Division of Labor in Households

Conceptualization and Measurement

In most industrialized nations, the division of household labor is often regarded as one of the most intransigent qualities of family life. In conjunction with traditional gender roles, the domain of the paid labor force has often been regarded as men's work, while the performance of chores within the home has typically been considered to be women's work. Although it is not necessarily made explicit within societies, most cultures maintain an expectation that women should bear the brunt of responsibility for the performance of household labor. This decidedly gendered pattern of the division of household labor has been examined by researchers for decades and has shown little evidence of change. In recent history, there has been considerable change in the participation of women in the paid labor force, along with substantial increases in the percentages of women obtaining a college education. These particular changes have been associated with slight variations in the overall allocation of chores; women are now performing less, yet these changes by no means approach a level of equity or equality in the division of household labor.

Household labor has been assessed by researchers in a variety of manners, such as by the use of large national surveys, self-maintained time dairies, and retrospective interviews. Each of these methods offers its own advantages, and the practical assessment of the division of household chores largely depends upon whether the researcher intends to pursue either a quantitative or qualitative measurement. In conceptualization, though, the division of household labor is typically regarded as having three basic forms.

The first, and most obvious, conceptualization addresses the amounts of absolute time that each individual allocates to the performance of chores around the home. Since the division of chores implies that each person will have to commit some of his or her time (e.g., daily, weekly) to executing [Page 451]the tasks, it is necessary to make relative comparisons of the total amounts of tasks that are performed. This comparison in and of itself provides a good indication of how chores are being divided in a given household. However, since the nature of the division of household labor involves head-to-head comparisons of effort, the absolute total contributions of each person may not adequately exemplify the allocation processes. A second and equally useful conceptualization is the relative share of the total labor in a given household performed by each person in the home. This conceptualization allows for a more precise appraisal of the division of labor given that it focuses not on individual totals but rather more exactly on how much each person does relative to others. Since household members will typically compare their chore performance to others, this conceptualization makes logical sense. Finally, it is also necessary to recognize not just the total amounts and relative shares of household labor that each person performs but also the kinds of chores that each person does. It is conceivable, for example, that a husband and wife perform exactly the same total amounts of labor around the home, yet each performs a unique set of tasks (e.g., a wife does all of the cooking and cleaning, while the husband does all of the yard work and laundry). Hence, the third conceptualization of the division of household labor involves how specific chores are segregated among the members of the household.

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