Gender and the Distribution of Household Work: A Comparison of Self-Reports by Female College Faculty in the United States and China

BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEWWho does the housework has become an increasing source of conflict among dual-career married couples. Surveys reveal that women have become increasingly angry at their husbands because of their unwillingness do a larger share of the work (Townsend and O'Neil, 1990). Housework is shared quite unequally among most married couples in the United States, even when both the husband and wife work full-time (Pleck, 1982; 1985; Barnett and Baruch, 1987; Bradley Googins, cited in Hochschild, 1989). Hochschild (1989) and others have attributed this pattern to the failure of the gender division of household labor to keep up with rapid changes in family and work roles.The preceding interpretation can be further examined by comparative studies of other societies that have undergone similar changes in work and family. One society which is similar in this respect but different in many other ways is the People's Republic of China. China differs from the United States in that its economy is socialist rather than capitalist; its government is central and hierarchical rather than democratically elected; its social and political ideology is collective rather than individualistic; and its economy is at a very different level of development, with a per-capita gross national product that is just a fraction of that of the United States.In spite of these major differences, the role of women in the two countries has undergone a remarkably similar transition over the past fifty years from a home-based role to one centered around employment, and -- for better-educated women -- career. In China, like the United States, gender roles had been highly traditional prior to World War II, with a distinct and separate role for women that was tied to the home and child-rearing. It is true that Chinese women were more involved in economic production, because China's largely agrarian economy meant that a sizable portion of economic production occurred at home. Still, it was relatively rare for Chinese women to work outside the home for pay, so their role, like that of most American women, was tied to the home before World War II. However, Chinese women rapidly moved into the paid labor force following the 1949 revolution and the replacement of a feudalist state with a socialist state. The widespread entry of women into the labor force in the United States came somewhat later, in the 1960s and 1970s, although there was a temporary surge during World War II, after which most women returned to the housewife role. By the 1980s , however, the proportion of women in the labor force in both the United States and China was far higher than it had been four decades earlier. In the United States, 57.8% of all women ages of 16 and over participated in the paid labor force in 1989 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991) -- an increase from around 28% in the early 1960s and a lower level than that in the 1950s. In 1991, 38.8 percent of China's labor force was composed of women (Chinese Statistic Publishing House, 1991), and 54 percent of Chinese women between the ages of 15 and 64 participated in the paid labor force (World Bank, 1992). Thus, the proportion of women participating in the labor force today is very similar in the two countries.Many of these women are entering professional occupations. In China, the number of women faculty at the rank of assistant, associate, or full professor in universities rose to 40,000 by the mid-1980s, by which time nearly 35 percent of all Chinese scientists were women (Planning Bureau of State Educational Committee, 1986; Chinese and International Women Digest, 1990). In the United States, there were sharp increases in the proportion of women in such occupations as medicine, law, and college teaching, with 33.2 percent of college faculty being women by 1987 (National Centre for Education Statistics, 1991). From Hochschild's perspective, it is conceivable that rapid changes in the employment status of women in the two countries might have similar effects on the division of household labor, despite basic differences in the economic systems. …