Racial-Ethnic Differences in U.S.

Married Women's and Men's Housework

Author(s): Liana C. Sayer and Leigh Fine
Source: Social Indicators Research , April 2011, Vol. 101, No. 2, VALUING TIME (April
2011), pp. 259-265
Published by: Springer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41476440

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Soc Indie Res (2011) 101:259-265
DOI 10.1007/sl 1205-010-9645-0

Racial-Ethnic Differences in U.S. Married Women's

and Men's Housework

Liana C. Sayer • Leigh Fine

Accepted: 17 July 2009 /Published online: 13 July 2010

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract Married women continue to spend more time doing housework than men
economic resources influence women's housework more strongly than men's. To expl
this, gender theorists point to how gender figures into identities, family interactions,
societal norms and opportunity structures. The extent of this configuration varies cultur
and, in the United States, by race-ethnicity because of how race-ethnicity conditions ac
to resources and influences gender relations within marriages. Housework levels a
gender differences may be lower in Black married couples compared to other coupl
because of Black women's higher historical levels of employment and consequently lo
standing need to balance work and family responsibilities. Race-ethnicity also lik
conditions the symbolic meaning and thus association of economic resources and hou
work. We use pooled time diary data from the 2003 to 2007 American Time Use Stu
from 26,795 married women and men to investigate how and why race-ethnicity influen
housework. Our results indicate Hispanic and Asian women do more cooking and clean
compared with White and Black women and the inverse relationship between wome
earnings and housework is steeper for Hispanic women compared with other women.
find no evidence that married Black men devote more time to housework than White m
either core or occasional, unlike earlier studies.

Keywords Gender • Housework • Race-ethnicity

1 Introduction

Despite their movement into paid work and widespread normative acceptance of shared
marital roles, married women continue to do much more housework compared with
married men. Further, women's housework levels are influenced more strongly than men's

L. C. Sayer (ÊS3) • L. Fine

The Ohio State University, 1778 Neil Avenue Mall/238 Townshend Hall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
e-mail: Sayer.12@sociology.osu.edu
L. Fine
e-mail: Fine.34@sociology.osu.edu

Ô Springer

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 260 L. С. Sayer, L. Fine

by economic resources (Say

vasive effects of how gende
and opportunity structures
ally - and at least in the U
ditions access to resources
Orbuch and Eyster 1997).
Black wives do no more hou
Custer 1995; Orbuch and Ey
do not explore the specifi
compare only Blacks and W
among Hispanic and Asian
Racial variation in associa
differences in housework
housework is more respons
This "autonomy" effect of
source or "opt out" of ho
example, levels of and gen
married couples compared
levels of employment and
responsibilities. Race-ethn
association of economic re
rather than seeing employ
Latina mothers perceive th
tenance (Dill 1998; Segura 1
jobs in domestic work me
resources to buy out of ho
couples. For example, black
evidence that they see ho
something higher earning
more patriarchal familisti
ings may have no associati
work is simply considered
In this article, we investi
vary by race-ethnicity? (2
housework differ by race-e

2 Methods

We use pooled time diary data from the 2003 to 2007 American Time Use Study, or ATUS
(Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau 2008). Our analytic sample consists of
26,795 married women ( n = 14,778) and married men (n = 12,017) ages 18-64. We
examine married women's and men's hours per day in core housework (housecleaning,
laundry, cooking, and meal cleanup) and in occasional housework (yard work, house and
vehicle maintenance and repairs, and household paperwork). We also consider the gender
gap in housework, defined as women's hours (engagement) divided by men's hours
(engagement). The ATUS race-ethnicity question offers multiracial respondents the option
of selecting multiple categories. For ease of comparison with earlier studies, we code
respondents into one racial-ethnic category based on the first category chosen. Sample

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Racial-Ethnic Differences in U.S. Married Women's and Men's Housework 261

sizes were too small to include Native American Indians and unfortunate
the pan-ethnic categories of Hispanic and Asian. Because of skewed ear
we log earnings for those individuals who report earnings and assi
respondents who report no earnings. We also include a dummy varia
models to test earnings thresholds results. Respondents with missing da
excluded from the analysis (about 10% of respondents did not repor
Preliminary results indicated minor differences in results when mult
used to address missing values. Weights are used in all analyses to corre
and adjust for the ATUS oversample of weekend days.
We begin by presenting descriptive results on Black, Hispanic, A
married women's and men's core and occasional housework hours and the housework
gender gap. Next, we present results from OLS regressions of women's and men's core
and occasional housework. For simplicity, we show only the coefficients for race-ethnicity
and logged earnings. All models include covariates for household income, parental status,
presence of other adults (in addition to the spouse), education, employment status, age,
age squared, geographic region, and weekend diary day. Full results are available upon
request.

3 Results

Table 1 shows White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian married women's and men's average
(standard deviation) hours per day in and the percentage reporting core and occasional
housework. The bottom panel shows racial-ethnic differences in the gender gap in married
women's and men's core and occasional housework.
Three findings stand out from Table 1. First, Hispanic married women do 1 h more and
Asian married women do about 20 min more core housework than White and Black
women. Variation in core housework is substantial among all women as indicated by the
large standard deviation relative to mean hours. In addition to spending less time cooking
and cleaning, Black married women are less likely to engage in core housework: about
80% report housework on the diary day compared with about 90% of White, Hispanic, and
Asian women. However, White married women spend more time and are more likely to
report doing occasional housework, such as yard work or household maintenance, com-
pared to other women.
Second, racial-ethnic variation in men's core housework is minor: all men do between
35 and 40 min of core housework a day (differences between White and Asian men are
significant, other comparisons are not significant). About 50% of White, Black, and Asian
men but only 41% of Hispanic men engage in core housework on the diary day. Differ-
ences by race-ethnicity in occasional housework are more substantial: just over 1 h per day
among White men compared with about 45 min for Hispanic, 35 min for Black, and
30 min for Asian men. Results indicate that earlier research that reported Black married
men did more housework than White married men looked only at aggregate housework
(using nonrepresentative or recall survey data) and thus missed key racial-ethnic variations
in core and occasional household chores.
Third, the gender gap in core housework is highest for Hispanic and Asian married
couples and lowest for Black married couples. For example, Hispanic women do 5.5 times
as much core housework than Hispanic men, whereas Black women do only 2.7 times
more core housework compared to Black men. Hispanic and Asian women are also over
twice as likely to engage in housework than Hispanic and Asian men. The smaller gender

Springer

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 262 L. С. Sayer, L. Fine

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Racial-Ethnic Differences in U.S. Married Women's and Men's Housework 263

Table 2 Race-ethnic and earnings coefficients from OLS regressions of married women
and occasional housework hours per day

Married women Married men

Core Occasional Core Occasional

Ml M2 Ml M2 Ml Ml

Black (reference)
White 0.282** 0.193 0.238*** 0.262** 0.007 0.444***

Hispanic 0.897*** 1.227*** 0.029 -0.008 -0.061 0.277***

Asian 0.648*** 0.790* -0.029 -0.146 -0.087 0.016

Individual earnings (logged) -0.178*** -0.180 -0.056* -0.050 -0.091** 0.000

White X earnings (logged) 0.006 -0.002
Latino X earnings (logged) -0.384* -0.036
Asian X earnings (logged) -0.006 0.025
Constant 1.014** 1.054** 0.329 0.315 -0.010 -0.798***

Ä2 0.13 0.14 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.06

N 14,778 12,017

Models include controls

other household adults,

gap core housew in

spending less time
among Black men.
occasional housewo
more likely) to eng
Table 2 shows coef
and occasional hous
multivariate results
men's core housewo
model controls, com
do about 9% less cor
association with occasional household chores.
Considering women, Table 2 confirms that, net of model controls, Hispanic and Asian
women do more cooking and cleaning compared with White and Black women. Further,
the inverse relationship between women's earnings and housework is steeper for Hispanic
women compared with other women. The relationship is illustrated in Fig. 1 showing
predicted housework hours by logged earnings for Black, White, Asian, and Latina
Women. Latina women's housework drops from about 3 h to about three-quarters of an
hour as weekly earnings increase from zero to around $2,500. In contrast, Black women's
core housework declines from about VA h to just under 1 h over the same earnings
increase.

4 Discussion

In sum, our results do suggest greater similarity in core housework for Black marr
couples compared to other married couples but, contrary to earlier research, this is fro

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 264 L. С. Sayer, L. Fine

Fig. 1 Racial-ethnic variation in

Black women's lower tim

evidence that married Black
core or occasional, unlike e
interpretations that doin
levels of housework at all
salience of housework as
higher levels and large in
greater symbolic salience
that White women and Wh
to other racial-ethnic grou
and class. Occasional house
they have larger homes an
Hispanic families are less
racially segregated pattern
variation in how subjectiv
use patterns would be a us

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