Perpetuation of Gender Inequalities in Households: From Culture to Cognition

Abstract

Though labor-force participation of women has considerably increased in most industrialized societies and many households are now dual-earner, the gender imbalance in household division of labor persists. Moreover, the consensus amongst men and women is that such distributions are fair, resulting in normalization and perpetuation of inequality. We provide a multifactorial explanation for understanding the economic, cultural and cognitive processes underlying such inequalities within households. The economic approach suggests that gendered division of labor is a problem of coordination, and payoffs available to individuals outside their households provides asymmetric bargaining power to men and women, shaping housework conventions. In most industrialized societies, various measures of economic payoffs such as financial assets, employment potential, can then provide power to gender groups. The sociological approach bridges this macro-level view of households with the micro-level view of an individual’s perceptions of labor divisions. Utilizing various aspects of culture, this section shows that when labor divisions become stabilized on a large scale, they become part of cultural narratives and norms – such as what individuals think fairness in the household is, what gender roles they abide by, etc – which become internalized. The psychological approach explores cognitive mechanisms underpinning self-perception and assessments of fairness within one’s household. This multi factorial approach allows us to address the individual dynamics of self-concept within the broader social and economic contexts that households exist within. Ultimately, we aim to demonstrate the utility of such multidisciplinary work for informing gender policy at various levels and making holistic strides toward the improvement of women's health and wellbeing.