Suchergebnisse

Marriage formation is deeply embedded in societal context. This study documents trends towards lower marriage rates and delayed marriage in Europe and the US. Using time series analyses, it shows the relevance of economic and gender context in understanding marriage formation. The study extends previous work by including more countries, a longer time period, and by examining changes in predictors of marriage patterns over time. Analyses show that the association between economic context and marriage rates weakens over time, but the role of gender equality and policy context remain stable. Differences in age at first marriage across policy clusters are diminishing. Although greater gender equality is consistently linked to later marriage entry, the link between economic context and age at first marriage is changing. Changes in predictors of cross-national marriage patterns over time strongly suggest the institution of marriage itself is changing.

"Being married is associated with many advantages. However, we do not know enough about the actual impact of entering marriage on individuals' earnings, especially for women. In this paper, I examine the immediate and the short-term impact of marriage on men's and women's earnings in the United States, Germany, and Sweden. Studying the impact of marriage on earnings in three distinct socio-political settings provides insights into the context dependency of the link between marriage and earnings. Fixed effects models show that marriage transitions are not associated with women's earnings in the United States and Sweden. For German women, I find an earnings penalty for marriage. Once I adjust for selection into employment, I find that employed German women with low employment propensities may experience instantaneous earnings boosts when they enter marriage, but that among women who are more firmly attached to the labor market, there is a short-term marriage penalty. For men in all three countries, I find no effect of marital transitions once employment likelihood is taken into account." (author's abstract)

Do the different ideological legacies of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) result in persisting differences in women's housework in the unified Germany? In this paper, I examine the housework of employed German women, singles and as well as women with partners, in the decade after unification using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP). This comparison allows me to assess the role of regional differences in shaping women's housework, while further distinguishing between full-time and part-time workers. The study shows that women with partners do more housework than single women do, regardless of region of residence. Among singles, there are no East-West differences in either the level of housework or the mechanisms that shape it. However, among women with partners, West German women do significantly more housework. These differences are only in part explained by differential participation in full-time and part-time employment. East German women's individual earnings are less effective than West Germans' in reducing housework for both fulltime and part-time workers. Overall, the results of the study imply that the different ideological legacies FRG and the GDR do have a lasting impact on the housework of partnered women through family roles, while singles do not seem to be affected by any remaining differences in the socio-political context.

Our essay addresses the real-life difficulties of discussing and describing gender inequalities. We acknowledge that, at times, falling back on binary heuristics might be necessary to communicate findings, but that this needs to happen in the context of a both/and approach. We argue that quantitative social science can be inclusive, even if there are limits to what data can be analyzed in depth. We conclude that a deep engagement with the complexity of sex, gender, race, nationality, sexuality, etc. remains an urgent, ongoing need across all disciplines.

In studies seeking to understand cultural and institutional influences on the division of domestic labor, religion has often been left out of the picture in favor of economic, gender and welfare state context. By examining men from 34 countries using 2012 International Social Survey (ISSP) data this study explores the ways in which religion is associated with men's household labor participation. We utilize individual measures of religiosity as well as cultural zones based on religious and cultural similarity to analyze the effect of predominant religion and religious participation on men's housework. Differences emerge between men by religious tradition, level of religious attendance, and across cultural zones. Contrary to expectations, we find increased religious participation at the individual and cultural zone levels associated with greater participation in some housework tasks and time spent on housework, though the findings show great variation by task and religious tradition. Our findings indicate two potential paths leading to men's increased housework participation: a nonreligious, egalitarian one, and a religious, family-centered one.

Theoretical approaches to housework do not reflect contemporary families and gender relations. We evaluate assumptions about gender and families in three dominant explanations and propose theoretical extensions. First, we suggest a work–family fit approach that examines housework and resources at a household level. Second, we propose the diverse capital perspective that extends earnings centered assessments of housework bargaining. Finally, a "doing genders" approach captures how gender shapes housework in nuanced ways. Our study does not focus on the more general issue of power in relationships, nor do we seek to dismantle existing theoretical perspectives or solve all shortcomings of the inherently couple‐centered and cissexist heteronormative approach to families that primarily focuses on the United States. Rather, we provide some insight into how these theories can be expanded given the realities of diverse family arrangements, stalled gender revolutions, and shifts and fluidity in gender and sexual identities.

Memberships in voluntary associations can provide access to valuable social resources. Generally focusing on high- and middle-income countries, research has demonstrated that to varying degrees in different societies, women have fewer memberships in voluntary associations than men. This study examines membership in voluntary associations globally and thereby the national characteristics that drive the gender disparity. The national characteristics we examine include development and inequality. We argue that two theories researchers have used to explain individual-level memberships—the resource perspective and homophily theory—also apply to contextual influences on joining associations. Using data from multiple waves of the World Values Survey, we employ multilevel models to analyze the relationship between national context and the individual vis-à-vis gender differences in memberships in voluntary associations. We find that macro-level resources such as the level of development, as well as macro-level heterogeneity in the form of economic inequality and indicators of gender inequality, significantly predict membership. However, macro-level heterogeneity explains gender gaps while macro-level resources do not. The findings of this study are applicable to countries spanning the full development spectrum and offer a new explanation of how social structures of inequality reproduce and create inequality at the individual level.

Despite the well-documented link between eating disorders (EDs) and female infertility, it is unknown how EDs or disordered eating behaviors (DEBs) influence overall parity in early adulthood. Using longitudinal data, we examine whether EDs or DEBs during adolescence are linked to the number of children born to young women in early adulthood. We find that EDs or DEBs are associated with increased odds of having three or more children compared to no children in adulthood, even when we account for delinquency and sexual behaviors.

The Authors draw on cognitive sociology and attribution theory to infer whether people classify homosexuality as an identity or a behavior. Using six waves of World Values Survey data covering 85 countries, the authors conduct factor and multilevel regression analyses to examine patterns of intolerance toward gay people alongside racialized groups, immigrants, and users of alcohol or illicit substances, in the context of who constitutes an undesirable neighbor. The authors examine changes in these patterns over time and variation across broad cultural zones. Evaluations of homosexuality tend to cluster with alcohol and substance use in non-Western societies, albeit less strongly over time, but with race and nativity among Western and Latin American publics. The authors suggest that homosexuality is widely perceived as an identity in Western and "West-adjacent" countries, whereas elsewhere it is more often understood in behavioral terms. Over time, homosexuality is increasingly interpreted as an identity trait rather than a deviant behavior.

AbstractTaking world society theory as our point of departure, we examine the effect of world culture on contraceptive use rates around the world. World-cultural rhetoric frames contraception as a necessity for economic development, a human rights issue, and a women's health matter. Using data on contraceptive use among married women for a sample of 159 countries over the period from 1970 to 2012, we find that linkages to all three sets of discourses are associated with increased use of modern contraceptive methods, over and above countries' sociocultural and economic characteristics. Nevertheless, we also find that world society influences vary across major cultural zones, defined in terms of predominant religions and geographic regions. World cultural effects are strongest in Orthodox Christian, Hindu, non-Western Protestant, and sub-Saharan African countries. There is no effect in Western and East Asian countries, where contraceptive use is comparatively high, or in zones such as non-Western Catholic nations, where the unmet need for contraception is often greatest. Compared to development and women's rights rhetoric, health-based frames appear to have the broadest and most effective reach across cultural divides. Overall, however, we find that world society processes tend to produce cross-cultural convergence in contraceptive use rates.