Division of Labor, Gender Ideology, and Marital Satisfaction in East Asia
| Date | 01 April 2016 |
| Published date | 01 April 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12274 |
| Author | Liana C. Sayer,Yue Qian |
Y Q Ohio State University
L C. S University of Maryland∗
Division of Labor, Gender Ideology, and Marital
Satisfaction in East Asia
Using data from the 2006 Family Module of the
East Asian Social Survey (N=3,096), this arti-
cle examines associations of marital satisfaction
with divisions of housework and gender ideol-
ogy in four East Asian societies: urban China,
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Compared
with Japanese and Korean married women
and men, Chinese and Taiwanese spouses were
more satised with their marriage and had
more egalitarian divisions of housework, but
simultaneously they held less egalitarian gen-
der ideologies. Multivariate analyses showed
that relative share of housework was nega-
tively associated with marital satisfaction for
Japanese and Korean men and for Korean and
Taiwanese women. Egalitarian gender ideology
was signicantly associated with lower marital
satisfaction only among Taiwanese women.
In addition, the negative association between
housework and marital satisfaction was more
pronounced for Taiwanese women who espoused
more egalitarian gender ideologies.The authors
discuss how differences in macro-level social
contexts explain these cross-society variations.
Department of Sociology, 238 Townshend Hall, 1885 Neil
Avenue Mall, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210.
∗Department of Sociology, 2112 Art Sociology Building,
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (e-mail:
lsayer@umd.edu).
This article was edited by Jennifer Glass.
Key Words: families and individuals in societal contexts,
gender, gender roles, marital quality, marital relations,
marriage.
Economic, political, and demographic transfor-
mations are occurring in East Asian societies,
driven by industrialization, urbanization, and
closer integration into world markets (Vogel,
1993). These forces have increased women’s
educational and employment opportunities,
but the gendered division of labor remains
stubbornly entrenched (Oshio, Nozaki, &
Kobayashi, 2013). What may have changed in
East Asian societies is women’s perceptions of
the fairness of unequal divisions of labor and
their alternatives to entering and remaining in an
unsatisfactory marriage. In Western societies,
unequal shares of housework reduce marital
satisfaction, and the negative association is
stronger in countries with egalitarian gender
norms, particularly those with cultural beliefs
that spouses should equally share work and
family roles (Greenstein, 2009).
The diffusion of Western ideals of egal-
itarian partnerships that has accompanied
modernization and globalization suggests that
inequalities in the gendered division of labor
should also reduce marital satisfaction in East
Asian societies (Casterline, 2001; Cherlin,
2004; Wong & Goodwin, 2009). However,
the historical-cultural emphasis on familism
and gender specialization in East Asian soci-
eties (Slote & De Vos, 1998) may function to
normalize women’s greater and men’s lesser
time investments in housework, even among
egalitarian spouses, and thus remove the gen-
dered division of labor as a source of marital
dissatisfaction. This study contributes to the
literature on gender and family change by
Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (April 2016): 383–400 383
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12274
384 Journal of Marriage and Family
taking a cross-national comparative approach to
investigate the independent and joint inuences
of the gendered division of labor and gender
ideology on marital satisfaction among women
and men in four East Asian societies.
Research on industrialized Western countries
indicates that the gendered division of house-
hold labor and its consequences for family out-
comes vary across national contexts. Women
do more housework than men across the con-
temporary world (Sayer, 2010), but the division
of housework is more egalitarian in countries
with higher levels of aggregate gender equal-
ity, full-time employment of mothers, public
child care, and access to paternity leave (Fuwa,
2004; Hook, 2010; Knudsen & Waerness,2008).
A more egalitarian division of housework is
associated with increased levels of perceived
fairness and marital satisfaction, especially for
women who espouse egalitarian gender ideolo-
gies (Coltrane, 2000; Greenstein, 1996; Lavee
& Katz, 2002; Yodanis, 2010). Associations are
contingent on national levels of gender equity
because these provide a comparative referent
that married women use in forming percep-
tions of justice about the division of household
labor (Greenstein, 2009). National levels of gen-
der equity are associated with public policies
and organizational structures of employment and
care. These affect women’s perceptions about
the compatibility of work and family and thus
options within and outside of marriage. Struc-
tures of employment that inuence ability to har-
monize work and family continue to vary across
East Asian societies (Yu, 2009). Hence, we
anticipate that the complex nexus of the division
of labor, gender ideology, and marital satisfac-
tion should also vary across East Asian societies.
Greenstein (2009) has suggested that in
countries with greater gender equity in non-
family (e.g., economic, educational, political,
health) domains, women are less likely to accept
micro-level gender inequalities as “fair,” which
leads to a stronger association between gendered
divisions of housework and perceptions of fair-
ness as well as stronger associations between
perceptions of fairness and satisfaction with
family life. Theoretically, macro-level gender
equity is positively associated with gender
egalitarianism at home because of three mech-
anisms (Yu & Lee, 2013). First, women have
more opportunities outside of marriage and thus
can bargain more effectively in relationships
because their “threat point,” or ability to leave
unsatisfactory relationships, is more credible.
Second, individuals routinely encounter women
who are employed, and thus women’s partici-
pation in the labor force becomes normalized.
Third, occupational opportunities for women
provide pecuniary and nonmaterial incentives
for families to behave and espouse attitudes that
dismiss gender specialization at home. Yet Yu
and Lee (2013) have argued that higher levels of
women’s integration into the public sphere may
push for greater support for gendered roles in
the home. This is because people can no longer
use gender differences in the public sphere to
reinforce displays and ideas about essential-
ized gender identities and because the costs of
espousing gendered family roles seem lower.
They garner support for this argument nd-
ing that macro-level gender equality increases
individuals’ support for employed mothers but
decreases their support for egalitarian gender
roles at home (Yu & Lee, 2013). This suggests
that increased gender equity in public spheres
may not translate directly into a negative asso-
ciation between gendered divisions of labor
and marital satisfaction, because unequal shares
of household work will not be perceived as
unfair.
In summary, couples’ division of housework,
their interpretation of that division, and con-
sequences of that division are inuenced by
levels of women’s integration into public arenas
(e.g., the paid labor force), specic workplace
and government policies that facilitate or hinder
work–family balance, and individual and cul-
tural beliefs about masculinity and femininity.
Research has yet to examine how individual-,
couple-, and macro-level forces play out to
shape individuals’ marital evaluation in Eastern
societies, and it is this gap we ll with the
current study. Drawing on a cross-national data
set, the 2006 East Asian Social Survey (EASS),
we comparatively examined the differences,
for women and men, respectively, in the effects
of gendered divisions of household labor and
gender ideology on marital satisfaction in urban
Mainland China (hereafter, urban China), Japan,
South Korea (hereafter, Korea), and Taiwan.
Under a cross-national comparative framework
(Yu, 2015), our contribution is to systematically
consider how divisions of housework and gen-
der ideology inuence the experiences of “his”
and “her” marriages in East Asian contexts and
explicitly assess how broader social contexts
shape family outcomes.
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