Housework , market work , and ‘ ‘ doing gender ’ ’ when marital satisfaction declines q

When faced with a decline in marital satisfaction, are wives constrained from increasing their labor market work time in part because they ‘‘do gender?’’ One of the predictions of the human capital accumulation hypothesis, which assumes no constraints, is that housewives with little work experience will respond to a decline in marital satisfaction by increasing labor market work time (only). In contrast, the gender display hypothesis predicts that, in settings where the evaluations of marriage and wives work performance are closely intertwined, a decline in marital satisfaction among this group of housewives will increase both labor market work and housework—and the increase in housework serves as a constraint on the increase in labor market work. To evaluate these contrasting hypotheses, we analyze a panel survey of women in contemporary Japan. Results from multinomial logit regression models are more consistent with the gender display hypothesis than the human capital accumulation hypothesis. Housewives with relatively little work experience are 11 times more likely to increase the time spent on both labor market work and housework when the satisfaction of their marriage declines than when it does not. No evidence is found that, when marital satisfaction declines, these housewives are statistically significantly more likely to increase labor market work only. 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 0049-089X/$ see front matter 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2004.11.005 q An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Population Association of America, 2002, Atlanta, GA. Research was supported by funds from the United States-Japan Foundation and the Abe Fellowship administered by the Social Science Research Council. We thank the anonymous reviewers, Debby Carr, N.E. Barr, Myra Marx Ferree, Akiko Nagai, and Pam Smock for their helpful input. * Corresponding author. Fax: +1 734 936 3809. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Ono). Social Science Research 35 (2006) 823–850 www.elsevier.com/locate/ssresearch Social Science RESEARCH