Summary

The division of housework and child care is primarily associated with the men’s percep-tions of their power outcomes. While the male partners perceive a negative association be-tween their share of housework and their decision-making power, they are less likely to per-ceive their partners to have control over the income if they take over a greater share of child care. At the same time, they perceive themselves as having control. Male partners seem to use financial power as a coping strategy if they take over a greater share of child care. In addition, both partners are also less likely to perceive her to be in control if he has a greater share of housework. These findings support doing gender theory. An unconventional division of labor is associated with male partners’ financial power and with a power disadvantage for female partners.

Furthermore, the results also showed that an unconventional division of housework is associ-ated with noncooperation. Women in particular seem to be more sensitive to the question of cooperation and noncooperation than men.

1.2 is confirmed for decision-making in the perceptions of the male partners but not for con-trol over the income.

As regards the partners’ employment statuses, the results were unexpected. Whereas we as-sumed that a higher status is positively related to financial power, the predicted probabilities indicate that the partner with the lower status has a power advantage. The effects are pre-dominantly significant for the female partners’ decision-making. Three explanations for this finding were proposed. First, a higher employment status is not a power base but a time-consuming burden which reduces influence in the household. Second, partners compensate for the lower employment status of one partner by giving him or her more power in the house-hold. Third, in couples with conventional arrangements separate spheres emerge, especially if he is employed full-time and she works part-time or is unemployed. He works in the labor market, while her sphere is the household. The hybrid models in Chapter 12 will give fur-ther insights into the association between relative employment status and the financial power outcomes. Regarding partners’ employment statuses, Hypothesis 2.1 cannot be confirmed.

Power bases are not stronger related to power outcomes for men than for women.

Household income is also related to the financial power outcomes. This study affirms the findings of Pahl (1983) and Lott (2009), confirming Hypotheses 3.1 and 3.2. In lower-income households, it is more probable that the female partner is responsible for money management.

In higher-income households, in contrast, men are likely to have financial power regarding control and decision-making.

Regarding control over the income, it is predominantly the division of housework that matters for cooperation and noncooperation. With an increase of his share of housework, the probabil-ities of cooperation are lower and those for noncooperation are higher. Again, female partners seem to be more sensitive to the question of cooperation and noncooperation.

Gender is done primarily with regard to the division of child care. Men compensate for the violation of the partners’ gender identities in the case of an unconventional division of child care. In couples where he has a greater share of child care, he is more likely to perceive himself as having power. Surprisingly, male partners do not cope with the violation of their gender identity if they assume more housework. They are less likely to have financial power, especially decision-making power, if they assume more housework. However, less housework and child care are a power disadvantage for women. Thus, Hypothesis 4 is confirmed in part.

An unconventional asymmetry of labor, especially of child care, is associated with male part-ners’ financial power, while less housework and child care is a power disadvantage for female partners.

Doing gender can be observed for child care but not for housework. One explanation for this finding might be that housework encompasses various tasks which belong to the “female”

sphere of the household (e.g. cooking and cleaning) or to the “male” or “neutral” sphere of the household (e.g. work in the cellar, garage, or garden). If the male partner predominantly assumes tasks in this latter sphere, he might not feel his gender identity to be violated. Child

care, in contrast, traditionally is part of women’s work and thus a violation for the partners’

identities if he assumes most of the child care. In future research, information on specific household tasks should be taken into account in order to cover the different meanings of housework.

Finally, the results indicate that unconventional asymmetries, e.g. regarding the division of housework and the allocation of earnings, are associated more often with the separate system than with the joint pool. Furthermore, a higher household income is related to noncoopera-tion. This finding supports the descriptive results and their interpretation, according to which the separate system is more likely to be used in couples with a progressive than with a tradi-tional gender ideology. However, similarly to a large gap between the income of the partners, asymmetries in their relative employment statuses are contained by the partners through co-operation.

With regard to response behavior, it is hard to find a general pattern. Only two remarks can be made. When we compare the perceptions of male and female partners, it emerges that female partners are more sensitive to questions of cooperation versus noncooperation – especially in couples with unconventional asymmetries. Male partners, in contrast, are more sensitive to the allocation of power bases regarding age, employment status, and commitment. Furthemore, the division of child care and household income seem to be more important for financial power from men’s perspectives. Hence, while the question of whether or not couples cooperate is more important for female partners than for male partners, male partners are more concerned with relative resources and household income. This finding suggests a rather stereotypical understanding of gender role models: she cares about cooperation and he cares about the al-location of potential power. However, the above results indeed point in that direction. In the future, research will have to investigate in more depth partners’ perceptions of power. This study makes a first step by analyzing only those couples where the partners’ perceptions of their power allocation are identical (see Chapter 10). Will the findings of the heckit model, which will be estimated for this purpose, differ from the results above? However, before this follow-up question will be answered, two other questions have to be tackled first. In the multinomial logistic regression models, the power outcomes were analyzed separately. Since both of them deal with money, it is very likely that they are interrelated. The person who is in charge of controlling the money could also be in charge of financial decision-making, and vice versa. The relation between control over the income and decision-making will be explored in more depth in Chapter 9. Another follow-up question concerns the relation between division of labor and the power outcomes. One could argue that financial decision-making, but espe-cially control over the income, are gender arrangements, like the division of housework and child care. Hence, theoretically, the direction of the relation is not clear. Whereas rational choice theories state clearly that power bases affect power outcomes, gender theory does not allow such an unidirectional assumption. Thus, the relationship between power and division of labor has to be analyzed further. Since it is possible that the power outcomes are

interre-lated with other gender arrangements, biprobit models will be estimated to test the correlation of the error terms of the models for the division of labor with those for financial power. The results will be presented in the following chapter.