Research Of Gender Division Of Labor In The Family

Biological differences between men and women, different experience and human capital differences both decide men and women should do different labor and production activities. Generally, the male specializes social activity, while the female specializes housework.According to the principle of comparative advantage and learning by doing, we construct a two‐period Nash model. By analyzing the size of the utility function between unmarried couples and the married couples under different degree of labor division, we conclude that marriage contract promotes household gender division of labor. However, in the long term it decreases the earning power of the party who specializes in housework, which causing the one who specializes in housework to increase investment in market activity and decrease the investment in housework. This is the “hold up” problem. To sovle that problem, the paper adds alimony in the model. On one hand, it can effectively protect the rights and interests of the party engaging in housework. On the other hand, it can family internal labor division.Once the marriage is dissolved she/he will be the losing party and hence should be compensated by the other party, who specializes in paid work which usually involves higher degree in the accumulation of human capital. As an effective means of compensation, it is shown formally that alimony may promote the gender division of labor and improve Pareto efficiency. The rule of remarriage termination of alimony is doubly inefficient by reducing gender division of labor and by discouraging efficient remarriages. After the theoretical analysis, the paper does T test on the urban‐female’s and urban‐male’s average weekly working hours. From this, we summary that the marriage contract greatly affects women’s labor participation and promotes household gender division of labor, which verifies the necessity of establishing the model and the correctness of putting forward the alimony. In the end, the paper makes policy recommendations in the state, the society and family three aspects on the basis of summary the above.