Dissertation
UNDOING GENDER: FAMILY ORGANIZATION AND IDENTITIES IN FAMILIES WITH BREADWINNER WIVES
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2020
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/111279
Abstract
From in-depth interviews with families with breadwinner wives, this study investigated how modern families were organizing daily life to determine if the gender imbalance of the second shift of household labor and childcare found by Hochschild (1989) and Tichenor (1999, 2005) remained. In contrast to these earlier studies, I found reports of families performing work and family roles in ways that undo gender norms and expectations. I argue in this dissertation that women were not just involved in the workforce, but that they were finding their sense of self in working and in the type of work that they were doing. At home, women were scaling back their work hours and standards to make room for men’s increased participation in household responsibilities. For men’s parts, they were increasing their participation in the second shift because it was important to them to be active and involved husbands and fathers. And yet, even with progress in undoing gender in many aspects of their lives, half of these families had a residual point of gender inequality in their division of labor: the family’s third shift of household management and emotional labor. The conclusions of this research show that these families have made progress toward gender egalitarianism in their families; however, traditional gender socialization still provided a guide that limited the extent to which otherwise gender progressive families could reject gender norms.
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Details
- Title
- UNDOING GENDER: FAMILY ORGANIZATION AND IDENTITIES IN FAMILIES WITH BREADWINNER WIVES
- Creators
- Sarah Anne Nishanian Akers
- Contributors
- Jennifer Sherman (Advisor)Monica K. Johnson (Committee Member)Alair MacLean (Committee Member)Julie Kmec (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Sociology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 333
- Identifiers
- 99900581409801842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation