Is the significance of gender declining in America?
That is, are men’s and women’s lives and rewards becoming
more similar? To answer this question, England examines trends
in market work and unpaid household work, including child care.
She considers whether men’s and women’s employment
and hours in paid work are converging, and examines trends in
occupational sex segregation and the sex gap in pay. She also
considers trends in men’s and women’s hours of paid
work and household work. The picture that emerges is one of convergence
within each of the two areas of paid and unpaid work. Yet progress
is not continuous and has stalled recently. Sometimes it continues
on one front and stops on another.
Gender change is also asymmetric in two ways: 1)
Things have changed in paid work more than in the household, and
2) women have dramatically increased their participation in formerly
“male” activities, but men’s inroads into traditionally
female occupations or household tasks is very limited by comparison.
England also considers what these trends portend
for the future of gender inequality. Jackson (1998) argues that
continued progress toward gender inequality is inevitable. England
considers his arguments. It is true that many forces push in the
direction of treating similarly situated men and women equally
in bureaucratic organizations. Nonetheless, she concludes that
the two related asymmetries in gender change—the sluggish
change in the household and in men taking on traditionally female
activities in any sphere—create bottlenecks that can dampen,
if not reverse, egalitarian trends.
Paula England, Sociology and
Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University
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