Gendered resources, division of housework, and perceived fairness - A casein urban China

Drawing upon equity and gender theories, we investigate Chinese couples' pe rceived fairness of the wife's disproportionately heavy household responsib ility. Data come from in-depth interviews with 39 married couples in Beijin g during the summer of 1998. Although housework, division remained unequal among dual-earner couples, the majority of wives and husbands saw it as fai r. We explore the notion of gendered resources by examining husbands' and w ives' opinions about both paid and domestic work. We find that husband's br eadwinner role and wife's housekeeper role retain their primary place in th e family and that gender-role expectations produce gendered resources to bo th wives and husbands. These expectations release both the husbands, who ha ve fulfilled the provider role, from the obligation to share housework equa lly, and the wives, who combine paid and domestic work, from an equal respo nsibility of breadwinning. Therefore, the failure to bring adequate gendere d resources to a marriage, rather than the unequal distribution of housewor k, causes a sense of unfairness.