Couples at Work

This book offers a unique look into how couples manage paid employment, housework, and childcare. The author explores how employment structures, policies, and practices intersect with individual attitudes to either reinforce or challenge gender inequalities in the domestic sphere through the 'doing' and 'undoing' of gender. The book introduces a new typology of fathering as a key mechanism through which policies affect domestic divisions of labour, demonstrating how this typology shapes the tasks men undertake and the impact of this on women's ability to act on their 'preferences' about how to combine paid work and home By examining couples' negotiations of housework and childcare, the book highlights the disparity between men's and women's reports on household duties, revealing distinct gendered differences in how these tasks are conceptualized and measured.