Explaining the Gender Gap in the Division of Household Labor: Bargaining/Resource Theory, Time Availability, and Gender Ideology.

Three theories have dominated the literature addressing differences between men and women in terms of household labor: Bargaining/Resource model, Time Availability, and Gender Ideology. I use the 2002 General Social Survey, to address differences between men and women in terms of time spent doing housework. Past studies employing these theories have never fully accounted for the substantial difference between married men and women in terms of relative contribution to household labor. I look at combined analyses of men and women in order to measure how much variation between married men and women in the United States in household labor is explained by each of these theories. I recast paid employment in the Bargaining/Resource model, rather than the Time Availability framework, since both men and women exchange employment time for housework. I find that both the Time Availability model and the Bargaining/Resource model account for the variation in household labor between men and women in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]