Exercise 4.1
- What does the resource-dependence hypothesis assert with respect to the gender division of household labour?
- What does the time-constraints hypothesis assert with respect to the gender division of household labour?
- Comparing Germany and Denmark, in what ways would you expect the two countries to differ with respect to the effects of resource-dependence and time-constraints on the gender division of household labour?
- Use the multiple regression procedure to examine the resource-dependence hypothesis and the time-constraints hypothesis separately for men and women in Germany and Denmark.
Comment:
In order to examine the effects of resource-dependence and time-constraints on the gender division of household labour, it is necessary to operationally define each of these concepts, as well as to statistically control for other factors that might affect the household division of labour.
Procedure:
- Create a subset of countries that includes Germany and Denmark.
- Select only households with couples (since the division of household labour refers to the way in which couples organise their households).
- For each country and gender separately, estimate the effects of resource-dependence and time-constraints on the division of household labour, controlling for the presence of children in the household ('Children') and the age of the respondent ('Age').
- As an operational definition of household labour, use ‘hwkpwd1: Part you spend of total time on housework on typical weekday 1’.
- The operational definition of resource-dependence is ‘pphincr: Porportion of household income respondent provides’.
- The operational definition of time-constraints will be ‘wkhct: Total contracted hours per week in main job overtime excluded’.
Questions:
- Arrange the results of the analysis in a table consisting of four columns (one column for each gender group by country). The relevant coefficients for each variable should be listed in the rows.
- For women, what is the effect of resource-dependence on the proportion of housework they perform? How do they differ between Germany and Denmark?
- For women, what is the effect of time-constraints on the proportion of housework they perform? How do the results differ for Germany and Denmark?
- Discuss the results from 'b' and 'c' for men.
- Present your conclusions concerning the similarities and differences between Germany and Denmark and how this might be related to gender regimes.
- Open the dataset Family, Gender and Work
- Click the icon for weighting, and select ‘dweight’
- Subset the data. You must create four different subsets, and run the analysis below four times.
- Subset 1: Women in Germany living as partners. Click the 'Subset' icon, click the variable 'Gender' and add to subset. Click 'Female' in the 'Categories' box and click 'Add'. Click 'More' and repeat for country (= 'DE') and couple (= 1). Click 'OK'.
- Subset 2: Men in Germany living as partners
- Subset 3: Women in Denmark living as partners
- Subset 4: Men in Denmark living as partners
- Click the ‘Analysis’ tab, and then 'Regression'
- Click the variable ‘Part you spend of total time housework on typical weekday 1’ and ‘Add as dependent variable’
- Click the variables ‘Porportion of household income respondent provides’, ‘Total contracted hours per week in main job overtime excluded’, ‘Age’ ‘Children’ and ‘Add as independent variable’
*You need to have a copy of SPSS installed on your computer, and you should download and use the dataset Family, Gender and Work.
*Open SPSS by clicking on the appropriate link.
*Open the ESS data by clicking ‘File’, ‘Open’, and ‘Data’ on the SPSS menu bar before you select the folder and the data set.
*Open a new syntax window by clicking ‘File’, ‘New’, and ‘Syntax’ on the SPSS menu bar.
*You can copy the syntax below and paste it into the syntax window in SPSS.
*Execute the syntax using the 'Run' option on the menu bar.
*Comments on commands start with an asterisk and end with a dot.
*Commands must always end with a dot.
*The following command causes the cases to be weighted by the design weight variable 'dweight'.
WEIGHT BY dweight.
*Create filter variable - only include women from Germany and Denmark living as partner.
USE ALL.
COMPUTE filter_$=gender=0 & (cntry ='DK' | cntry ='DE') & (marital=1 or lvgptn=1).
VARIABLE LABEL filter_$ 'gender=0 & (cntry =DK or cntry =DE) & marital=1 or lvgptn=1 (FILTER)'.
VALUE LABELS filter_$ 0 'Not Selected' 1 'Selected'.
FORMAT filter_$ (f1.0).
FILTER BY filter_$.
EXECUTE.
*SPLIT FILE splits the active dataset into subgroups that can be analysed separately.
SORT CASES BY cntry.
SPLIT FILE LAYERED BY cntry.
REGRESSION
/MISSING LISTWISE
/STATISTICS COEFF OUTS R ANOVA
/CRITERIA=PIN(.05) POUT(.10)
/NOORIGIN
/DEPENDENT hwkpwd1
/METHOD=ENTER pphincr wkhct age children.
*Create filter variable - only include men from Germany and Denmark living as partner.
USE ALL.
COMPUTE filter_$=gender=1 & (cntry ='DK' | cntry ='DE') & (marital=1 or lvgptn=1).
VARIABLE LABEL filter_$ 'gender=1 & (cntry =DK | cntry =DE) & (marital=1 or lvgptn=1) (FILTER)'.
VALUE LABELS filter_$ 0 'Not Selected' 1 'Selected'.
FORMAT filter_$ (f1.0).
FILTER BY filter_$.
EXECUTE.
REGRESSION
/MISSING LISTWISE
/STATISTICS COEFF OUTS R ANOVA
/CRITERIA=PIN(.05) POUT(.10)
/NOORIGIN
/DEPENDENT hwkpwd1
/METHOD=ENTER pphincr wkhct age children.
*Turn off the split file and weight, and select all cases.
SPLIT FILE OFF.
WEIGHT OFF.
USE ALL.
Problem
- The resource-dependence hypothesis asserts that the division of household labour largely reflects the relative power of the spouses. More specifically, it suggests that the more balanced the statuses of the spouses (e.g. they have similar earnings), the more equal the division of the household labour. Alternatively, the more dependent the female spouse is on her husband's income, the greater will be her share of housework.
- The time-constraints hypothesis asserts that the division of household labour is a function (in part) of time availability. Specifically, the more time a woman spends in the labour market, the less time she will devote to housework. This generally means a more equal division of housework between the spouses.
- Denmark is characterised by the individual-independence regime. One might expect, therefore, that the division of household labour will not be much affected by the relative earnings of the spouses. Hence, we would expect a stronger negative effect of a female spouse’s share of total household earnings on her share of housework in Germany than in Denmark. As to the time constraints, we would expect a weaker effect in Germany, since the state-dependence regime still upholds a more traditional family model (even when women join the labour force).
Answers
- Table with regression results
- The effect of the proportion of household income provided by the female spouse (this is the complement of dependence) on the time she devoted to housework (as a proportion of the total time spent by spouses) is b = -0.266 in Germany, and b = -0.221 in Denmark. In both countries, the coefficients are significant and they are very similar in magnitude.
- The effect of time constraints on the time she devoted to housework (as a proportion of the total time spent by spouses) is very small and not statistically significant in either Germany or Denmark.
- The effect of the proportion of household income provided by the male spouse (this is another way of representing the female spouse’s dependence) on the time he devoted to housework (as a proportion of the total time spent by spouses) is b = -0.291 in Germany, and somewhat weaker in Denmark (b = -0.169). This may represent a weaker relationship between power and the division of household labour in the latter country, as one might expect. Interestingly, in Germany, the time constraints on men are not related to housework, but they are negative and borderline significant in Denmark (the more time the male spouse devotes to work in the market, the smaller his contribution to housework). That is, the male’s contribution is more sensitive to time constraints in Denmark than in Germany.