Summary

It is a striking result that most of the female partners stated that they pooled their incomes and made the financial decisions together with their partner. Thus, most of the couples cooperate with regard to financial arrangements. One reason for this finding could be an underlying ideology of equality. Partners want and perceive their relationship to be equal – especially with regard to financial decision-making.

In contrast to financial decision-making, however, control over the income is affected by the type of relationship. Cooperation is dominant in the marriages, while noncooperation prevails in the cohabitations. The married couples are likely to pool their incomes and the cohabiting couples predominantly separate their earnings. In line with this finding, Singh and Lindsay (1996) state that married partners engage in “marriage money”, which they define as joint and cooperative. In contrast, “cohabitation money” is characterized by being separated (Elizabeth, 2001, 390). While in marriages a discourse of equality seems to underlie the sharing of resources, in cohabitations a discourse of equity underlies the way the partners control their finances. Cohabiting couples often apply the rule of equal contribution, the 50:50 rule.

Even though the separate system may imply the idea of equality in the sense of equal con-tributions, researchers perceive the separate system to reproduce gender inequalities if the earnings of the partners differ. In their study of the separate and partly separate systems, Vogler et al. (2008, 140) argue that by applying the rule of equity in a relationship, the partners “allow market forces into the relationship”. Since power in these couples is based

on each individual’s earned income (Vogler et al., 2008, 139), gender inequalities existing in the labor market emerge in the relationship if the separate system is being used. Elizabeth (2001) is also critical of the separate system. She states that in the case of disparate incomes

“the continued use of the principle of equal contributions will result in one partner (typically women) paying a much higher proportion of their income towards the couples’ joint expenses, whilst also leaving this person with far less money to spend on their personal needs after they have paid their dues” (Elizabeth, 2001, 408).³⁸ Furthermore, Pahl (2005) highlights the fact that women are predominantly responsible for child care and thus expected to pay for children. Pahl argues that women’s incomes are reduced when children are born, while they are expected, however, to cover the costs for children. If the couple organizes their finances separately, women are worse off than their partners.

“Individualisation in money management can then be a route to inequality, so long as women’s earnings are lower than men’s and women are responsible for paying for chil-dren and childcare” (Pahl, 2005, 381).

However, this study has shown that in the case of an extreme inequality in income, cohabiting couples in particular are more likely to pool their incomes, and less likely to use the separate system. Thus, partners with very different incomes perpetuate inequality by using the pooled system. This finding supports Pahl’s (1999) and Vogler et al.’s (2006) studies. Note, how-ever, that it is not clear what concrete practices, e.g. regarding financial decision-making, are concealed underneath the label “pooled”. Singh and Lindsay (1996) characterize marriage money as joint but also nebulous. Vogler (2005) argues that equality is often a myth and that the joint pool covers up inequalities between the partners. In order to better understand what the pooling of incomes actually means, it is crucial to investigate whether the joint pool is also associated with joint decision-making, or whether one partner has decision-making power if earnings are pooled. Section 9 will therefore reveal how control over the income and financial decision-making are related to each other.

Income is positively associated with control over the income (particularly in the cohabitations) and related even more strongly to decision-making power. Education and age are positively related to perceived control and decision-making, particularly for men. He is relatively often the decision-maker if his level of education is higher. The ratio of age and education only matters for the female partner’s exclusive control. She is more likely to control the income if she has a higher level of education and is older than her partner. Although these findings con-firm the assumptions of exchange theory, the power bases are related differently to the power outcomes of male or female partners. Furthermore, an unconventional allocation of education

38Furthermore, in their qualitative study, Ashby and Burgoyne (2008) were able to show that if the partial pool was used, the partner with the lower share of the income was less likely to feel that he or she had the right to spend money on him- or herself. Knudsen and Waerness (2009) also problematize the separate system, arguing that new gender inequalities may emerge because housework and child care are no longer recognized as part of the common provision.

and age (she has a higher level of education and is older than her partner) are associated with noncooperation.

Moreover, differences between the genders continue to be present: in marriages, he is more likely to be perceived to have decision-making power if he earns less than his partner. Fur-thermore, the female partner is more likely to manage the money in the lowest income group, while the male partner controls the finances in the highest income groups.

Cultural activities and meeting with friends are negatively related to control over the finan-cial resources. One interpretation for this result, which is contradictory to the theory, is that alternative social relations are used for coping with a loss of power – especially by the male partner. Commitment to the relationship seems to be less related to the power outcomes.

The division of child care and especially the division of housework are negatively related to exclusive control over the income. Especially for the female partner, less housework and child care is a power advantage. In the couples with a traditional division of housework, cooper-ation is most common. In the couples with a non-traditional or reverse-traditional division of housework, noncooperation is dominant. This finding also holds true for the results for relative age and education. Unconventional arrangements are related to noncooperation. The joint pool (cooperation) is associated with traditional gender arrangements, whereas the sep-arate system (noncooperation) can be defined as a progressive arrangement. Interestingly, the relation between division of child care and cooperation and noncooperation is the opposite:

couples with a non-traditional division of child care cooperate, whereas couples with a tradi-tional division of child care do not cooperate.

To sum up, exchange theory seems to be verified with regard to income, education, and age.

For alternative social relations, the assumption that more alternatives are related to power has to be rejected. Division of labor is related to power within the couples. However, housework and child care are perceived as a power disadvantage (especially for the female partners) rather than as a means of coping with the violation of the partners’ gender identities. As expected, there is gender inequality with regard to the budget to be controlled.

Surprisingly, the general frequencies of his and her exclusive power are very similar. There is no observable gender inequality for the distribution of the power outcomes. This is a contra-dictory finding since we know that female partners in the general population have fewer power bases. For example, they often have incomes or employment statuses which are lower than those of their partners. If we assume (and, in the cases of income, age and education, know) that the power bases matter for the power outcomes, we would expect male partners to possess power outcomes more often than female partners. However, this is not the case. Apparently other mechanisms are at work beside the allocation of resources. The descriptive analysis has already pointed to the limitation of rational choice explanations of partners’ power allocations.

Another reason for this finding could be a perception bias of power allocation.

The following sections will analyze further the relation between power bases, gender ar-rangements, and power outcomes. They will outline the multinomial logistic regression mod-els for control over the income and decision-making power separately for the male and female samples. Hence, not only the relation between power bases and power outcomes but also part-ners’ perceptions of power will be the focus of the following analysis.