Journal Article

Division of Labor, Gender Ideology, and Marital Satisfaction in East Asia

Qian, Yue, Sayer, Liana C.

2016

Overview

Using data from the 2006 Family Module of the East Asian Social Survey (N = 3,096), this article examines associations of marital satisfaction with divisions of housework and gender ideology in four East Asian societies: urban China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Compared with Japanese and Korean married women and men, Chinese and Taiwanese spouses were more satisfied with their marriage and had more egalitarian divisions of housework, but simultaneously they held less egalitarian gender ideologies. Multivariate analyses showed that relative share of housework was negatively associated with marital satisfaction for Japanese and Korean men and for Korean and Taiwanese women. Egalitarian gender ideology was significantly associated with lower marital satisfaction only among Taiwanese women. In addition, the negative association between housework and marital satisfaction was more pronounced for Taiwanese women who espoused more egalitarian gender ideologies. The authors discuss how differences in macro-level social contexts explain these cross-society variations.

• Publisher: Wiley Subscription Services, Inc,The National Council on Family Relations,Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subject: Asian cultural groups / Chinese languages / Dual career couples / Egalitarianism / Employment / families and individuals in societal contexts / Gender / Gender differences / Gender equity / Gender roles / Housework / Ideology / Japanese language / Korean language / marital quality / marital relations / Marital satisfaction / Marriage / Satisfaction / Sex differences / Sexes / Sexual division of labor / Social environment / Spouses / Wives / Women