Suchergebnisse

Using 2002 International Social Survey Programme data, this study examines the association between women's economic resources (full-time employment, educational attainment, and income) and their attitudes toward marriage across 31 countries ( N = 14,827). The focus of this study is to test whether state policy to reduce work–family conflict (shorter working hour schedules and enhancement of public child care services and parental leave) explains cross-national differences in the association between women's economic independence and their attitudes toward marriage. The results show that highly educated women have negative attitudes toward marriage only in countries with long average working hours. Also, in countries with generous public child care services, the positive effect of educational attainment is stronger. These findings suggest that it is not women's economic independence per se that reduces attractiveness of marriage; instead, it is the incompatibility between work and family life that lowers women's marriage aspirations.

Based on 25 interviews with educated and employed never-married men in Japan, this article examines how the diminished social norm to marry by a certain age, never-married men's beliefs regarding gender in marriage, and the value these men place on individual autonomy all contribute to a trend in late marriage. We argue that the diminished social pressure to marry and the changing age norm do further men's ambivalence toward marriage by allowing them to rationalize their detachment from the idea of their future marriage, their aversion to the perceived gender constraints of marriage, and the emphasis they place on their autonomy. However, we also argue that the weakening of the social pressure to marry does not relate to changes in employed men's gendered views of marriage, which remain traditional.