The production of gender among Black and White women and men: The case of household labor

Using the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 13,017; 11.09% Black, 79.99% White), we compare the household labor time of Black and White women and men, and assess the extent to which the time constraint, relative resource, and ideology explanations account for racial and gender differences in housework time. We find that although time constraint, relative resource, and ideology explanations account for some of the variation in housework time, they do not account for all of the gender and racial differences. We also find that paid work and housework trade off differently for Black men than for White men and also for women and men. Finally, a variety of relative resource, time constraint, and ideology factors are associated differently with women’s and men’s housework time. We argue that our findings lend support to the production of gender approach to understanding the division of household labor and that this approach can be used to help us understand racial differences in housework time as well. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

Contextual Effects on the Gendered Division of Housework: A Cross-Country and Cross-Time Analysis

Individuals who espouse an egalitarian gender ideology as well as economically independent women benefit from a more egalitarian division of housework. Although these two individual-level characteristics affect the gender division of housework, each suggests a different mechanism; the former is anchored within an economic logic and the latter within a cultural one. Using data of 25 countries from the 2002 and 2012 “Family and Changing Gender Roles” modules of the International Social Survey Program, we examine whether a country’s mean gender ideology and women’s labor force participation (WLFP) rate have a distinct contextual effect beyond these individual-level effects. We predict that the division of housework between married or cohabitating partners will be more egalitarian in countries with higher WLFP rates and in countries with more egalitarian attitudes, even after controlling for the two variables at the individual level. Given the cross-country convergence in WLFP, but not in gender ideology, we expect the effect of WLFP to decline over time and the effect of gender ideology to remain salient. Indeed, our multi-level analysis indicates that the net effect of WLFP, which was evident in 2002, had disappeared by 2012. By contrast, the net contextual effect of gender ideology, which was not significant in 2002, had become an important determinant of housework division by 2012. We conclude that further changes will depend on a country’s prevalent gender ideology because the equalizing effect of WLFP on the division of housework may have reached its limit.

     

Existential and religious issues when admitted to hospital in a secular society: Patterns of change

Situated in a secular culture, this study examined the relationship between four dimensions of health and a number of existential, religious, and spiritual/religious practice variables in questionnaires sampled from 480 Danish hospital patients. Illness dimensions were: self-rated health, severity of illness, illness duration, and recent changes in illness. The results indicated the youngest age group (<36 years) to be the most active on all existence/religious/practice variables. Small overall correlations were found between the illness dimensions and existential/religious/practice variables, but results had underlying complex patterns. The dimension of severity of illness showed the most consistent results in the expected direction: the worse the illness, the more existential/religious/practice activity, but very different patterns were found for men and women. Men generally had low levels of existential/religious/practice issues, when illness was not severe, but levels heightened when illness turned worse. The opposite was the case for women who had overall higher levels, when illness was not severe, but unexpectedly lost interest and activity when the illness grew worse, especially regarding the religious faith variables. When illness turned to the better, women (re)gained religious faith. The illness duration of 1–3 months showed to be the most sensitive period for the existential/religious/practice variables involved. The patients’ experience of change in existential/religious/practice issues and the actual measured change pattern did not always follow each other. The findings might contribute to clinical reflection and planning in health care settings in secular societies like in Scandinavia.     

Jewish Identity and the Secular Achievements of American Jewish Men and Women

Three questions are addressed concerning the relationship of Jewish identity to secular achievements. Are the secular achievements of American Jews related at all to the strength of their Jewish identity? Which has a stronger relationship to secular achievement, a religious or an ethnic Jewish identity? Do communal aspects or private, personal aspects of Jewish identity have the stronger relationship to secular achievements? Using the 2000–2001 National Jewish Population Survey, we find that educational attainment, labor force participation, and occupational achievements are related to several expressions of Jewish identity, even after controlling for the traditional sources of variation (age, gender, education, family status). Jewish identity, as expressed in terms of religion, ethnicity, communal commitment, and private attitudes and practices, is related to contemporary Jewish secular achievement, albeit differently for men and women.     

Gender Inequality in Europe and the Life Satisfaction of Working and Non-working Women

Empirical analysis of data drawn from the European Social Survey reveals that—after individual characteristics are controlled for—women engaging in market work and housework have similar life satisfaction levels. Complementing the micro-level data from the survey with country-level variables, namely GDP per capita and gender inequality (measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, GGGI), we estimate a multilevel regression model to shed light on the contextual factors of the life satisfaction of women in Europe. We find that working women’s well-being relative to housewives is greater in countries where the GGGI indicates a smaller gender gap, i.e. where women are in a better position in terms of equality with men in the public domains. We interpret this finding to mean that the so-called ‘paradox of declining female happiness’ is in part due to persistent gender roles which appear to have a larger impact on the well-being of working women.     

The Political Advantages of a Polysemous Secular

This article uses the occasion of the Secular Coalition for America's first‐ever congressional briefing as a case study for demonstrating the political advantages a polysemous secular affords secular lobbyists. The briefing, conducted primarily for the benefit of staff members from the U.S. House of Representatives, offers a rare public forum in which the Secular Coalition tried to strike a balance between the two halves of its mission: advocating for nontheists and promoting secular government. In its efforts to fulfill this mission, the Secular Coalition conflates and distinguishes between four distinct meanings of the secular and secularism: the separation of church and state, the secular public sphere, the ideology of nonbelief, and a nascent secular identity. By studying the ongoing efforts of secular activists to redefine the place and meaning of the secular and the religious in American life, this article contributes to the study of how the secular gets made, who makes it, and why.     

Routine housework and tripartite marital commitment

This study assumes that performing household labor is a method of maintaining the marital relationship and investigates whether higher marital commitment (personal, moral, and structural) is associated with more time spent on housework. Data taken from the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households on 3,428 paired spouses in the United States were used to test research hypotheses. Results indicate that (a) husbands with higher moral commitment, or those married to a wife with lower moral commitment, do more routine housework, and (b) husbands with stronger personal commitment do less routine housework and their wives do more. The interplay of gender ideology and marital commitment as they pertain to housework performance for each gender is discussed.     

家庭事务分配与女性性别意识研究

本文利用2000年第二期中国妇女地位调查数据,根据数据所展示的家务劳动时间的影响因素和家务分工满意度的对比,导入对一个问题的关注:为什么在家庭内部事务存在明显的性别差异的情况下,男女两性对家庭地位的满意度却相差无几,女性为何甘于处在这样一种地位?本文尝试对这一现象进行解释。     

How Are Religious Belief and Behavior Good for You? An Investigation of Mediators Relating Religion to Mental Health in a Sample of Israeli Jewish Students

The present study investigated the relation between aspects of religiousness and negative and positive aspects of mental health and compared three models of the psychosocial processes that may underlie this relation. A sample of 668 Jewish Israeli students filled out multidimensional self-report measures of religious belief and behavior, religious identity, personal fear of death, perceived social support, meaning in life, and mental health. This sample was divided into a religious identity subsample, a traditional identity subsample, and a secular identity subsample. Path analyses found religious belief to be positively related to psychosocial well-being and negatively related to psychological distress only for the religious and secular identity subsamples. These analyses also indicated that meaning in life, but not social support nor fear of death, accounted for both relations.     

Changing the Division of Household Labor: A Negotiated Process Between Partners

This short-term longitudinal study expands on previous theoretical approaches, as we examined how women’s assertiveness and the strategies they use to elicit more household labor from husbands help to explain the division of labor and how it changes. Participants included 81 married women with 3- and 4-year-old children who completed two telephone interviews, approximately 2 months apart. Results based on quantitative and qualitative analyses show that (a) relative resource, structural, and gender ideology variables predicted the division of housework, but not childcare; (b) assertive women were closer to their ideal division of childcare than nonassertive women; (c) women who made a larger proportion of family income were less assertive about household labor than other women, but when they were assertive, they had a more equal division of childcare; (d) women who earned the majority of their household’s income showed the least change; and (e) the nature of women’s attempts to elicit change may be critical to their success.     

THE SHIFT IN POWER WITH AGE Changes in Perception of the Power of Women and Men Over the Life Cycle

Previous research has described an apparent shift in perceived interpersonal power towards equality between men and women later in life. This study investigated (a) whether the "shift in power with age" would appear in the Israeli kibbutz, (b) the role of the "parental emergency" in the shift, and (c) whether changes in behaviors or attitudes best account for the shift. One hundred twenty younger and older Israeli women and men, half from the city and half from the kibbutz, wrote TAT stories, which were then rated for overall power of the female and male characters, their power strategies, and their motives. A shift in perceived power with age was found in both the city and the kibbutz. Parental status reduced the power of the woman and increased the power of the man only in the city, whereas the reverse was true in the kibbutz. These results counter the "parental emergency" explanation for the shift in power with age. Furthermore, older women used traditionally feminine power strategies, but their behavior was evaluated as more powerful than the same behavior in younger women. Thus, it is not the behaviors but rather people's evaluation of the behaviors that changes across the life span of the individual.     

Religiousness and Religious Coping in a Secular Society: The Gender Perspective

Women are found to be more religious than men and more likely to use religious coping. Only few studies have explored religious gender differences in more secular societies. This population-based study comprised 3,000 Danish men and women (response rate 45 %) between 20 and 40 years of age. Information about demographics, religiousness and religious coping was obtained through a web-based questionnaire. We organized religiousness in the three dimensions: Cognition, Practice and Importance, and we assessed religious coping using the brief RCOPE questionnaire. We found substantial gender differences in both religiousness and religious coping. Nearly, 60 % of the women believed in some sort of spirit or in God compared to 40 % of the men. Generally, both men and women scored low on the RCOPE scale. However, for respondents reporting high levels of religiousness, the proportion of men who scored high in the RCOPE exceeded the proportion of women in using positive and especially negative coping strategies. Also, in a secular society, women are found to be more religious than men, but in a subset of the most religious respondents, men were more inclined to use religious coping. Further studies on religious coping in secular societies are required.     

Secular Psychotherapists and Religious Clients: Professional Considerations and Recommendations

Traditional psychotherapy has often failed to meet the needs of religiously committed clients. Because many potential clients have religious as well as secular concerns, secular psychotherapists must become more empathic and competent in treating religious individuals. In this article the author argues that efforts toward consciousness raising as well as fundamental changes in professional training programs are necessary to accomplish this goal. Recommendations are offered for counselor educators and mental health service providers.     

Is Self‐enhancement Related to Modesty or to Individualism‐collectivism? A Test with Four Israeli Groups

The main assertion of this study was that degree of self-enhancement is determined by the modesty requirements prevailing in a culture rather than by its level of collectivism. Four Israeli subgroups (323 11th-grade students) were compared in a two-by-two design: type of living (kibbutz versus city) and level of religious observance (religious versus secular). The two kibbutz groups were found to be more collectivist than the urban groups, and the religious groups were found to be more modest than the secular groups. Results show that self-enhancement was related to level of religious observance and not to type of living. When modesty was statistically controlled for, the effect of level of religious observance was removed. It was also found that self-enhancement measures were predicted by modesty and not by collectivism facets. Thus, the data supported the study's main claim.     

Trends in geriatric psychiatry relevant to pastoral counselors

This article is a general overview of mental disorders in the aged that stresses the complementary roles that religious and mental health professionals can play in meeting the psychological and spiritual needs of elders. Chaplains and pastoral counselors should be competent in recognizing serious psychiatric disorders in older adults and able to differentiate them from the more common and benign emotional disturbances. Both counseling and biological treatments have distinct but often overlapping roles in the treatment of mental disorders in the aged. When treating emotionally disturbed elders, religious professionals should be aware of new trends in psychotherapy and biological psychiatry that are now making the integration of secular and religious techniques more and more feasible.Funding for this study was provided by the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development at Duke University Medical Center and by the Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.     

For Better or for Worse? Gender Ideology,Religious Commitment,and Relationship Quality

Few studies have considered how religion moderates the ways gender ideology influences heterosexual relationship outcomes. Drawing on a national random sample of American adults who report being married or living as married, we focus on the extent to which religious commitment moderates the link between gender ideology and reported relationship satisfaction, and whether this moderating effect varies across gender. We find that gender traditionalism is negatively associated with relationship satisfaction; however, interaction effects reveal that religious commitment moderates the effects of gender ideology such that the negative effects of gender traditionalism on relationship satisfaction only apply to people who are less religious. Gender traditionalism, by contrast, is not negatively related to relationship satisfaction for the highly religious. Splitting the sample by gender reveals that this moderating relationship is significant for women only. Thus, while gender traditionalism is negatively related to relationship satisfaction in the main, this effect is contingent on both gender and religious commitment. Religious commitment appears to mitigate negative effects of gender traditionalism on relationship outcomes, particularly for American women.     

DIVISION OF HOUSEHOLD LABOR, STRAIN, AND DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS AMONG MEXICAN AMERICANS AND NON-HISPANIC WHITES

This article presents preliminary tests of the hypothesis that household labor serves as a source of strain and is indirectly associated with depressive symptoms. It also examines associations of gender and Mexican-American ethnicity with housework, household strain, and depressed mood. Respondents are 668 Mexican Americans and 394 non-Hispanic whites. Because respondents are randomly selected community residents and are married, average strain and depressive symptom levels are low. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that housework affects depressed mood indirectly, through household strain. Among women, housework is associated with an increased likelihood of household strain, which, in turn, is associated with depressive symptoms. Among men, housework is unrelated to household strain, but household strain is associated with depressed mood. Although ethnicity and gender are associated with household division of labor, with more traditional patterns among Mexican Americans, ethnicity does not modify associations among housework, household strain, and depressive symptoms.     

Does Masculinity Thwart Being Religious? An Examination of Older Men’sReligiousness

Previous work shows a significant relationship between gender orientation and being religious in samples of college–age and adult men. Before entering later life, men with a feminine orientation have greater religious involvement than other men. In a sample of older men from three Massachusetts counties, this study assessed the bearing of men'sgender orientation and gender ideology on their religious involvement. Gender orientation more than masculinity ideology was found to be a reliable predictor of older men'sreligiousness. Similar to studies of younger men, a feminine orientation was a significant determinant of the older men's religious participation, commitment, and intrinsic orientation. Older men who define self in very masculine terms, however, engaged in a quest religiosity. When the masculinity ideology contains norms that prescribe the virtues of a traditional masculinity and acquiring status, men's religious orientation was extrinsic (or means) oriented. These important findings are discussed in terms of how masculinity is at times a barrier to men's private devotion and at other times can be a trigger to questing.     

Born a pastor,being a woman: biographical accounts on gendered religious gifts in the Diaspora

Women’s presence in Pentecostal leadership positions has slowly increased over the past decades, which raises new questions on the reconfiguration of gender roles and its relationship with religious doctrines. Based on empirical research, this article examines the construction of female leadership and religious authority within Pentecostal churches in a diasporic context. We draw upon biographical narratives of six female Pentecostal pastors—three African and three Latin American—who are leaders in Pentecostal churches in Spain. Our aim is to understand which conditions allowed these women to obtain positions of leadership in a mainly male dominated Pentecostal milieu and analyse the discursive articulation of Pentecostal conservative views on gender issues with local dynamics in the construction of female religious authority. The article shows that the authority of these women within the church realm is forged and legitimated through a religious narrative, one that empowers them as religious leaders without challenging their (and other women’s) subaltern role in the domains of social and family life.     

Time,Money, or Gender? Predictors of the Division of Household Labour Across Life Stages

Drawing on a life course perspective and data gathered during three developmental periods—the transition to adulthood (age 25; n = 168), young adulthood (age 32; n = 337), and midlife (age 43; n = 309), we explored patterns of division of household labour among Canadian men and women. We also investigated associations among housework responsibility and variables representing time availability (i.e., work hours), relative resource (i.e., earning a greater share of income in a relationship), and gender constructionist perspectives (i.e., marital status and raising children) at three life course stages. Results indicated women performed more housework than men at all ages. Regression analyses revealed housework responsibility was most reliably predicted by relative income and gender at age 25; work hours and raising children at age 32; and work hours, relative income, and gender at age 43. Gender moderated the influence of raising children at age 32. Overall, the relative resource perspective was supported during the transition to adulthood and in midlife, the time availability perspective was supported in young adulthood and in midlife, and certain elements of the gender constructionist perspective were supported at all life stages. The present study contributes to the division of household labour literature by disentangling the predictive power of time, resource, and gender perspectives on housework at distinct life stages.