Abstract # 8

Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Sonja Drobnic (Eds.) Careers of Couples in Contemporary Societies: From Male-Breadwinner to Dual-Earner Families. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2001).

Angela in Köln, Germany, is married and has two school-aged children. After a "childrearing break", she recently started a part-time job as a secretary. Her husband, who has a leading position in his company and good career prospects, only sporadically helps with household chores and childrearing. He has mixed feelings about his wife's employment. Dörte lives with her partner Jan in Stockholm, Sweden. They have one child, and both parents are employed full-time. Jan is very supporting and proud of Dörte's success at work. However, when their daughter is sick, it is mostly the mother who stays at home. Also, Dörte does most of the work in the household, in spite of her demanding job. Elisabetta in Florence, Italy, is expecting her first child. She is a pharmacist, employed full-time, but it goes without saying that she is also responsible for the household. Her husband Fabrizio, a successful dentist, would like her to quit her job and take care of their child and family. Elisabetta is probably going to do that, because it is very difficult in Italy to reconcile paid work and family through part-time employment. These are some typical examples of young families in today's Europe. These examples show that there are common characteristics but also important differences in the organization of couples' lives across various countries. How do young (married) couples negotiate their investments in family and employment careers? What is the effect of increasing employment participation of women on the gender-specific division of labor within couples? How do the educational level and income potential of the partner affect these family-related decisions? Does a high occupational position of the husband boost or suppress the wife's employment? How do the career paths evolve after the arrival of children? What role does the career success or failure of one partner have on the other partner's employment patterns? Are these patterns gender-specific? Do young women today continue to "sacrifice" their careers for the sake of the family? These and similar questions are being studied in a newly published book Careers of Couples in Contemporary Societies: From Male-Breadwinner to Dual-Earner Families (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). This is the first systematic cross-national comparative book on the transition from male breadwinner to dual-earner families in modern societies and the transformation of couples' careers in the post-war period. Hans-Peter Blossfeld (University of Bielefeld) and Sonja Drobni? (University of Bremen), coordinated the research work of an international team of researchers, who used longitudinal data on life histories to explore what has and what has not changed for couples in various countries due to women's increasing involvement in paid employment. The countries included are Germany, the Netherlands, the Flemish part of Belgium, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, the United States, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, and China. The book provides evidence that despite substantial improvements in women's educational attainment and career opportunities in all the countries studied, the transformation of role specialization in dual-earner couples has been rather modest over all. Gender role change within the family has been asymmetric everywhere: Housework and childcare primarily remained ‘women's work,' and husband's participation in housework and childcare has not increased substantially. This means that in most countries, whether capitalist or socialist, liberal, conservative, or social democratic, the traditional role performance of women outside the home has changed considerably, with women increasingly entering the sphere of paid employment. However, since gender differences in roles and responsibilities in the home in dual-earner couples have not transformed to the same extent, the result is often a double burden on women. In general, men seem better able than women to keep paid work and family as separate spheres of life. Along the motto that "a successful breadwinner is by definition a good husband and father," men tend to concentrate on their careers and withdraw from family and household responsibilities. Women, however, are often forced to choose between a career and a family. If they give priority to the family, their career suffers, and vice versa. Women thus in part shape their participation in the market-place in response to family needs. These asymmetric developments result in personal as well as structural resistance to change in the division of housework, and generate inequalities in the labor market along gender lines. Policy interventions that are only aimed at the educational sphere, as well as occupational and labor market structures, are inadequate and inefficient because they ignore the persistent gender division of labor within dual-earner families. This is not to say that an increase in educational attainment and a more continuous labor force experience have no impact on employment and career chances of young generations of women. However, these chances are molded by their choice of partners and the marital setting. In none of the countries included in the study did wives' employment patterns affect their husbands' or partners' employment behavior. Regardless of the wife's occupational status, men in general pursue a life-long continuous employment career. In dual-earner marriages, men tend to define themselves as primary breadwinners, even in cases where their female partners have a similar or even higher occupational status than themselves. In this sense, the career patterns of (married) men are to a large extent independent of career patterns of their partners. Such independence often does not apply when we observe (married) women's employment paths. Husbands/partners tend to exhibit a significant influence on their wives' career patterns. The scope of the influence differs among various countries with various institutional frameworks. In particular, the impact of males‘ resources on female partners‘ employment careers seems to depend on the welfare state regime. In conservative (e.g., Germany or the Netherlands) and Mediterranean welfare state regimes (such as Italy or Spain), women's paid employment is negatively correlated with the occupational position of their husbands. The higher the income potential of the husband, the less likely it is that his wife will work. Germany stands out as a country with a particularly traditional division of labor in married couples. Here, the longitudinal analysis shows that even when the wife has substantial resources at her own disposal, high career resources of the husband can suppress her career potentials and drive her out of the labor market. The career paths in marriage in conservative and Mediterranean welfare state regimes are clearly gendered. The consequences are the traditional division of labor in couples, a growing gap between male and female careers over the course of the marriage, an increasing specialization of spheres, an increasing economic dependency of married women on their spouses over the life course, and the prevalence of a breadwinner family model. These countries are still far away from a full-time dual-earner model, like the one that has been practiced in (former) socialist countries. In liberal welfare state regimes such as Great Britain, no impact of husbands‘ resources on their wives‘ labor force participation could be detected. Hence, it seems the effect of husband's characteristics on wives' employment behavior is low in market-dominated societies. In the social democratic welfare state regimes, such as Sweden or Denmark, and generally in (former) socialist countries, husbands‘ resources have a positive effect on their wives‘ employment. This means that husbands with high income potential foster their wives' paid employment. The result is that occupational resources and income cumulate in dual-earner families. All in all, this study also implies that the diffusion of dual-earner families in male breadwinner societies in the past 20 years has contributed to the increase in social inequalities. The reason for this is a high marriage homogamy, that is, men and women tend to choose marriage partners that are similar to them in terms of education and social status. In the 1960s and 1970s, working class families compensated part of their income disadvantage through wives' paid employment. Wives most likely to be employed were those married to low-income husbands, and their participation in the labor market had an equalizing effect on household income and reduced inequality. However, when women with high occupational resources – as a rule married to men with high earnings – start to enter the labor force on a massive scale, this contributes to the increase in inequality between households, and the inequality distance between social classes increases again. Consequently, not only families with a sole breadwinner (and often numerous children) but also lower class families with a traditionally high female labor force participation are the relative losers of these developments. If we want to avoid the conclusion that a decreasing gender inequality in the labor market leads to an increasing social class inequality, we need a political will which is sensitive to gender and class-related issues, and effectively uses social policy interventions and tax regulations to target all the groups most affected by the societal transformation from the male breadwinner to dual-earner family model.

Further Information in the Internet: http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-924491-X