WHEN WIVES ARE MAJOR PROVIDERS - CULTURE, GENDER, AND FAMILY WORK

Based on a series of interviews with blue-collar women and their husba nds in Istanbul, Turkey, this article examines the negotiation of fami ly work in households in which the wives are major providers. The rela tionships between provider status, women's expectations, and the actua l configuration of family work are complexly mediated by cultural cons tructions, perception of women as providers, marital dynamics, and ext ended family relationships. Three different discourses characterize fa mily work, Woman's evaluation of her husband as ''responsible'' or ''i rresponsible'' informs the construction of the male role in the househ old. Conflict is heightened when men default on both domestic: and eco nomic grounds. This study makes a contribution toward a comparative un derstanding of negotiation of family work by providing an analysis of how structural conditions and cultural ideology interact to construct a gendered division of family work in the household in the context of continuities and discontinuities in sociocultural patterns.