A Study On The Division Of Household Labor And It’s Relation With The Gender Ideology

The division of household labor is an important embodiment of the gender relationship in the private sphere. Based on the previous researches on the division of household labor and combined with the background of Chinese culture, this study explored how married couples divided their household labor and how influence factors worked. The previous researches have come to the conclusion that women were the main takers of household labor. They have found that the division of household labor was significant related with the economic income, the education level, age, gender ideology, work hour and work schedule. There are three main theories, the relative resource theory, the gender ideology theory and the time available theory, have been discussed to explain the division of household labor. But none of them could perfect explain all division of household labor behaviors.There are three studies overall. Study1used investigation method with questionnaires aimed to give an overall view of the present state of the division of household labor in China in detail by considering the Chinese culture background, which filled the void of Chinese data in this field. secondly, study1was designed to test the validate the three main theories by analyzing the relationship between the independent variable(such as income contribution, education level, gender ideology, work hour) and contribution of household labor. Thirdly, this study intended to understand some attitude toward household labor, such as the satisfaction degree and the ideal model. Be aimed at the argument that whether the gender ideology could predict the real daily behaviors, Study2got the implicit gender ideology by the stereotype explain bias measurement(SEB) to discuss its’ relationship with the division of household labor, comparing with the explicit gender ideology. Study3was designed to explore the relationships between the sex roles and the division of household labor through the Bem’s sex roles questionnaire.This study improved the ecological validity by adding some cultural factors, such as "the housework help form parents" and "elder care", and investigating the contribution of household labor through both the time measure and assessment measure. The results of this study are as follows:(1) Couples still divided their household labor traditionally. Women contribute about2times more than men significantly by both measure methods. Women are the main taker of household labor even though controlling other influence factors. However, the division of household labor tends to be more and more equal comparing with the previous researches.(2) The relative resource theory can best explain the division of household labor, especially for women. The income gap between couples is the best predictors of the division of household labor. Women’s contribution of income is significantly related with their contribution of household labor. Women with more income do less housework. The gender ideology and education level are significantly related with behavior of household labor, too. The person who gets more education, with more equal gender ideology, will share the housework more equal, especially for men. The time available theory could best explain the housework behavior when the sex factor is excluded which argues that the work hour has significant linear relation with total housework hour and men’s contribution of housework, but not for women. Besides, some demographical variables, such as age, the family structure, the parenthood and children’s age, have effect on the division of household labor.(3) The gender stereotype that"men are more suitable for acting as the breadwinner, while women are more suitable for acting as the family care taker" is existed by the SEB. And men hold stronger stereotype about women. This implicit gender attitude has more significant effect on the division of household labor than the explicit one. The implicit gender attitude about the other gender has linear relation with one’s housework behavior.(4) The sex undifferentiated type groups make up the largest share of all participates, then the single sex groups. People with different sex roles have different contributions of household labor. Masculine males do significantly less housework than the androgyny and the sex undifferentiated ones, while androgyny female do significantly less housework than the sex undifferentiated ones. And men’s housework contribution rate is negative correlated with their masculine scores, and positive correlated with their feminine scores, while women’s housework contribution rate has no correlation with their gender scores.