Gender Domesticity Reinterpreted: Housework Division in Dual-Work Moroccan Families

Research on the gendered division of household labour suggests that spouses’ inequitable housework division is determined by economic, cultural and/ or pragmatic considerations. While these factors are partially supported by the literature on household labour division, results of this study further suggested that women perform more housework than their spouses out of choice and are not necessarily unhappy with their unbalanced share. The data for the study were drawn from in-depth semi-structured interviews administered to 30 Moroccan female primary school teachers. Building on Thompson’s (1991) distributive justice framework, this paper focuses on examining women’s underlying motivation for doing a far greater proportion of housework tasks than do their husbands in spite of working for pay. It also states the implications of such a deliberate choice.

[1]  Linda Thompson,et al.  Family Work , 1991 .

[2]  N. Hoffart.  Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory , 2000 .

[3]  M. M. Ferree.  The Gender Division of Labor in Two-Earner Marriages , 1991 .

[4]  Harriet B. Presser,et al.  Employment Schedules Among Dual-Earner Spouses and the Division of Household Labor by Gender , 1994 .

[5]  S. Coverman.  EXPLAINING HUSBANDS' PARTICIPATION IN DOMESTIC LABOR , 1985 .

[6]  D. M. Wolfe,et al.  Husbands and Wives, the Dynamics of Married Living , 1961 .

[7]  M. M. Ferree.  Beyond Separate Spheres: Feminism and Family Research. , 1990 .

[8]  Daniel T. Lichter,et al.  Measuring the Division of Household Labor , 1991 .

[9]  Constance T. Gager,et al.  The Role of Valued Outcomes, Justifications, and Comparison Referents in Perceptions of Fairness Among Dual-Earner Couples , 1998 .

[10]  B. Major.  Gender, Entitlement, and the Distribution of Family Labor , 1993 .

[11]  E. Kluwer,et al.  The marital dynamics of conflict over the division of labor , 1997 .

[12]  Y. Kamo,et al.  Determinants of Household Division of Labor , 1988, Journal of family issues.

[13]  John P. Robinson,et al.  Is Anyone Doing the Housework? Trends in the Gender Division of Household Labor , 2000 .

[14]  Erica Frank,et al.  The Second Shift , 2002 .

[15]  Sarah Fenstermaker Berk.  The Gender Factory: The Apportionment of Work in American Households , 1985 .

[16]  Theodore N. Greenstein,et al.  Economic Dependence, Gender, and the Division of Labor in the Home: A Replication and Extension , 2000 .

[17]  B. Major.  Gender, justice, and the psychology of entitlement. , 1987 .

[18]  John P. Robinson,et al.  Back to the Basics: Trends in and Role Determinants of Women's Attitudes toward Housework. , 1998 .

[19]  D. Khor,et al.  “Doing Gender” , 2007 .

[20]  J. Brines,et al.  Economic Dependency, Gender, and the Division of Labor at Home , 1994, American Journal of Sociology.

[21]  Laura Sanchez.  Gender, Labor Allocations, and the Psychology of Entitlement within the Home , 1994 .