Working too many hours is more common in higher paying jobs than lower paying jobs. Down the pay scale, people are struggling for hours, up the pay scale, not so much. So experience and scholarship has shown us that the pressure to work! work! work! and never leave that Blackberry unattended creates a work/family conflict that can affect women workers more so than men–though it isn’t easy on anyone.
But new research in the April 2010 American Sociological Review examined how “spousal overwork†affects who does what in families. The article, “Reinforcing Separate Spheres: The Effect of Spousal Overwork on Men’s and Women’s Employment in Dual-Earner Households†by Youngjoo Cha asks whether excessive work hours by one partner can influence the decisions another partner makes about work and family life.
Results are clear: when a husband works more than 60 hours per week, a wife was 42 percent more likely to quit her job (compared to those whose husbands work fewer than 50 hours per week). The same was not true for husbands. Among professional workers, the wife’s odds of quitting when her husband worked 60 hours per week was 51 percent (versus 38 percent for non professional workers). Think of it this way: up the social ladder, people are more likely to talk the talk, but less likely to walk the walk when it comes to gender equality.
And what if kids are present? The answer provides no surprises. Professional mothers were 3.2 times more likely to quit when their husbands worked 60 hours per week (compared to non mothers in the same situation). Is this a set up, or what?
Youngjoo Cha argues that overwork reintroduces “separate spheres†– the pattern of assigning domestic work and childcare mainly to women and market work mainly to men – and can even help explain the slowing of progress towards gender equality.
Overwork just seems kinda American. We work hard because we are of the nature to work hard. Well, a policy of inequality since the 1970s may be why we are of the nature to work so hard, so long, and with so little to show for it. One thing we do seem to have to show for it is the persistence and maintenance of gender inequality in families. I suppose that is kinda American too.
Comments
tom b — May 1, 2010
So the real question is why are we working so hard?
What's the biggest difference be us and the rest of the industrialized world that is just as greedy as we are?
THE SUBURBS!
gwp_admin — May 3, 2010
HA, Tom B, love it. (Are you the Tom B I think you are? )
Va, gender equality SO sneaky. Just when I think I've narrowly escaped, I find it's hiding under my bed. Damn.
Love this post, as always.
Adina Nack — May 5, 2010
Excellent post -- we need to keep asking why the U.S. "Protestant work ethic" is so incompatible with an "ethic of care"?
Odds are that high-paid employees working 60+ hours per week are not only relying on their (primarily female) spouses to quit their paying jobs to devote time and energy to their domestic spheres but are also lacking the time and energy to invest in quality relationships with their significant others (including children, extended family and friends)...let alone able to take care of their own physical and mental health. So, pushing to create more equality is also pushing to create healthier individuals and healthier families.