Why (and how) we shouldn't have it all

Debates over whether women should lean in, lean out, have it all or just some have been raging over the last few years, with few clear answers. Should women emulate men? Adjust what they’re doing to gain power? Opt out entirely?

At this week’s WAPPP Seminar on “Different Ways of Not Having It All: Work, Care, and Gender Change in the New Economy,” NYU Sociologist Kathleen Gerson suggests that the answers can’t, and shouldn’t be that simple.

While women have made tremendous strides in the workplace and at home, we’re entering a whole new economic era, where the boundaries between work and home, local and global job markets, and part and full-time work are all blurring---to say nothing of changing gender norms in most vocations.

Meanwhile, even household norms are changing, with more women working outside the home even through a child’s life, work tensions affecting marital relationships, and greater expectations of parental involvement throughout a child’s life.

As a result, both economics and home life are changing and becoming even less secure: careers aren't quite the linear, predictable paths they used to be, nor are household expectations of, and demands on both partners.

There are three main ways that people are thinking about these changes:

• “Neotraditional” arrangements, in which both partners work and are committed to one another, but one partner “specializes” in care, while the other “specializes” in breadwinning
• “Self-Reliance,” where, even in committed relationships, both partners work to provide money and care in equal doses---without counting on the other.
• and “Gender flexibility,” in which there is an egalitarian sharing of earning and caretaking, but a vague meaning of equality: care and breadwinning are responsibilities assigned not by gender, just what needs to be done

Both men and women would prefer gender-flexibility as an ideal arrangement. But in practice, women tend to fall back to more self-reliant positions, while men reflexively tend toward neotraditional arrangements. This is partly because men are still under the subtle yet profound pressure of the male breadwinner ideal: a man who can’t support his family is unmarriageable and “isn’t a man.” Even equality is seen as chivalrous: “equality means the woman has a choice; but I don’t.”

In practice, a third of people are “neotraditionalists,” with fathers left managing time-demanding jobs. About a third of people are “on their own,” and are left to rear children by themselves or without a committed partner. One of six couples have reversed traditional roles, with women providing more financially, but this leading to resentment in the relationship. And another sixth are “equal, but exhausted.”

At the end of the day, these choices are not about gender, but universal hopes to have a balanced life with predictable work and secure relationships---all permutations of which will require trade-offs. The erosion of job and relationship security are permanent conditions with which we must all contend; to do so we may have to redefine the responsibilities of being a man and a woman in the modern world.




Photo Source

Does workplace equality come home?

Over the last few generations, many societies have made major strides towards gender equity, particularly in the public sphere. Some of this may come from the demands of economics of the industrial and post-industrial revolutions, others from changes in attitudes, but all over the world, women are coming back into the workplace.

So what effect is this having in households? What is the relationship between women’s income generation outside the house, and intra-household bargaining, i.e. housework shared between spouses?


Last week Kathleen McGinn and Maya Ruiz Castro of Harvard Business School presented some of their preliminary research on these very questions. They suspect that:

1. Women’s income and their involvement in societal leadership roles are shaped by both gender attitudes and intra-household bargaining outcomes, including the allocation of household work and childcare.
2. More equal distribution of household work and childcare between spouses and less traditional gender attitudes are associated with higher earnings, greater supervisory responsibility, less work-life conflict and greater life satisfaction for both men and women.

They’re currently analyzing data from the global 2002 International Social Survey Program to see whether things like 'who does the laundry?' or whether there’s additional help from grandparents might affect equality within marriage and income. Meanwhile, how can public policy on parental leave and workplace equality affect changes in gender attitudes that are carried into the household?

Just last week, The New York Times published an article adding another dimension to the conversation: do women’s empowerment and intra-household bargaining, then, affect marriage dynamics, and in particular sexual behavior?

While having a “peer marriage” in which both partners do housework and childcare has become a bigger factor in women’s marital satisfaction, the article finds that, very often, “the less gender differentiation, the less sexual desire.”

With all of these changes---in women’s workforce participation, intra-household bargaining power, sexuality, and power---will societies adjust their expectations accordingly?



Photo: Bertha Stallworth, age 21, inspects 40mm artillery cartridges at Frankford Arsenal during WWII. Source: National Archives, 208-NP-1WW-1

What's Culture Got to Do with Fertility?

I had no idea what to expect from a talk titled “Lowest-Low Fertility: A theory of normative rigidity and economic context” but judging by the packed room, a number of people were interested in hearing Mary C. Brinton, the chair of Harvard’s sociology department, discuss this topic. 

   

What is “lowest-low” fertility? A country’s total fertility rate of 1.3 or fewer births per woman is considered lowest-low. Of course, low fertility is not a problem for the planet overall, but for individual countries fertility far below replacement rate has serious implications – a rapidly aging population and a shrinking labor force among them. 

 

So why are some developed, post-industrial countries experiencing lowest-low fertility and others are not? For instance, the United States does not have “lowest-low” fertility, but Japan does, even though Japan has better child care options and ostensibly more family-friendly policies. Low fertility doesn’t even correlate with female labor force participation. In fact, it appears that countries with high percentage of women working actually have normal fertility rates.

If it’s not working women and it’s not government policies, what is driving down fertility in some well-to-do nations? Perhaps it is culture. 

Professor Brinton and her team set out to test this hypothesis. Utilizing data from the global attitudes survey, they isolated the gender-role perceptions through answers to questions like “A woman needs children to be fulfilled” and “Men have more rights to jobs when jobs are scarce.” They discerned three broad clusters among 24 post-industrial countries – those with predominantly “conservative” attitudes, reflecting the male breadwinner-female caregiver model, and then “egalitarian” or “caregiver egalitarian” countries.  

Professor Brinton’s analysis demonstrates that predominance of male breadwinner-female caregiver attitudes correlates significantly with low fertility rates. The quantitative model controls for the economic well-being of the countries and includes other potential factors that affect fertility, such as unemployment among young males. 

This means changing a culture of gender inequality and breaking down attitudes that perpetuate rigid gender norms is in the best interest of any post-industrial country concerned about its rapidly shrinking and aging population. If only changing culture were easy...