"The calculus for mothers between working and staying at home varies across U.S. states. Lower costs and longer school days tend to help mothers return to work after giving birth. States tend to offer either better workplace protection or affordable child care, but few states support mothers across their employment needs"--
Macro-level measures of divorce have important consequences on individual-level housework dynamics. Previous research has focused on the relationship between access to divorce at the country level and divisions of housework at the individual level. The article extends this literature by investigating the relationship between individual-level housework conflict and country-level measures of divorce and women's bargaining power. Using European Social Survey data (n = 18,560), it tests the multi-level relationship between individual-level housework conflict and country-level rates of the following four measures: marriage, divorce, full-time female labour force participation and the female-male wage gap. The multi-level results demonstrate that both men and women report more housework conflict in countries with higher rates of women's full-time labour force participation and divorce, and women report less conflict in countries with higher rates of marriage.
Using 2002 International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data, the relationship of individual level characteristics with the division of labor was examined for three countries with different patterns of female labor force participation and country-specific gender equality. The impact of two theories, distributive justice and relative resources, was assessed for Sweden, the Netherlands, and Hungary. The author finds that the distributive justice theory had a strong relationship in these three countries in relation to husband and wives' housework hours and husbands' participation in core "female" household chores. The Netherlands proves anomalous as wives' gender role ideologies and housewife status had significant associations with fairness. Relative resources had some association in Hungary as wives' who earn more than their husbands report less fairness than spouses with equal earnings. The results demonstrate that country context is an important consideration for studying the fairness.
Theoretical approaches to housework do not reflect contemporary families and gender relations. We evaluate assumptions about gender and families in three dominant explanations and propose theoretical extensions. First, we suggest a work–family fit approach that examines housework and resources at a household level. Second, we propose the diverse capital perspective that extends earnings centered assessments of housework bargaining. Finally, a "doing genders" approach captures how gender shapes housework in nuanced ways. Our study does not focus on the more general issue of power in relationships, nor do we seek to dismantle existing theoretical perspectives or solve all shortcomings of the inherently couple‐centered and cissexist heteronormative approach to families that primarily focuses on the United States. Rather, we provide some insight into how these theories can be expanded given the realities of diverse family arrangements, stalled gender revolutions, and shifts and fluidity in gender and sexual identities.
The risk-fear paradox, whereby people who experience the least criminal victimisation report the greatest fear of crime, has been established in the extant literature. That this paradox is gendered, notably that women report greater fear yet are less likely to experience crime, has also been consistently identified. However, there remains a largely unanswered call to explore further the distinctive experiences of women and men. There are likely to be substantial within-group differences as well as between-group differences in experiences of crime and reported fear of crime. For instance, women may experience fear differently by relationship type. Specifically, women in non-traditional families, notably same-sex couples and single, divorced and widowed women may be more fearful. Therefore, for women, the risk-fear paradox may not function equivalently across relationship types. What is more, the impact of experiencing crime may have broader effects on women's well-being, with those in families with complex needs shouldering a greater burden. We apply 2012 European Social Survey data to investigate reports of experiencing crime, feeling unsafe and anxious and sleeping restlessly for a sample of European women (n = 28,768). Our results demonstrate that single, separated and divorced women are more likely to experience crime than married women. Divorced and widowed women, as well as those who experience crime, are more likely to report feeling unsafe. Single women, compared to married women, who experience crime are more likely to feel anxious and sleep restlessly. Our results indicate that crime has differential effects on women by relationship type particularly regarding well-being. These findings offer important nuance to the experiences of women.
European countries are undergoing significant changes in employment schedules, including increases in weekend work with potential consequences for families. We focus on one arena of family life—the couple's division of housework—to investigate implications of weekend work for this aspect of gender equality. Furthermore, we situate these divisions within the cross-national context of wives' weekend work to determine whether nonstandard employment has more general implications for domestic practices. Using 2004 European Social Survey data for married respondents in 25 nations, we test original hypotheses which address time availability arguments, the qualitative differences in weekend and weekday time, and the gendered nature of domestic roles. We find husbands and wives accommodate to weekend employment, but women benefit less from these domestic adaptations. Regardless of their personal employment arrangements, husbands do relatively more housework and wives less in countries where wives' weekend work is more prevalent.
In: Journal of policy analysis and management: the journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, Volume 41, Issue 3, p. 937-940
In: Journal of policy analysis and management: the journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, Volume 41, Issue 3, p. 922-929
Although well theorized at the individual level, previous research has neglected the role of national context in shaping overall levels of nonwork–work and work–nonwork interference. This study fills this gap by examining how a national context of gender empowerment affects the likelihood of experiencing nonwork–work and work–nonwork interference at the individual and national levels. Controlling for individual-level differences in the distribution of job demands and resources, results from our multilevel models indicate that women's empowerment has significant net gender and parenthood effects on nonwork–work interference. By contrast, gender empowerment equally structures work–nonwork interference for these groups. Our results highlight the need to investigate interference bidirectionally and in a multilevel context.
The COVID-19 pandemic intensified unfavorable international news coverage of the Chinese Government with consequences for the Chinese diaspora broadly. To understand these relationships, we conducted surveys in Australia and the United States from 8 to 21 June 2021. Using a survey experiment, we find a significant negative impact of the Chinese Government's early handling of COVID-19 on public sentiment toward the Chinese Government in Australia but not in the United States. In both countries, expressing unfriendly feelings toward the Chinese Government tends to harm Chinese temporary residents more (compared to permanent residents). The associations between attitudes toward the Chinese Government and diasporic Chinese differ significantly across demographic groups but overall, holding cold attitudes toward the Chinese Government has stronger negative implications for diasporic Chinese in Australia.(J Contemp China / GIGA)