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- Title
The Role of Valued Outcomes, Justifications, and Comparison of Referents in Perceptions of Fairness Among Dual-Earner Couples.
- Authors
Gager, Constance T.
- Abstract
The article examines factors that may explain why full-time employed wives fail to report than an unequal division of labor is unfair despite performing more housework than their full-time employed husbands. Wives and mothers have steadily increased their labor force participation since the 1960s. Over the same period, working wives reduced their hours spent on housework significantly, but increases in their husbands' housework hours have been far from commensurate. Shifts in public attitudes about the appropriate role for each gender in society have accompanied the shifts in the involvement of wives in paid and unpaid labor. Data from the 1987 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) show that 90 percent of wives and 82 percent of husbands agree that when wives and husbands both work full-time they should share household work equally. Despite a growing body of both qualitative and quantitative research on perceptions of fairness in the division of household work, researchers still remain puzzled as to why inequality is not translated into unfairness in the minds of husbands and wives. The present research addresses some of the gaps in the knowledge by providing more in-depth information on the valued outcomes of tasks, the justifications used when assessing fairness, and by identifying the social comparisons made by husbands and wives that influence justice perceptions.
- Subjects
DOMESTIC relations; DUAL-career families; FAMILY-work relationship; WOMEN employees; SPOUSES; HOUSEHUSBANDS
- Publication
Journal of Family Issues, 1998, Vol 19, Issue 5, p622
- ISSN
0192-513X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/019251398019005007