Abstract
Changes to domestic divisions of labor have been widely documented, but some tasks seem particularly resistant to change. Using the lens of ‘doing gender’, this article draws on interviews with 25 heterosexual working parent British couples who produced a ‘household portrait’ of their division of labor. It examines how they explain men’s continuing responsibility for ‘man-typed’ domestic tasks and why this is so resistant to change. Although men’s ‘gatekeeping’ of these tasks is consequential for the overall household division of labor, there is relatively little opposition from their women partners. This gatekeeping reproduces gendered meanings of ‘man-typed’ tasks and enables both men and women to ‘do gender’ while supporting their image of a ‘sharing’ couple
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Journal of Family Issues |
| Early online date | 23 Jan 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 23 Jan 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright © The Author(s) 2024. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/], which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Keywords
- ‘doing gender’
- femininity
- gatekeeping
- gender
- household labor
- household portait
- masculinity
- 'man-typed' tasks