STUDY EXAMINES THE ROLE OF WOMEN AS "BREADWINNERS"
Employed wives are not automatically defined as "breadwinners," even when family finances are their primary motivation for employment and their jobs account for a substantial portion of the family income.
That's according to Jean L. Potuchek, associate professor of sociology and coordinator of Women's Studies at Gettysburg College and author of the book Who Supports the Family? Gender and Breadwinning in Dual-Earner Marriages (Stanford University Press, 1997).
"Somehow, even in a society of dual-earner families, breadwinning retains its association with men," says Potuchek. Her book examines why the distinction between employment and breadwinning persists, the factors which shape the meaning attached to a wife's or husband's paid employment, and how the responsibility for breadwinning is allocated in dual-earner marriages.
Potuchek interviewed a sample of 153 randomly chosen couples with both husband and wife in the paid labor force between 1987-1993 for her book. While many other studies have focused on dual-career couples, Potuchek looks at a more broadly representative group, including older as well as younger couples, part-time as well as full-time workers, blue-collar workers as well as professionals. She focused on dual-earner couples in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, which allowed her to select participants through random-digit dialing.
"Americans value differences between men and women and act to highlight those differences in their daily lives through the creation of gender boundaries," says Potuchek.
Among her findings:
* Only 15 percent of wives and 26 percent of husbands in the study reported both that they fully shared responsibility for breadwinning and that they considered such sharing appropriate. Moreover, in only 12 of the 153 dual-earner couples were husband and wife in agreement that breadwinning was and should be a fully shared responsibility in their marriage.
* High-income men were more likely to use breadwinning as a gender boundary in practice, but men in blue-collar jobs were more likely to emphasize the ideological importance of breadwinning as a boundary than were those in white collar jobs.
* Despite the prevalence of dual-earner marriages, breadwinning is still widely used as a boundary that highlights differences between men and women by distinguishing the meaning of men's employment from that of women's. ###
Editors: You can reach Potochek at 717-337-6789/6196 (offices) or 717-337-3684 (home). Please contact Steve Infanti of Dick Jones Communications at 814-867-1963 if you need any assistance.
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