The Production of Gender Among Black and White Women and Men: The Case of Household Labor

Abstract

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.

Publisher

Springer Verlag

Publication Date

2-1-1997

Publication Title

Sex Roles

Department

Sociology

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02766266

Language

English

Format

text

Link to Full Text

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