October 2011
PATRIARCHY, RESOURCES, AND SPECIALIZATION:
MARITAL DECISION-MAKING POWER IN URBAN CHINA*
Forthcoming in Journal of Family Issues
Xiaoling Shu
Department of Sociology
University of California Davis
One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616
[email protected].
Yifei Zhu
Department of Sociology
University of California Davis
One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616
[email protected].
Zhanxin Zhang
Institute of Population and Labor Economics
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
5 Jianguomennei Dajie, Beijing 100732, China
[email protected]
PATRIARCHY, RESOURCES, AND SPECIALIZATION:
MARITAL DECISION-MAKING POWER IN URBAN CHINA
ABSTRACT
This paper examines influences of patriarchal ideas and practices, relative resources, and housework
specialization on three dimensions of marital decision-making power in urban China. We analyze
mundane, child-related and economic decisions using data from a 2000 national sample of 8,300
married urban individuals from 178 cities. Gender ideology and gendered patterns of inequality
remain the most salient determinants of marital decision-making power. Specialization in
housework bestows power on wives in mundane and child-related decisions, and extends the
existing pattern of gendered specialization in housework and breadwinning into wives’ prevalence in
mundane decisions and husbands’ dominance in economic decisions. There is little support for
resource theory: wives fail to use their relative income to bargain for more power. Housework, not
relative income, boosts Chinese wives’ marital decision-making power in mundane and child-related
decisions, indicating the absence of a “transitional equalitarian” value system and a collective rather
than an individualistic orientation in marital power process.
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PATRIARCHY, RESOURCES, AND SPECIALIZATION:
MARITAL DECISION-MAKING POWER IN URBAN CHINA
INTRODUCTION
Chinese marriages have experienced a multitude of transformations in the last decades. As the birth
place of Confucian patriarchy, China had one of the most elaborate patriarchal family structures
among all the family systems of the world (Stacey 1983; Therborn 2004; Wolf 1985), but the 1949
Communist Revolution largely dismantled this ancient patriarchy by assigning jobs to urban women
and initiating marital freedom and equality (Stacey 1983; Whyte and Parish 1984; Wolf 1985; Shu
2004). The transition to a market economy and integration into global capitalism has been
hypothesized to have brought equality-based bargaining into the dynamics of marital power (Parish
and Farrer 2000). Looser government control over individual lives allows for both a lenient attitude
toward divorce and the recurrence of patriarchal ideology among men (Pimental 2008).
However, research on marital decision-making power as a component of Chinese women’s
status is relatively scant. Research are voluminous on gender inequality in the labor market (Cao
and Hu 2007; Shu and Bian 2002, 2003; Shu 2004, 2005; Zhang, Hannum and Wang 2008) and in
household division of labor, marital satisfaction and divorce in China (Chen 2004; Entwisle et al.
1995; Parish and Farrer 2000; Zuo 2003), but only a handful studies have focused on marital power
since 1990. Despite its exploratory nature and limited sample size, Zuo and Bian’s (2005)
stimulating account of 43 couples in Beijing documents a fairly equal pattern of power sharing
among urban couples. From a sample of 1,700 couples in Beijing, Pimentel (2006) found that
spouses report a substantial amount of integrated decision making across all marriage cohorts. Two
other studies were based on samples from rural China (Matthews and Nee 2000, Zuo 2008). These
studies are based on samples from one single locale in China and usually consist of only a few dozen
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respondents. To date, there has been no systematic analysis on power dynamics in Chinese families
that is based on national samples.
“Marital power” often refers to the overall hidden power between husbands and wives over
control of money, decision-making, the division of domestic labor, and conflict resolution, etc. (Berk
1985; Bloode and Wolfe 1960; Blumstein & Schwartz 1983; McDonald 1980; Tichenor 1999).
Doing more housework is usually seen as signifying lesser status or power within the relationship,
while making more household decisions is believed to reflect a higher status and more overall
power. Past research generally perceived the division of labor in the family as derived from power
measures (e.g., Richmond 1976; Stafford et al. 1977; Ericksen et al. 1979). The more power
resources such as income, education and jobs and decision-making power the wife has, the more
housework is shared by the husband. On the other hand, spouses can gain power by doing
housework (Zuo and Bian 2005) as expert knowledge gained through doing housework may
constitute an important power base in the process of marital decision making (Raven, Centers and
Rodriguez 1975). In this research, we examine whether contribution to domestic work can enhance
decision-making power, analyzing if expert knowledge derived from doing housework can be a
source of decision-making power.
This study tests three theories of marital power to unravel the influences of relative
resources, patriarchal attitudes and arrangements, and division of housework on marital decisionmaking power in urban China. Resource theory predicts that relative resources such as income
determine a spouse’s power within the family. Gender theory contends that both individual gender
ideology and the cultural and structural context of gender egalitarianism have a strong influence on
marital power over and beyond the effects of individual resources. Theory of utility maximization
argues that to maximize the welfare of a household, the spouse with the most relevant knowledge or
skills makes the related decisions. With the exception of Zuo and Bian (2005), none of the existing
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research on China has systematically tested these theories. Cross-national studies suggest that
resource theory can be successfully used in the prediction and explanation of marital power
distribution only in "transitional equalitarian" cultural systems (Rodman 1967, 1972). In Taiwan,
another Confucian society in the process of rapid modernization, wives are gaining bargaining
power against patriarchy in determining the balance of marital power (Xu and Lai 2002). Chinese
wives’ overwhelming share of domestic work has been argued as a source of marital decisionmaking power as both wives and husbands consider housework as a contribution to family wellbeing
(Zuo and Bian 2005).
We will address one noted discrepancy in gender inequality in both the labor market and the
family in China. Contemporary marriages in urban China are characterized by an asymmetry
between Chinese women’s sizeable gains in both the labor market and marital decision-making
power, and an unequal division of household labor. Almost all urban Chinese wives work outside
the home earning 40 to 50 percent of joint spousal income (Whyte and Parish 1984; Stockman et al.
1995; Parish and Farrer 2000; Pimentel 2006). Egalitarian decision-making is prevalent among
urban Chinese couples (Pimentel 2006). Yet despite these indicators of Chinese wives’ power, they
continue to do the overwhelming majority of housework (Whyte and Parish 1984; Parish and Farrer
2000). Why do Chinese wives take up the bulk of housework while sharing power with their
husbands in family decision-making? Neither resource theory nor gender theory can account for
such asymmetry. Zuo and Bian (2005) proposed an alternate framework to the resource theory,
arguing that the majority of couples in China are codependent and that these collectivized couples
strive for relational harmony rather than practicing equity-based bargaining when determining the
balance of marital power. Thus doing housework is seen as a contribution to the family collective
well-being and a right to decision-making power. On account of their substantial share of both
market and domestic work, Chinese women enjoy more decision-making power. In this paper,
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instead of seeing housework as an indicator of less power, we examine whether housework as a form
of expert knowledge can lead to more marital decision-making power. We also examine whether
this housework-power relationship varies by type of work, or by type of decision or by gender of the
spouses.
This paper uses data from a national sample of 8,300 married urban individuals from 178
Chinese cities to test three theories of marital decision-making power: resource theory, theory of
utility maximization, and gender theory. After briefly outlining the context of Chinese marriage and
family, we analyze the effects of gender attitude, community-level gender inequality, and husbands’
and wives’ relative income and share of housework on distribution of marital power. Because both
division of housework and distribution of marital decision-making power vary largely by type of
work and decision, we treat marital decision-making power as a multidimensional concept by
differentiating three types of decision-making: mundane, child-related and economic. We also
distinguish three types of housework: routine, child-related, and strenuous. In doing so, we seek to
deepen our understanding of family dynamics in urban China from these prevailing theoretical
perspectives.
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY IN CHINA
The Confucian family functioned as a potent social institution that maintained male
dominance through strictly confining women within the domestic realm of the patrilocal, patrilinear,
and patriarchal kinship network (Stacey 1983). In all stages of the life course, women were expected
to depend on and defer to their male relatives – maidens obeying their fathers, wives obeying their
husbands, and widows obeying their adult sons. This patriarchal family system started to erode in
the early 20th century and was radically weakened by rapid industrialization in the 1950s and the
Communist government’s policies.
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Following the 1950s, views regarding women’s rights to divorce and remarry became
increasingly egalitarian in China. Over 90 percent of urban residents endorsed such women’s rights
by the early 1990s. Attitudes toward women’s careers and sexual freedom also started to transition
in an egalitarian direction, although at a slower pace and with lower levels of support (Shu 2004).
Despite a legacy of arranged marriage, Chinese nuptials are primarily decided by the couples
involved, usually with approval from their parents. The new marriage law of 1950 promoted
autonomous marriage and discouraged arranged marriages (Cleverley 1991; Parish and Farrer 2000;
Shu 2004). By 1991, 95 percent of all marriages were chosen by the couple themselves, and ages at
the first marriage have since increased constantly, now reaching the mid- or late twenties after the
participants have established some independence (Parish and Farrer 2000).
A typical Chinese couple consists of a husband and a wife, each with a full time job, thanks
to the large-scale movement initiated by the socialist state in the 1950s, that enlisted women en
masse into the labor force. In 1950, the Trade Union Law mandated equal pay for equal work and
provided paid maternity leave and the right to nurse babies at work (Cleverley 1991). As a result, a
fairly equal match of education and income between husbands and wives characterizes Chinese
marriages, with increasing numbers of younger women having as much or more education than their
husbands. 20 percent of wives have more education than their husbands while 40 percent have the
same amount (Parish and Farrer 2000). Approximately 85 percent of wives work full time and most
earn nearly as much income as their husbands, providing 40 to 50 percent of the couple’s joint
income (Parish and Farrer 2000).
However, this egalitarian pattern fails to extend to domestic division of labor. Chinese wives
spend twice as much time on cooking and laundry as their husbands do, although Chinese husbands’
participation levels in housework are higher than those of American and European men (Parish and
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Farrer 2000). Chinese wives take up more than 70 percent of cooking, grocery shopping, laundry
and housecleaning tasks (Whyte and Parish 1984; Parish and Farrer 2000).
Egalitarian decision-making is prevalent among urban Chinese couples (Pimentel 2006).
Husbands and wives practice a high level of joint decision-making in household purchases and other
matters while wives dominate in management of household money (Stockman et al. 1995; Whyte
1984; Whyte and Parish 1984; Zuo and Bian 2005).
Divorce used to be constrained in China by extensive legal barriers (Whyte and Parish 1984),
but the 1980 new marriage law liberalized divorce policy and enabled women to initiate the
termination of unhappy marriages (Cleverley 1991). Urban residents also generally endorsed
women's rights to divorce, remarriage, and sexual freedom within marriage. 44 to 60 percent
endorsed remarriage in the 1980’s (Wolf 1985), and 67 to 84 percent did so in 1991 (Parish and
Farrer 2000). The divorce rate shot up to .35 divorces per thousand population in 1980 and .82 in
1996 (to 1.7 in the two largest cities, Beijing and Shanghai), far greater than the average divorce rate
of .15 per thousand population in countries at a similar development level (Parish and Farrer 2000).
In short, Chinese husbands and wives practice power sharing in family decision making
while wives contribute close to half of family income and seventy percent of housework in a society
with a long patriarchal tradition. We next use the prevailing theories to analyze this pattern of power
sharing.
THEORIES OF MARITAL DECISION-MAKING POWER
Resource theory, theory of utility maximization, and gender theory emphasize different
principles of marital dynamics in power determination. Based on their arguments, we develop a
series of testable hypotheses.
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Classic Resource Theory
Resource theory posits that the balance of power at home is negotiated during the process of
resource exchange between husband and wife (Blood and Wolfe 1960; Blumstien and Schwartz
1983; Scanzoni and Szinovacz 1980; Brayfield 1992; Brines 1994; Lennon and Rosefield 1994).
These resources often comprise socioeconomic capital such as income, educational attainment,
occupational prestige and skills in organizations outside the family. The spouse who earns more,
holds a more prestigious job, has more resources available, and is relatively less dependent on the
partner for resources may trade these assets for greater authority at home. Classic resource theory
assumes gender neutrality by claiming that either husband or wife can attain more marital power by
bringing more resources into the marriage. Table 1 presents our hypotheses with “+” indicating a
positive association on three dimensions of decision-making:
(R1) Higher relative income is positively associated with more decision-making power;
(R2) This positive association remains constant at all range of relative income for both
husbands and wives;
(R3) This positive association exists for all dimensions of decision-making.
[TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]
Theory of Utility Maximization
The neoclassical model of marital decision-making holds that marital partners exhibit
common preference by jointly maximizing a single household welfare function. The joint goal of
household efficiency encourages spouses to engage in behaviors to prioritize the gain of the
marriage as an intact unit over and beyond individual interests. This model treats family behaviors
as equivalent to a single collective unit, albeit with pooled resources from both members (Becker
1964). For the family as a whole, utility maximization is achieved through spousal specialization,
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investments in different human capitals that give them a comparative advantage. Specialization does
not necessarily stem from biological differences between men and women. This theory argues that
increasing returns to advantages of specialization encourages household members to specialize in
activity-specific human capital investments.
Household utility is best maximized if the spouse who specializes in home maintenance and
management makes relevant decisions, regardless of the sex of the spouse. In traditional
breadwinner-homemaker marriages, women and men enjoy comparative advantages in distinct
productive or reproductive activities. Since women are generally more productive in child-rearing
and other domestic activities and men more productive at paid work, it is most advantageous for the
household to maximize their utility if the husband specializes in paid work and wife in housework
(Becker 1981). Specialization encourages the division of labor at home, facilitates interdependence
between husband and wife, and maximizes the efficiency of the family (Parsons 1949; Becker 1981,
1985). Contemporary marriages with a greater degree of symmetry between the spouses do not
necessarily bestow dominant power on husbands within marriage; rather, decision-making power is
likely to be divided, based on the spouses’ ability to make those decisions, thus maximizing
household utility. For example, expert power — the belief that one spouse has superior knowledge
or ability which will result in the best possible outcome — was shown to be particularly germane to
family decision making (Raven et al. 1975). Table 1 presents two hypotheses with “+” indicating a
positive association on three dimensions of decision-making based on the theory of utility
maximization:
(UM1) The larger the share of one type of household work a spouse has, the more power this
spouse has in the related decision-making; and
(UM2) This positive housework-power association does not vary by gender.
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Gender Theory
Gender, a primary cultural frame, organizes social relations and influences social institutions
and patterns of social connections (Ridgeway 2009). This cultural frame has a strong influence on
family and marital behaviors, both in addition to and as part of the effects of structural resources (Xu
and Lai 2002; Tichenor 1999; Kulik 1999; Greenstein 1996; Kamo 1988; Scanzoni and Szinovacz
1980). In all societies, traditional gender norms emphasizing man’s breadwinner role and woman’s
housekeeper role constrain women’s overall economic power (Blumberg and Coleman 1989; Ferree
1990; Scanzoni and Szinovacz 1980; Vogler 1998). The effects of socially-prescribed gender roles
operate at multiple levels−individual, interactional, cultural, and institutional (Ferree, Lorber, and
Hess 1998; Ferree 1990; Bittman et al. 2003; Coltrane 2000; Ridgeway 2009; West and Zimmerman
1987; Fox and Murry 2000). There are at least three pathways via which gender influences the
balance of marital power: gender attitudes, macro-level gender inequality and relative income
through a gender lens.
Egalitarian Gender Attitudes
Gender attitude determines the power, authority and autonomy to which people aspire, as
well as the interactions in which they are involved. Gender can affect the allocation of decisionmaking power “through the norms internalized by men and women,” even given equal or close
earnings (Bittman et al. 2003:190). Gender ideology influences family exchanges over and beyond
the effects of income (Bittman et al. 2003). Egalitarian gender attitude is associated with a more
equal division of decision-making power (Vogler 1998; Xu and Lai 2003; Kulik 1999). Table 1 lists
the hypotheses under “(1) Egalitarian Gender Attitude” with bold “+” or “-ˮ indicating a positive or
negative association on three dimensions of decision-making:
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(GA1) Wives’ egalitarian gender attitude is positively associated with their decision-making
power; and
(GA2) Husbands’ egalitarian gender attitude is negatively associated with their decisionmaking power.
Macrolevel Gender Inequality
Couples do not operate in isolation from general society. Societal gender inequality
influences women’s power within the family and their ability to convert their resources into power
(Blumberg and Coleman 1989). Male domination of the political economy, national policy,
educational institutions, labor market, and prevailing ideology structure can influence a couple’s
perception of their opportunities both outside and within the household. Widespread gender
egalitarian ideas and equal distribution of educational and employment opportunities may also boost
wives’ authority within the household. When the educational disparity between women and men is
large, favoring men, women perceive few opportunities for themselves in education and the labor
market. Given their limited opportunities outside the home, women in these communities have little
bargaining power within the household and thus perceive few rights for themselves within the family
(Shu 2004). In such communities, there are also fewer female role models for other women to
emulate; women are less likely to come into close contact with highly educated women who could
influence them. The hypotheses derived from this perspective are in Table 1 listed under “(2) Index
of Gender Equality in City”:
(GE1) Wives have more decision-making power in communities with a higher degree of
gender equality; and
(GE2) Husbands have less decision-making power in communities with a higher degree of
gender equality.
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Relative Income through a Gender Lens
Empirical support for classic resource theory is mixed. Its prediction of the positive
association between relative income and decision-making power is generally supported by
comparative studies on marital power in developing societies (Mathews and Nee 2000; Oropesa
1997; Rodman 1972; Xu and Lai 2002). These studies found that employment opportunities for
women outside the family increase their economic contribution to the household. As women’s
economic resources increase, their decision-making power grows. However, studies of marital
power in developed societies in the U.S. and Western European countries showed that the
association between relative income and husbands’ decision-making power varies among societies
with different gender norms (Rodman 1967, 1972). Studies in the U.S. revealed that this association
is not universal within a society, either. Tichenor (1999) found that wives who make more money
and have higher occupational status than their husbands do not necessarily have more say in the
households.
Interaction between Income and Macrolevel Gender Equality. The nature of the association
between relative income and allocation of housework and decision-making power varies among
societies with different degrees of patriarchal tradition (Rodman 1967; Blumberg and Coleman 1989;
Fuwa 2004). Rodman (1967) showed that only in societies where gender norms approach
equalitarianism can we observe a positive association between the husband’s resources and his
marital power, as predicted by resource-exchange theory. No such association exists in either fully
patriarchal or fully egalitarian societies. Recent empirical studies indicate that in societies with less
egalitarian gender norms, women are less likely to translate earnings into more decision-making
power and a reduction in housework (Blumberg and Coleman 1989; Fuwa 2004). Because
individual woman’s power is “nested” in the gender-power relationship on the macro-level, any
power benefit from a wife’s high income relative to her husband’s may be reduced by male
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dominance at the macro-level. Women’s income is “discounted” into their “net economic power” in
actual bargaining between husbands and wives (Blumberg and Coleman 1989). Table 1 shows the
hypotheses under “(3) Interaction Effect between Gender Equality in City and Relative Income”:
(IE1) The positive effect of wives’ relative income on marital decision-making power is
larger in more gender egalitarian communities than in less gender egalitarian communities; and
(IE2) The positive effect of husbands’ relative income on marital decision-making power is
smaller in more gender egalitarian communities than in less gender egalitarian communities.
Modified Resource Theory. Gender could affect distribution of decision-making power
because husband and wife “enact” and “affirm” their gender identities in daily interactions through
engaging/disengaging in gender-coded activities (West and Zimmerman 1987; Berk 1985; Gupta
1999). Doing housework, providing for the family, and making major decisions at home are all
gender-coded activities (Blood and Wolfe 1960; Rodman 1967; Berk 1985; West and Zimmerman
1987; Brines 1994; Gupta 1999). Almost all societies make a cultural association of doing
housework with women, and being the economic supporter and authority figure of the household
with men. Since role-reversal couples (those in which wives are the primary earners) are under
pressure to account for their non-traditional gender identities, we expect that classic resource theory
does not explain allocation of decision-making power for such couples. Predictions of resourceexchange theory hold only for conventional marriages with breadwinner husbands and dependent
wives. Derived from this modified resource theory (Brines 1994), we specify our hypotheses in
+
Table 1 with bold “ ” under Resource Theory, indicating a positive association:
(MR1) Only among breadwinner husbands is their relative income positively associated with
husbands’ decision-making power;
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(MR2) Only among dependent wives is their relative income positively associated with
wives’ decision-making power; and
(MR3) Among couples whose gender roles are reversed (primary-earner wives and
secondary-earner husbands), relative income has no bearing on decision-making power.
DATA, MEASURES AND METHODS
Our data come from the urban portion of the Survey on Chinese Women’s Social Status in
2000 (henceforth WOMEN2000). WOMEN2000 was jointly conducted by the All China Women’s
Federation and the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2000. It surveyed 19,449 individuals in
30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in both urban and rural China. The urban
sample includes 29 provinces, excluding Qinghai. It used a multilevel stratified sampling procedure
of four levels: city, street, neighborhood, and household. Adults aged 18-64 were randomly selected
from each of the chosen households. We use information for the 8,317 married individuals (3,715
men and 4,602 women) in the urban sample in our analysis, excluding rural respondents, single and
divorced/separated urban residents. The data do not afford information from both husbands and
wives as married couples, although we often refer them as husbands and wives when reporting
results from the male and female respondents.
To contextualize our analysis, we use city-level data compiled from the 2000 Census,
Provincial Statistical Yearbooks, Provincial Yearbooks, China Statistical Yearbook for Regional
Economy, and Urban Statistical Yearbook of China. We collected data for the 178 municipalities,
prefecture cities, and counties in which respondents in the micro-level data reside.
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Dependent Variables
Household Decision-Making Power. WOMEN2000 included a list of questions on
household decision-making. Respondents were asked who exerted more influence in making seven
decisions (wife, husband-wife joint, husband): budgeting daily expenses, fertility, children’s
education and occupation, purchasing luxury goods, purchasing a house, engaging in business, and
major financial decisions such as investments and loans. Although this survey contains more
measures of decision-making than prior research, it does not contain information on some important
measures of power, such as sexuality, career decisions, and conflict resolution, nor the processes of
decision-making.
We recode these variables separately for husbands and wives, and analyze these two samples
separately. In the subgroup of wives, we assign a value of +1 to wives who are the sole makers of
these decisions, a value of 0 to wives who make joint decisions with their husbands, and a value of 1 to wives whose husbands are the sole decision-makers. Similarly, in the subgroup of husbands, we
assign a value of +1 to husbands who are sole decision-makers, a value of 0 to husbands who make
joint decisions with their wives, and a value of -1 to husbands whose wives are the sole decisionmakers. We carry out factor analysis to reduce the decisions into three dimensions of power:
mundane, child-related and economic.
Independent Variables
Housework. WOMEN2000 included a list of questions about household chores.
Respondents were asked who (wife, husband) was mainly responsible for eight tasks: cooking,
cleaning dishes, laundry, grocery shopping, house cleaning, childcare, help with children’s
homework, and tasks requiring physical strength, such as buying coal and bottled gas and wood
15
chopping. We carry out factor analysis to reduce these items into three dimensions of house work:
routine, child-related and strenuous.
Relative Income. Relative income measures a respondent’s contribution to the family
income. It is computed using the spouse’s annual income (including wage, bonus and dividend)
divided by the sum of both husband’s and wife’s annual income, then multiplied by 100. We use a
spline function to capture the effect of relative income; income share is divided into two continuous
variables to distinguish breadwinners from secondary wage-earners (Brines 1994). Income1 ranges
from 0-50%, and Income2 ranges from 50.1-100%. We focus on relative income as the primary
measure of relative resources although we also control for the effects of the difference in husband
and wife’s education, respondent’s work sector and occupation.
Gender Attitude is a composite measure constructed from two variables measuring
respondents’ gender ideology: “Men should focus on outside jobs whereas women should focus on
family,” and “Men are born to be more capable than women.”
Gender Equality in City is a standardized measure with a mean of 0 and standard deviation of
1.0 with higher value indicating more gender equality in the city. We created this index using
confirmatory factor analysis on the difference between average education of men and average
education of women in the city/county from China’s 2000 census. Educational attainment can be
viewed as an indicator of an individual’s access to structural resources and instrumental networks.
We also considered gender income ratio at city-level but decided not to use this measure because (1)
past study (Shu 2004) shows that women in communities with large gender gaps in education hold
more traditional gender attitudes than do women in communities with smaller gender gaps; (2)
information on gender income ratio at city-level is not readily available from external city-level data
sources; (3) income ratio at city-level, calculated by aggregating all males and females’ income for
each city in the individual sample, is not associated with measures of decision-making power.
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Control Variables
Work sector. We use four dichotomous variables to differentiate the respondents’ work
sectors into state, collective, new and private. They are coded 1 if the respondent is in the state, or
collective, or new, or private sector, respectively, and 0 otherwise. Occupation. We use three
dummy variables to represent occupation types: professional, managerial, and worker. These
variables are coded 1 if the respondent holds a professional, or managerial occupation, or is a
worker, respectively, and 0 otherwise. Time on paid work and commute. This is the total number of
hours the respondent spent on paid work and commute on the business day prior to the survey.
Three variables describe personal characteristics. Age is the respondent’s age in years.
Education measures years of schooling. To enable us to use only one variable to measure education
and to calculate any educational gap between husbands and wives, we extrapolate years of education
from levels of education completed using the following scales (Hannum and Xie 1994): illiterate or
marginally illiterate = 0, primary school = 6, junior high school = 9, senior high school = 12,
vocational and trade school = 12, community college = 14, college = 16, and graduate school = 19.
CCP Membership is a dummy variable with 1 indicating the respondent is a member of the Chinese
Communist Party and 0 otherwise.
Six variables capture family characteristics. Family Income is the combined income of the
husband and wife in thousands yuan. Number of Children is the number of children living in the
household. Difference in Education is the husband’s number of years of education minus the wife’s
number of years of education. Extended household is a dummy variable with 1 indicating a
household consisting of members who are not part of a nuclear family of parents and children. Two
dummy variables measure the type of housework assistance received: Grandparents is a dummy
variable with 1 indicating that grandparents help out with housework; Others is another dummy
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variable with 1 indicating that other people besides the couple and grandparents help out with
housework.
Marketization in City is constructed as an index based on FDI and GDP per capita in the city,
because they capture two key aspects of market reform−integration into the global capitalist market
and economic development. FDI is the amount of foreign direct investment to the city/county in
2000. GDP per Capita is the per capita Gross Domestic Product measured in yuan. This index is a
standardized measure with a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1.0 with higher value indicating
higher degree of market transition.
Appendix Table A1 shows means and standard deviations for individual-level variables, in
addition to the t-values and P-values for gender differences in these variables. Appendix Table A2
shows means and standard deviations for the city-level measures and indices.
Factor Analysis of Decision-making Power and Housework
We implement a series of factor analyses to reduce the number of power-measures and
housework to a smaller number of both meaningful and statistically-sound measures. Principal
component analysis indicates that three types of decisions can be derived from the seven resulting
measures: mundane decisions of budgeting daily expenses; child-related decisions of fertility and
child’s education and occupation; and major economic decisions of purchasing luxury goods,
purchasing real estate, engaging in business, investments and loans. Table 2 shows the results for
this measurement model. These factor loadings are very similar for both sexes. The Cronbach’s
Alphas are .79 and .80 for women and men, respectively, and the percentages of accounted-for
variances are 75% for both. There is no gender difference between the male and female models.
[TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE]
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Principal component analysis shows that the eight variables of housework can be
differentiated into three types: mundane housework consisting of cooking, cleaning dishes, laundry,
grocery shopping, and house cleaning; child-related work of help with homework and childcare; and
strenuous work. The factor loadings for housework are also in Table 2. The Cronbach’s Alphas are
.62 and .65, and the percentages of accounted-for variances are 63% and 66% for women and men,
respectively. Again, these measurement models do not vary by gender.
When constructing composite measures of both decision-making power and housework, we
take into account that some respondents do not face all seven decisions or all eight types of
housework (e.g. couples with grown children do not have childcare or homework obligations). In
turn, we consider the distribution of decision-making power or share of housework relative to the
actual number of decisions or types of housework that respondents encountered. We standardize the
share of decision-making power and housework between the respondents and their spouses by
calculating their percentage of the total number of tasks or decisions.
A Multilevel Model of Household Decision-Making
To simultaneously estimate the effects of individual- and community-level influences on
spouses’ marital decision-making power, we estimate a series of nested multilevel models. The
microcomponent can be expressed as follows:
DECISION ij = β 0 j + β 1 j HWM ij + β 2 j HWC ij + β 3 j HWS ij + β 4 j INCOME1ij
+ β 5 j INCOME 2 ij + β 6 j GENATT ij + ∑ β kj Control kij + ε ij
(A1.0)
where DECISION represents one dimension of decision-making for individual i in jth community.
ij
The β’s are microlevel coefficients, the interpretations of which are similar to those for a multiple
regression. β 0 j is the individual-level intercept. HWM ij to Controlij are individual-level predictors
19
of decision-making power. HWM ij , HWC ij , and HWS ij are the three dimensions of housework—
mundane, child-related and strenuous . INCOME1ij and INCOME2ij are the two measures of
relative income and GENATT ij is the gender attitude of the respondent. These variables are
measured as continuous, and the bars on these variables indicate that they are centered on their
city/county means. The effects of k control variables are denoted by ∑ β kj . ε ij is the error term,
assumed to be normally distributed with mean zero and variance σ 2 .
We expect the individual-level intercepts and slopes to vary across cities. In the macrocomponent of the model, the micro-level intercept β 0 j and the micro-level coefficients for income
β 4 j and β 5 j are assumed to depend stochastically on macro-level characteristic GE, the index of
gender equality in the city. The micro-level intercept of β 0 j also varies by MARKET, the index of
marketization in the city. The following equations express the macrocomponent of the model:
β 0 j = γ 00 + γ 01GE j + γ 02 MARKET j + µ 0 j
(A2.0)
β 4 j = γ 40 + γ 41GEj + µ4 j
(A2.4)
β 5 j = γ 50 + γ 51GE j + µ 5 j
(A2.5)
where γ 00 is the macro-level intercept, γ 01 is the main effect of GE, γ 02 is the main effect of
MARKET; γ 40 is the intercept for income share of 0-50%, γ 50 is the intercept for income share of
50.1-100%, γ 41 is the effect of GE on β 4 j , the effect of income share of 0-50%; γ 51 is the effect of
GE on β 5 j , the effect of income 50.1-100%; µ0 j , µ 4 j , and µ 5 j are macro-level error terms
assumed to be normally distributed with mean zero and variance τ . These multilevel models,
expressed by Equations A1.0, A2.0, A2.4 and A2.5, are “intercepts-and-slopes-as-outcomes” models
estimated using HLM 6.0 (Raudenbush and Bryk 2002).
20
ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
We conduct our analysis in two steps. To describe the distribution of housework and
decision-making, we graph the division of seven household decisions and eight items of housework
between males and females. To estimate the effects of income, housework, gender attitudes and
gender egalitarian communities on martial power, we estimate a series of multilevel models. We
describe these results as follows.
Distribution of Decision-making Power and Housework
The respondents report they practice power-sharing on almost all household decisions.
Figure 1A reports the proportion of decision-making power between husbands and wives in urban
China. At least 60% of both men and women respondents report that husband and wife make joint
decisions on purchase of luxury goods, fertility, children’s school/work, purchase of housing,
investments and decisions on other major economic activities. Only on one type of decision,
budgeting daily expenses, are wives primary decision makers (> 40%), outnumbering the
percentages of joint decisions (35%) or decisions made solely by husbands (20%). Among decisions
made by one spouse only, husbands outnumber wives in purchasing luxurious goods, children’s
school/work, real estate purchasing, economic activities, and investment/loans, while wives
outnumber husbands only in budgeting daily expenses.
[FIGURES 1A AND 1B ABOUT HERE]
This prevalence of power sharing among Chinese couples is not a surprise, given that
researchers found a similar pattern of power-sharing from data collected in China from the 1980s
(Whyte and Parish 1984) and the 1990s (Stockman et al. 1995; Pimentel 2006). Interestingly,
couples in Taiwan also practice power-sharing in decisions concerning children’s education and
21
marriage, estate purchases and family expenses, but husbands dominate career choice decisionsi (Xu
and Lai 2002: P226).
In stark contrast to household decision power-sharing between Chinese couples, women take
the bulk of six out of the eight housework items measured in this study. Figure 1B presents the
percentage share of housework by husbands and wives. Wives shoulder the lion’s share of cooking,
cleaning dishes, doing laundry, house cleaning, and taking care of children. At least 70% of women
report they are responsible for such work. Slightly more than 50% of both women and men report
they help with children’s homework. The only dimension of housework in which men take a larger
share is those that demand body strength and heavy lifting. Both men and women report that 90% of
husbands do this strenuous work. These results are consistent with prior evidence that 70~80% of
Chinese women perform most of the repetitive and routine housework: cooking, cleaning dishes,
laundering clothes, daily grocery shopping, housecleaning, and childcare (Whyte and Parish 1984;
Parish and Farrer 2000). Chinese husbands’ share of housework extends to half of helping with
children’s homework and almost all the occasional physical work that involves weight-lifting.
A Multilevel Model of Household Decision-Making
We estimate a series of multilevel models to analyze the effects of housework, relative
income, gender attitudes and community gender equality on three types of marital power on
mundane, child-related, and economic decisions. The estimates for the coefficients of both
individual- and city-level explanatory variables are in Table 3. We discuss the effects of relative
income, housework, and gender separately in relation to the hypotheses derived from the three
theoretical perspectives: resource theory, theory of utility maximization, and gender theory.
[TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE]
Relative Income: Classic Resource Theory and Modified Resource Theory
22
The effect of relative income on decision-making power is minimal. Based on classic
resource theory, we hypothesized twelve positive coefficients between the two measures of income
and the three dimensions of power. Our results indicate only two positive associations: consistent
with classic resource theory’s predictions, higher income share is associated with more decisionmaking power for husbands in major economic decisions, and higher income share is also associated
with more power for wives in child-related decisions. Except for these two, relative income is
neither correlated with wives’ power in either mundane or economic decisions, nor with husbands’
power in either mundane or child-related decisions.
There is also little support for the hypotheses derived from modified resource theory. This
theory predicts three positive coefficients between the income of dependent wives and their power,
and three positive coefficients between the income of breadwinner husbands and their power. Our
analyses show that only one of these associations exists: solely among primary wage-earner
husbands does allocation of economic power follow the predictions of the modified resource theory.
Contrary to our hypothesis derived from modified resource theory, relative earnings of primaryearner wives are correlated with their child-related decision-making.
Support is scant for both the classic resource theory’s and modified resource theory’s
predictions of a positive association between relative income and decision-making power. The
strongest evidence to buttress these theories is found in the positive association between
breadwinner men’s relative income and their economic power−a testament to the importance of the
male “provider” role in claiming husbands’ status in the marriage.
23
Housework and Relative Income: Theory of Utility Maximization
We found strong support for the specialization perspective, that the spouse who specializes in
certain types of housework has more power in corresponding decision-making. We derived eight
positive associations relating housework and income to marital power based on the theory of utility
maximization, and found support for five of these positive coefficients. Every 1% increase in the
amount of mundane housework tasks boosts spouses’ power in budgeting daily expenses by .26%.
This is consistent for both wives and husbands. Further, every 1% increase in share of child-related
housework increases child-related decision-making power by .06% for women and .08% for men. In
addition, among husbands who are primary breadwinners, their economic decision-making power is
positively associated with income. However, contrary to the hypotheses, women’s income is not
associated with any dimensions of their marital decision-making power, nor is the income of
husbands making less than their wives.
This pattern lends support for the specialization theory, with a caveat. On the one hand,
investment in mundane and child-related housework could be viewed as investment in specific
human capital. The household best maximizes its utility if the spouse who specializes in the
maintenance and management of the household makes relevant decisions, regardless of the sex of
that spouse. On the other hand, utility maximization theory fails to account for the irrelevance of
women’s income on their economic decision-making power. Regardless of level of income, wives’
earning capabilities have no bearing on their economic decision-making power. Conversely,
breadwinner husbands boost their economic decision-making power with higher relative income,
although more income for men who are secondary wage-earners does not increase their economic
power. This finding affirms that economic power is in essence male power, and only men who fill
the traditional male “provider” role can derive economic power from an increase in their income.
24
Gender Attitude and Community Gender Equality: Gender Theory
Our results demonstrate that gender influences family processes at the individual level,
which in turn supports our hypotheses about the association between gender attitudes and allocation
of decision-making power. Wives with egalitarian gender attitudes enjoy more power in economic
decisions, and husbands with egalitarian gender attitudes seem willing to relinquish some power in
child-related and economic decisions. This finding suggests that couples with more egalitarian
gender attitudes have a more equal balance of power at home, particularly on economic decisions.
Our analysis also shows that gender influences household division of power on the macro
level. In cities where gender equality is high, wives enjoy more power in child-related and
economic decisions. However, macro-level gender equality is not correlated with husbands’ marital
power in any dimension of decision-making. While women are susceptible to community forces
shaping the balance of power between men and women, men’s relative power within the household
is not subject to this contextual influence. These results are consistent with findings in Shu (2004)
that women are more susceptible to community-level influences than men and that women in
communities with larger gender education gaps accept egalitarian gender attitudes less.
There is no evidence that community-level gender equality discounts or boosts the effects of
individual resources, as individual resources, such as relative income, have little main influence on
marital power in the first place.
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we analyzed the distribution of marital decision-making power in urban China
during its transition to a capitalist market economy, testing three theories: relative resource theory,
theory of utility maximization, and gender theory. Using a national sample of more than 8,000
25
married urban individuals from 178 Chinese cities and counties, we analyzed a series of nested
multilevel models. We summarize our two conclusions as follows.
A Hierarchy of Marital Decision-making Power
Marital power processes are not uniform across all dimensions of marital decision-making.
Rather, the underlying mechanism varies by the types of decision. Mundane decisions of household
daily maintenance lie at the bottom of this power hierarchy. Chinese wives often control the
budgeting of daily expenses, as they derive their power from their expertise and knowledge of
routine housework. Interestingly, men who engage in this type of repetitive housework also have
more authority on mundane decisions. Therefore, utility maximization seems to be the guiding
principle in mundane decision-making. Women’s such decision-making power appears to grow
from a gendered division of housework, in which wives bear the burden of routine and repetitive
tasks.
Spouses practice joint power-sharing on child-related decisions. Those spouses who do more
childcare and help with homework enjoy more power in decisions regarding fertility, and children’s
education and occupation. Husbands who hold more liberal gender attitudes relegate more power to
their wives, and wives who live in more gender-egalitarian communities enjoy more power.
Specialization in knowledge and skills, husbands’ gender attitudes, and wives’ community contexts
are important determinants of power in child-related decisions.
In line with their masculine “provider” role, husbands prevail in household economic
decision making. Income is a gendered resource for breadwinner husbands in strengthening their
dominance in economic decision-making power within the household; wives−even breadwinner
wives−do not enjoy such a boost in their economic power with more income. Gender equality at
both micro- and macro-levels is also important: wives with more liberal gender attitudes themselves
26
or who live in more gender-egalitarian communities are able to demand more economic decisionmaking power; husbands with egalitarian gender attitudes are willing to relinquish some economic
power to their spouses.
Patriarchy, Specialization and Resources
Patriarchal beliefs, patterns and institutional arrangements are the most salient factors
underlying marital power. Evidence for a strong gender effect manifests in the following pattern:
first, husbands and wives with more egalitarian gender attitudes have more equal marital power
relationships; second, communities with more gender equality foster a more equal marital power
relationship; third, only for breadwinner husbands does relative income increase their decisionmaking power, while higher income does not boost wives’ power; fourth, the existing pattern of
gendered specialization with wives concentrating on routine housework and husbands on earning
income has led to a gendered division of marital decision-making power, whereby wives dominate
mundane decisions and husbands prevail in economic decisions.
We also found some support for the utility maximization perspective. For both spouses,
mundane housework and child-related work enhance their decision-making power in these areas.
However, only among breadwinner husbands does higher income lead to more power in economic
decisions; wives’ income has no bearing on their power in economic decisions. Because wives
dominate routine housework and share child-related work, they acquire more say in daily budgeting
and equal power over decisions on childbirth, children’s education and occupation. Husbands
relinquish some power to their wives in these two areas of decision making, not on account of
wives’ income share, but their share of housework as a contribution to the collective well-being of
the family. Such a gendered pattern in marital power corresponds to a gendered division of labor,
where wives take the overwhelming share of the mundane housework and husbands specialize in
27
breadwinning. This finding shows that housework constitutes another source of decision making
power, for both husbands and wives. Instead of signaling less overall power in marriage, doing
housework can lead to expert knowledge that boosts decision making power, thus making
housework a base of marital power (Raven et al. 1975; McDonald 1980).
Support for resource theory is minimal. Evidence buttressing this theory lies in only two
positive associations between income and power: among husbands who are primary breadwinners,
higher income is positively associated with economic decisions; among wives who are primary
breadwinners, income is positively associated with power in child-related decisions. Income is not
associated with power in either mundane decisions or child-related decision for breadwinner
husbands. Among husbands and wives who are secondary income earners, income is not associated
with any decision-making. Among the small number of breadwinner wives, income is not
associated with mundane or economic decision-making.
Although urban Chinese families have partly transitioned away from the traditional model of
patriarchal arrangements, we observe little association between spouses’ resources and their marital
decision-making power as predicted by resource-exchange theory. Despite decades of socialist
transformation since 1949 and market reforms since 1978, China has yet to reach the stage of
“transitional equalitarianism,” where couples enter into bargaining exchange based on their relative
resources (Rodman 1967) or marital exchanges that emphasize self-interest and personal freedom.
The Chinese population is yet to adopt gender egalitarian ideologies endorsing women’s equal rights
in the family, schools, labor market, and politics. The World Value Surveys of 1995, 2001 and 2007
show that only 40-60% of the respondents endorse women’s equal rights with men in the labor
market and in politics, despite almost universal support for women’s paid employment (Shu and Zhu
2008). The prevalence of an ideology of male dominance that emphasizes husbands’ authority and
supremacy both outside and within the family, particularly in breadwinning and economic primacy,
28
has delayed a transition towards resource-based bargaining within the Chinese family. The absence
of such egalitarian gender values is attributed to couples’ pursuit for marital cooperation and
collective interests based on culturally-prescribed gender roles (Zuo and Bian 2005). Gender values
and institutional gender equality−not relative resources brought into the exchange−remain the most
salient determinants of marital decision-making power in urban China.
29
AUTHORS’ ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2006 Annual Conference of the American
Sociological Association, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 2006. We thank Nan Lin and Susan
Short for their helpful comments. This research was supported by a Faculty Research Grant,
Academic Senate, UC Davis.
30
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ENDNOTES
i
To make the comparison consistent with our analysis, we recalculated the percentages in Table 2 by Xu and Lai (2002)
to only consider the power balance between husbands and wives by excluding the “Other” category.
36