Analysis Of Gender Inequality Between Men And Women

America has made great strides in achieving equality between men and women. Women have greater opportunity than in the past such as obtaining higher education and better career prospects. However, one area of gender inequality that could be improved is domestic labor. The study by Janell Fetterolf and Laurie Rudman explores the relationship of a person’s income relative to their spouse and domestic labor. Before doing the research, Fetterolf and Rudman had six hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that woman would report doing more housework and men would report doing less regardless of their income. The second one states that as a person’s relative income to his or her spouse increased that person would report doing less housework. The third hypothesis is if a particular family supported traditional gender roles, the woman would do more housework and childcare than the man. The fourth hypothesis says that as a person’s relative income increased, …show more content…
However, women who make more money than their spouses still do less work than women who make less or similar. For men who make more money than their spouse, “perceived entitlement may enable them to ‘buy out’ of housework and childcare.” On the other hand, for women who make more money than their spouse, they endorsed less of traditional gender roles “which, in turn, released them from domestic labor relative to women who earned the same or less than their spouse.” To solve this labor inequality, Fetterolf and Rudman proposed two solutions: increase women’s sense of entitlement to do less labor if they are contributing more in other ways such as more income and reduce men’s sense of entitlement to do less housework labor than their spouses. Though the specifics to these two solutions would require further study, but it would close the domestic labor gap between men and