examine a work/family arrangement under circumstances in which the traditional gender division of labour is removed – in lesbian family households. It draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 17 lesbian parents living in New South Wales, Australia. Thematic analysis was undertaken to identify patterns of work and family arrangements in these lesbian-parented families. The findings suggest that family stress and conflict are lessened in some lesbian households through the de-stabilising of scripts concerning traditional gendered division of labour. The paper aims to contribute to the small but growing lesbian-parenting literature in Australia and also to the broader work/family literature.

‘It's them faulty genes again’: women, men and the gendered nature of genetic responsibility in prenatal blood screening

Prenatal blood tests are routinely offered to pregnant women in the UK. Male partners are tested only where a combined positive male and female test could detect fetal abnormality such as sickle cell anaemia. Little is known about the gendered nature of screening and the impact it has on lay feelings of genetic responsibility. For example, do women take exclusive 'maternal responsibility' for the fetus? How is this responsibility challenged when men are also screened? Drawing on empirical research with pregnant women and their male partners in a northern city in the UK, this paper aims to explore the gendered nature of genetic responsibility in prenatal blood screening. The paper will argue that women and men feel a sense of genetic responsibility for the fetus throughout screening. However, while women's sense of responsibility is directly 'embodied' and is heightened by the detection of 'faulty genes', men's manifests itself indirectly through shared responsibility with their pregnant partners and directly through their own genetic connections to the fetus. The paper concludes that the gendered nature of genetic responsibility is complex and contradictory, producing a set of gender roles that both challenges and reinforces a traditional gender division of labour.

Does Parenthood Strengthen a Traditional Household Division of Labor? Evidence From Sweden

Parenthood is often considered a major factor behind gender differences in time allocation, especially between paid work and housework. This article investigates the impact of parenthood on men’s and women’s daily time use in Sweden and how it changed over the 1990s. The analysis is made using time diary data from the Multinational Time Use Survey (MTUS;N= 13,729) and multivariate Tobit regressions. The results indicate that while parenthood in 1990 – 1991 clearly strengthened the traditional gender division of labor in the household, this was much less the case in 2000 – 2001, when parenthood affected men and women in a more similar way.

Collapsing the Boundaries? Fatherhood, Organization and Home-Working

In the modern western world, the discursive construction of fatherhood and everyday fathering practices has been underpinned by the spatial separation of work from home, of public from private. However, increasing numbers of employees are now working from home and a disproportionate number of these are men with young children. This article draws on new empirical research to examine the implications for fathers and for organizations as home-working disrupts earlier spatial configurations of fatherhood and fathering practices. The article concludes that as the spatial boundaries between home and work collapse, new accommodations between fatherhood/fathering and organization are emerging. However, these are underpinned by a traditional gender division of labour in the household. More broadly, these findings confirm the inadequacy of static distinctions between public and private, showing that while such distinctions are still used to mark space and time, this is relational, contingent and unstable.

The division of labor between generations of women in rural China

Using the 1993 wave of the China Health and Nutrition Survey, I examine the work arrangement of coresiding mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law in rural China. The analyses suggest that work activities of daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law are not independent of each other, but rather reflect a coordination of activities. I use the typology of “inside” vs. “outside” work to describe the intergenerational work arrangement, which was used to depict traditional gender division of labor in China. In addition to the effect of individual resources and local labor market conditions, multivariate analysis documents that the division of labor between the generations of women is a type of family strategy as well as a result of power dynamics in the household. For example, the intergenerational division of labor responds to family needs, such as childcare demands, with the mother-in-law more likely to adjust her work activities than the daughter-in-law. The results also indicate that the work arrangement tends to favor the daughter-in-law the closer her natal kin lives. Analyses on housework arrangements also suggest that the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law share housework responsibilities.

The Suburban Worker in the History of Labor

The Suburban Worker in the History of Labor