New Evidence for the Gender-Deviance Neutralization Effect in the Performance of Household Labor

• In Event: 414 - Regular Session. New Directions in Research on Housework

Abstract

Gender-deviance neutralization is a process whereby wives and husbands act to neutralize a non-normative economic role when they do housework. Evidence from qualitative and quantitative studies suggests that in some situations breadwinner wives seem to do more housework than would be predicted under an economic dependency model and that economically-dependent husbands seem to do less. Recent scholarship has suggested that either observations of the gender-deviance neutralization phenomenon were the result of model misspecification or were historically-linked and no longer likely to occur. This study uses data from the 2010 European Social Survey that demonstrate the operation of a gender-deviance neutralization effect for wives but not for husbands. Some thoughts on a continuing research program studying gender-deviance neutralization in the performance of household labor are offered.

Author

• Theodore N. Greenstein, North Carolina State University