Judith Treas and Sonja Drobnic, eds. Dividing the Domestic: Men, Women, and Household Work in Cross-National Perspective. Studies in Social Inequality. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, 280 pp. $US 50.00 hardcover (987-0-8047-6357-8).
The seventeen authors of this excellent collection have produced a very unified volume on the division of domestic work. Just as the division of housework is asymmetric by gender, so is the division of labour in Sociology, as represented here by 13 women and 4 men authors. The authors do not use the same definition of domestic work, and thus the introductory chapter on “why study housework” does not define the concept, nor do we know if it includes child care and household maintenance, in the view of the editors. … The overview chapter by Judith Treas provides an excellent theoretical statement, starting with rational choice, and constraints, then going to gender ideology and relative resources, and finally to gender in the institutional context of the broader society. All chapters are theoretically informed and empirically based. Read more
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