Why
Don't Men Do More Housework? A Job Characteristics
Exploration of Gender and Housework Satisfaction
Pamela K. Adelmann
Abstract
Men tend to participate less in unpaid household work than women.
As one potential reason why, this study explores a job characteristics
explanation of men's satisfaction with housework, and with paid
work, compared to women. Measures of self-direction, physical demands,
time pressure, and satisfaction were compared for men and women
from a national survey. Findings show that men perceive the characteristics
of their housework differently than women, but not more negatively.
Women's housework satisfaction is predicted by all three characteristics
but men's only by housework time pressure.
In the subset of individuals who occupied both housekeeping and
paid employment roles, men made more discrepant ratings of their
housework compared to their paid work than women, but this discrepancy
favored housework, not paid work. This study suggests there is little
about men's perceptions of housework that explains their lack of
participation in it.
Pamela K. Adelmann,
School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University
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