Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gender Inequality and Couples? Income Organizational Strategies

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This study will analyze class variation in the ways couples share their financial resources. The project will address theoretical debates about whether retaining autonomous control over earnings facilitates women?s ability to convert money into power within their relationships. Investigating how couples allocate money will help resolve the theoretical puzzle of why women's increased labor force participation has not been a sufficient condition to reducing gender inequality in the home. This research will add conceptual clarity to the ways gender and economic circumstances combine to structure family relations. Securing the welfare of all individuals within households is a matter of public concern and this study is expected to expand knowledge about women's economic position in society. How families share money influences relationship quality and the distribution of resources when relationships end, an event that often disproportionately disadvantages women economically. The research will contribute to our understanding of the stability of adult intimate relationships, a topic important to policy makers. Economic changes in society altered the dynamic of financial resources brought into relationships and family structures are increasingly diverse. Modern couples confront tensions between ideals of mutual family interests and values of individualism, a departure from fitting themselves into culturally expected family arrangements of the past. Interpretations of why individuals increasingly withhold money from a common family pot are inconsistent and sometimes contradictory, and has generated competing claims about what the trend symbolizes: a rise in the instability of families, a shift towards individualist interests within marriages, or evidence of movement towards an ethos of gender equality. Class disparities in the risk of financial hardship may also influence the goals and resources available to families. This project uses semi-structured interviews with couples to understand how couples' allocation of money mitigates or exacerbates gender equality within families and whether the strategies used to achieve couples' goals are conditional on class position. The interviews will focus on life transitions associated with changes in financial allocations approaches and addresses the paradoxes between the stated reasoning behind couples? allocation systems and the actual consequences of their organizational approaches.