Gender Theory and Household Labor

This commentary evaluates and extends Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard’s (2010) review of household labor studies published between 2000 and 2009. Article sampling choices and coverage issues are reviewed and critiqued, followed by a discussion of gender theories and the relationship of divisions of household labor to systems of gender stratification. The author applauds the recent turn toward conceptualizing and measuring national political and policy contexts in household labor studies and calls for more use of meso-level variables and reliance on multi-dimensional theories of gender inequality in analyzing divisions of paid and unpaid labor.