Teaching and Learning Guide for: Fairness and Power in Family Organization
Authors: Poeschl Gabrielle 
Published: May 2009

This guide accompanies the following article: Gabrielle Poeschl, ‘What Family Organization Tells Us about Fairness and Power in Marital Relationships’, Social and Personality Compass 1/1 (2007): 557–571, 10.1111/j.1751‐9004.2007.00026.x

Author's Introduction

One thing that often strikes me, when I talk with people, is the human capacity to accept and defend surprising aspects of the social life. Thus, we have some feeling that the separation between the domestic and the public spheres has not always existed, but we are ready to assume that in the first human groups, men went out hunting to feed their family, while women stayed in the camp to take care of the children. Even in the face of evidence to the contrary, we are reluctant to question the opinion that men and women differ in personality traits and competences that make them more capable of performing different types of tasks. In other words, we are prone to believe in historical reconstructions or in social constructions that help us to explain and justify present‐day relations between social groups. As a result, current debates about the differences between the sexes, or about the status of women during 99% of human history, do not have much influence on the way in which people enact their family roles. In particular, women continue to be held responsible and to feel responsible for family organization and, therefore, they still do the greater share of housework and often view the unequal division of family tasks as fair and satisfactory. If young unmarried people are apt to value more egalitarian relations, they downplay the impact of constraints and social pressures on family practices, which usually bring married people to conform to the traditional family roles. In turn, the adoption of unequal family practices contradicts the progression of women in the public sphere and, consequently, contributes to maintaining the asymmetry between men and women in society as a whole. The extensive research on family organization provides matter for debates on attitudes, norms, values, and behaviors, which are likely to promote students’ interest in research in social psychology and to stimulate their reflection on social inequalities.

Author Recommends

Framing the problem of family organization in a broader perspective about sex and gender:

1. Nielsen, J. M. (1990). Sex and gender in society. Perspectives on stratification. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

This book provides a good understanding of the structural aspects of the inequality between the sexes, outlining its historical roots and its nature, and presenting explanations and theories about gender stratification. It gives a solid basis to understand as well as to study present‐day family organization and gender roles.

2. Bem, S. L. (1993). The lenses of gender. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

In this classic book, the author examines how the assumptions transmitted by the cultural discourses and social institutions shape individuals’ perceptions of the social reality. It analyzes how androcentrism, gender polarization, and biological essentialism contribute to the maintenance of an unequal social structure organized around predefined gender roles.

3. Eagly, A. H. (1987). Sex differences in social behavior: A social‐role interpretation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

This book emphasizes the importance of men and women's positions in the social structure to explain their distinctive traits and behaviors. Male and female adults are viewed as the recipients of social pressures to conform to role expectations, acquire skills to accomplish relevant social behaviors, and develop beliefs about the consequences of these behaviors.

4. Adovasio, J. M., Soffer, O., & Page, J. (2007). The invisible sex: Uncovering the true roles of women in prehistory. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Written by anthropologists, this book presents current research about prehistoric women and attempts to rectify commonly held theories about how the first human groups were living. The authors argue that men were probably not mighty hunters and discuss, in particular, the role of women in supplying food and creating artifacts to be used in this activity by the egalitarian prehistoric communities.

Focusing the issue of family organization:

5. Hochschild, A., & Machung, A. (2003). The second shift. Working parents and the revolution at home (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Penguin Books.

This book analyses the way in which a small sample of spouses with different ideologies (traditional, egalitarian, and transitional) negotiate who does the housework and cares for the children. Conclusions based on a series of interviews and observations highlight the predominant contribution of women to the second job constituted by the family work.

6. Casper, L. M., & Bianchi, S. M. (2002). Continuity and change in the American family. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

In this demographically focused book, authors describe the changes that occurred in the American families during the second half of the 20th century, and present theories to interpret the causes of the changes and to assess their consequences. Topics discussed include cohabitation, changes in life of mothers and fathers, child care, economic disparities related to family structure, and the way work and family are combined.

Online Materials

There is a lot of material on the Web on gender and family issues: Government sites, feminist sites or religious sites, among others, present reports and data about the equality between the sexes, or develop points of view about the desirable roles for men and women in the family and in the society more generally. Official reports, statistics, and documents may be found, for example, on the following sites:

1. United Nations Development Program

http://hdr.undp.org/en/

Global, national, and regional reports on human development may be downloaded from this site. Human development is defined as the progress made in order that people lead healthy lives, have access to knowledge and to the resources needed for a decent standard of living, and be able to participate in the life of the community. Data about achieving equality between men and women may be found in the published reports, where market and nonmarket activities are described.

2. WomenWatch. United Nations Inter‐agency Network on Women and Gender Equality

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/

As a space for global gender equality issues, this sites offers information and resources on the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. It presents numerous links to reports, papers and statistics.

3. UNIFEM. United Nations Development Fund for Women

http://www.unifem.org/

On this site, which focuses on the advancement of women's rights, information, publications, and reports about the advancement of women and achievement of gender equality may be found.

4. European Commission. Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities

http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=418&langId=en

This site provides information on the effort to achieve equality between men and women in the European Union, through equal treatment legislation, gender mainstreaming, and specific measures for the advancement of women.

5. Status of Women Canada

http://www.swc‐cfc.gc.ca/index_e.html

This site is designed to provide information about women's issues. Among the numerous publications that may be viewed online, papers and data on paid and unpaid work may be chosen from the alphabetical list of the ‘publication’ section of the site.

Sample Syllabus for Seminar in Fairness and Power in Family Organization

Course description

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the theories and research on family organization. It discusses the origin of present‐day family organization; the division of family work between spouses, the reasons that might explain this division and the feelings it induces in partners; the distribution of power between spouses and its implications on marital satisfaction; the consequences of family organization on the achievement of equality between men and women in the public sphere. Theories and research developments are introduced through lectures, readings, weekly assignments, group projects, and discussions.

Course format and readings

This seminar on Fairness and Power in Family Organization consists of lectures, class discussions, and a proposed study for groups of two to three students. There are several texts that students should all read, and each student will have to present a single (different) journal article. Weekly assignments are proposed to provide complementary material for discussions.

Course requirements and grading

The requirements of the course are the following: to do all the weekly assignments and readings before class, so that we can have informed discussions; to participate actively in the class discussions; to present an article (using PowerPoint) selected from among the suggested readings; to contribute constructively to a research project conceived by a small group of students. Final grades will be based on the amount and quality of student participation in general (20%), individual presentation of readings (40%), and the group presentation (PowerPoint and handout) of the proposed study (40%).

Course projects

Individual presentation.  You will be expected to present to the class the paper that you selected in agreement with your professor, using PowerPoint. You should mention the objective of the paper, summarize the cited literature, describe how the data were collected, present the main findings, and explain what the authors felt their main contribution was. You should outline how the paper contributes to your own understanding of the issue, what questions it raises and how further studies might be developed on the basis of those data. Note that you will not be graded on your presentational style, but on your ability to integrate and transmit the information provided by the paper.

Group presentation.  The group presentation consists of a PowerPoint presentation that should include the following sections: (a) a title page; (b) an introduction that presents the main objective of the study and justifies its theoretical and social importance; (c) a brief review of relevant literature; (d) a clearly stated hypothesis; (e) a method section explaining how the data are collected, the sample defined and the data analyzed; (f) the expected results; (g) a brief discussion indicating what might be concluded if the results support – or do not support – the hypothesis; and (h) a reference section.

Research project idea.  The proposed study should be original and develop any of the topics discussed in the seminar and presented hereafter. It should aim at shedding light on a selected aspect of the issue, which should contribute to expand the current state of knowledge on the way in which family organization reflects different conceptions of fairness and power, or different readjustments in these conceptions that affect marital relationships and, more generally, social organization.

Topics, Focus Questions, and Readings

Part 1: Introduction

The first part of the seminar is dedicated to the presentation of a historical perspective on the relations between men and women and the progressive division of roles by sex. It describes how the theories about the differences between the sexes stemmed from the roles of breadwinner and caretaker and how these theories still contribute, in turn, to justify the traditional division of roles between men and women.

Assignment and Focus Questions:

Ask about ten persons – half men, half women – how they view the roles of men and women in prehistory.

What are, in your opinion, the reasons why men and women traditionally perform different roles?

Readings for All:

Nielsen, J. M. (1990). Sex and gender in society. Perspectives on stratification. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Chapter 2: Gender and status in preindustrial societies (pp. 25–48).

Nielsen, J. M. (1990). Sex and gender in society. Perspectives on stratification. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Chapter 3: Gender and status in industrial and industrializing societies (pp. 49–84).

Suggested Readings:

Eagly, A. H., & Steffen, V. J. (1984). Gender stereotypes stem from the distribution of women and men into social roles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 735–754.

Folbre, N. (1991). The unproductive housewife: Her evolution in nineteenth‐century economic thought. Signs, 16, 463–484.

Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (2001). An ambivalent alliance. Hostile and benevolent sexism as complementary justifications for gender inequality. American Psychologist, 56, 109–118.

Hoffman, C., & Hurst, N. (1990). Gender stereotypes: perception or rationalization? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 197–208.

Hollingworth, L. S. (1916). The vocational aptitudes of women. In H. L. Hollinworth (Ed.) Vocational psychology: its problems and method (pp. 222–244). New York, NY: D’Appleton & Company.

Scott, J. W. (1993). The woman worker. In G. Fraisse, & M. Perrot (Eds.), A history of women in the West, Vol. IV, Emerging feminism from revolution to world war (pp. 399–426). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Shields, S. A. (1975). Functionalism, Darwinism, and the psychology of women. American Psychologist, 30, 739–754.

West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1, 125–151.

Part 2: Present‐day family organization: characteristics and explanations

The second part of the seminar focuses on the present‐day family organization and the ‘gender‐typed’ division of domestic and parental tasks. The factors explaining inter‐individual variations, such as age, education, or family structure are discussed, as well as the main explanations for the lack of changes in traditional family organization.

Assignment and Focus Questions:

Ask about ten married persons – half men, half women – how they divide the domestic and parental tasks at home and why they do so.

Think about what you, personally, would do and why.

Readings for All:

Coltrane, S. (2000). Research on household labor: Modeling and measuring the social embeddedness of routine family work. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 1208–1233.

Shelton, B. A., & John, D. (1996). The division of household labor. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 299–322.

Suggested Readings:

Bianchi, S. M., Milkie, M. A., Sayer, L. C., & Robinson, J. P. (2000). Is anyone doing the housework? Social Forces, 79, 191–228.

Davis, S. N., Greenstein, T. N., & Gerteisen Marks, J. P. (2007). Effects of union type on division of household labor. Journal of Family Issues, 28, 1246–1272.

Greenstein, T. N. (1996). Husbands’ participation in domestic labor: Interactive effects of wives’ and husbands’ gender ideology. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 58, 585–595.

Gupta, S. (2006). Her money, her time: Women's earnings and their housework hours. Social Sciences Research, 35, 975–999.

Poeschl, G., Pinto, I., Múrias, C., Silva, A., & Ribeiro, R. (2006). Representations of family practices, belief in sex differences and sexism. Sex Roles, 55, 111–121.

Presser, H. B. (1994). Employment schedules among dual‐earner spouses and the division of household labor by gender. American Sociological Review, 59, 348–364.

Singleton, A., & Maher, J. (2004). The ‘new man’ is in the house: Young men, social change, and housework. The Journal of Men's Studies, 12, 227–240.

Thompson, L., & Walker, A. J. (1989). Gender in families: Women and men in marriage, work, and parenthood. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51, 845–871.

Part 3: Perception of (un)fairness with family organization

The third part of the seminar deals with the common paradoxical feeling of fairness with the unequal division of family tasks and discusses the proposed explanations for this feeling. Inter‐individual variations in the perception of fairness are examined as well as the implications of the perception of unfairness for spouses and marital relationship.

Assignment and Focus Questions:

Ask about ten married persons – half men, half women – whether they are satisfied with the way they divide domestic and parental tasks and why they find this division (un)fair and (un)satisfactory.

Would you share their feeling? Why? What would, in your opinion, be a fair and satisfactory family organization?

Readings for All:

Kluwer, E. S., & Mikula, G. (2002). Gender‐related inequalities in the division of family work in close relationships: A social psychological perspective. European Review of Social Psychology, 13, 185–216.

Major, B. (1993). Gender, entitlement and the distribution of family labor. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 141–159.

Suggested Readings:

Baxter, J., & Western, M. (1998). Satisfaction with housework: Examining the paradox. Sociology, 32, 101–120.

Frisco, M., & Williams, K. (2003). Perceived housework equity, marital happiness, and divorce in dual‐earner households. Journal of Family Issues, 24, 51–73.

Gager, C., & Hohmann‐Marriott, B. (2006). Distributive justice in the household. Marriage and Family Review, 40, 5–42.

Grote, N. K., Naylor, K. E., & Clark, M. S. (2002). Perceiving the division of family work to be unfair: Do social comparisons, enjoyment, and competence matter? Journal of Family Psychology, 16, 510–522.

Mikula, G. (1998). Division of household labor and perceived justice: A growing field of research. Social Justice Research, 11, 215–241.

Mikula, G., & Freudenthaler, H. H. (2002). Division of tasks and duties and the perception of injustice: The case of household chores. Psychologische Beitraege, 44, 567–584.

Poeschl, G. (2008). Social norms and the feeling of justice about unequal family practices. Social Justice Research, 21 (1), 69–85.

Thompson, L. (1991). Family work: Women's sense of fairness. Journal of Family Issues, 12, 181–196.

Part 4: Power relations in family organization

The fourth part of the seminar addresses the division of power and authority in the family. It discusses different perspectives on family power, the relationship between women's earnings, power, and conformity to the normative family roles, the concept of female gatekeeping, as well as the implications of the perception of an unbalanced distribution of power on marital satisfaction.

Assignment and Focus Questions:

Ask about ten married persons – half men, half women – to tell you how they view the division of power in their family and on which clues they base their opinion.

Do you agree with their analysis? Why? How would you describe a desirable distribution of power between spouses?

Readings for All:

Kranichfeld, M. L. (1987). Rethinking family power. Journal of Family Issues, 8, 42–56.

Tichenor, V. (2005). Maintaining men's dominance: Negotiating identity and power when she earns more. Sex Roles, 53, 191–205.

Suggested Readings:

Allen, S. M., & Hawkins, A. J. (1999). Maternal gatekeeping: Mothers’ beliefs and behaviors that inhibit greater father involvement in family work. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 199–212.

Bittman, M., England, P., Folbre, N., Sayer, L., & Matheson, G. (2003). When does gender trump money? Bargaining and time in household work. American Journal of Sociology, 109, 186–214.

Deutsch, F. M., Roksa, J., & Meeske, C. (2003). How gender counts when couples count their money. Sex Roles, 48, 291–304.

McBride, B. A., Brown, G. L., Bost, K. K., Shin, N., Vaughn, B., & Korth, B. (2005). Paternal identity, maternal gatekeeping, and father involvement. Family Relations, 54, 360–372.

Müller, U. (1998). The micropolitics of gender differences in family life. In V. Ferreira, T. Tavares, & S. Portugal (Eds.), Shifting Bonds, Shifting Bounds (pp. 329–344). Oeiras: Celta Editora.

Tichenor, V. (1999). Status and income as gendered resources: The case of marital power. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 638–650.

Vogler, C. (1998). Money in the household: Some underlying issues of power. Sociological Review, 46, 687–713.

Weigel, D. J., Bennett, K. K., & Ballard‐Reisch, D. S. (2006). Influence strategies in marriage: Self and partner links between equity, strategy use, and marital satisfaction and commitment. Journal of Family Communication, 6, 77–95.

Part 5: Family organization and equality between men and women in the public sphere

The last part of the seminar examines the social consequences of traditional family practices. It discusses the way in which inequalities within the family lead to inequalities outside the family, namely by conditioning women's participation in the economic and political spheres, and the way in which such practices contribute, ultimately, to the ‘feminization of poverty’.

Assignment and Focus Questions:

Ask about ten persons – half men, half women – how they balance their family and professional tasks.

Do you think that the equality between the spouses implies sharing roles? And what do you think about an equal representation of men and women in the breadwinning and care giving roles?

Readings for All:

Smock, P., & Noonan, M. C. (2005). Intersections: Gender, work, and family well‐being in the United States. In S. M. Bianchi, L. M. Casper & R. B. King (Eds.), Work, family, health and well‐being (pp. 343–360). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

United Nations Development Program (2007). Human Development Report 2007/2008. Gender empowerment measures (pp. 326–346). New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Suggested readings:

Brescoll, V. L., & Uhlmann, E. L. (2005). Attitudes toward traditional and nontraditional parents. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 29, 436–445.

Hersch, J., & Stratton, L. S. (1997). Housework, fixed effects, and wages of married workers. Journal of Human Resources, 32, 285–307.

Hersch, J., & Stratton, L. S. (2002). Housework and wages. Journal of Human Resources, 37, 217–229.

Holden, K. C., & Smock, P. J. (1991). The economic costs of marital dissolution: Why do women bear a disproportionate cost? Annual Review of Sociology, 17, 51–78.

Kaufman, G., & Uhlenberg, P. (2000). The influence of parenthood on the work effort of married men and women. Social Forces, 78, 931–947.

Riggs, J. M. (1997). Mandates for mothers and fathers: Perceptions of breadwinners and care givers. Sex Roles, 37, 565–580.

Smock, P. J. (1994). Gender and the short‐run economic consequences of marital disruption. Social Forces, 73, 243–262.

Waldfogel, J. (1998). Understanding the ‘family gap’ in pay for women with children. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12, 137–156.