Resource Bargaining and Gender Display in Housework and Care Work in Modern China

Abstract

This paper analyses data from the Chinese Women’s Status Survey 2010 to investigate how dual-earning couples allocate routine housework, nonroutine housework, and care work between spouses based on their relative income and working time. Women spend more time on housework and take on a higher amount of routine domestic work (e.g., cooking and cleaning) and care work (e.g., childcare). Men share a higher proportion of nonroutine domestic work (e.g., home repairs). Routine housework is negatively associated with one’s relative contribution to family income and working time. For both men and women living in rural areas, however, relative income forms a curvilinear relationship with routine housework and total housework time. Relative income and working time, however, are poor predictors in the gender division of nonroutine housework. Furthermore, they have more complex patterns of association with care work. The results suggest that gender ideology interacts with resource factors in multiple ways to influence the domestic division of labor in China.