The Gender Division of Labor

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The Gender Division of Labor: "Keeping House" and Occupational Segregation in the UnitedStatesAuthor(s): Philip N. CohenSource: Gender and Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Apr., 2004), pp. 239-252Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4149435

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THE GENDERDIVISION OF LABORKeepingHouse and OccupationalSegregation in the UnitedStates

PHILIPN. COHENUniversityof California,Irvine

Thisarticleexplorestheeffect of women'smovement nto the labor marketon thegender segregationofwork,using the CurrentPopulationSurvey rom 1972 to 1993. The author includesas workingthoserespondentswho were keepinghouse and codes keepinghouse as an occupation.The results showhigherestimatesof gendersegregation,andslightly steeperdeclines overtime,than wereseen inprevi-ous studies.Analysis of one-year longitudinalchangesreveals less movementoutoffemale-dominatedoccupationswhenkeepinghouse is includedas an occupation. Finally,a decompositionof thesegrega-tion trend howsthat the movementofwomenawayfromkeepinghouse contributed s much o the over-all declineingender egregationas did thedesegregationofpaid occupations.Theauthorconcludes thatthe movementof women'swork rom the householdto the labor markethas been a driving orce in thechangingnatureof gender inequality.Keywords: occupational segregation; housework; gender inequality

Gender segregation n the labor market s high, fueled by genderedand discrimi-natory practices and assumptions (Baunach 2002; Nelson and Bridges 1999;Reskin1993).But forreproducingan institutionalizedgenderdivisionof labor,anddevaluingwomen'swork,thelabormarket s still no matchfor the gender actoryof the married-couple family (Berk 1985). This article explores the effect ofwomen's labormoving into the paid marketon the overallgender segregationofwork and thereforeon the changingnatureof gender inequality.Thegenderdivision of labor s a centralfeatureof genderinequality,bothin itseconomic aspectsand in the social constructionof genderidentities(Huber1991;Lorber1994). As Chafetzwrote, undergirding ll systemsof genderstratificationis agender-baseddivision of labor,by whichwomen arechiefly responsiblefor dif-ferenttasks thanare men (1991, 77). However,theempirical iterature n thegen-der division of labor is uncomfortablydivided between those who examine theAUTHOR'SNOTE:Iwould liketo thankChristineBose, NancyFolbre,MattHuffman,andthe Gender& Society reviewersor their commentsand suggestionsand Liana Sayerfor her contributions.REPRINTREQUESTS:PhilipN. Cohen,DepartmentofSociology, UniversityofCalifornia,Irvine,CA92697-5100.GENDER & SOCIETY,Vol. 18 No. 2, April2004 239-252DOI: 10.1177/08912432032620370 2004 Sociologists for Womenin Society

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240 GENDER& SOCIETY April2004

division of household labor and those who study gender segregationin the paidlabor market. The overall gender division of labor has not been considered inempiricalstudies of the United States (Millerand Garrison1982).The problemwith separatestudies of houseworkversusoccupationalsegrega-tion is thattheycannotshow thedynamicrelationbetween thetwo. Inthisarticle,bring togetherthe division of household and labor marketwork in one, partialattempt o fashion aunified measureof thedivision of labor or oneperiodof recenthistory.Theresults underscore he importanceof the movementof women's laborfrom the household to the labormarket n reducing genderinequality.

HOUSEWORK AND OCCUPATIONSResearchconsistentlyhas shownthatwomen do the lion's shareof unpaid aborwithin households (Coltrane2000). Although this inequality has decreased inrecentdecades, the household division of labor remainshighly gendered(Bianchiet al. 2000). At the sametime,gendersegregation nthe labormarket emainshigh,althoughafter a halfcenturyof apparent tability, here weredeclines in the 1970sand 1980s (Blau, Simpson, and Anderson1998; Cotteret al. 1995; Reskin 1993;Wells 1999).Of course,changein thesetwo arenas s linked,but thatconnectionis rarely hesubjectof directexamination.Theentryof greaternumbersof womenintothe aborforce occurredas householdservices, products,andtechnologyreducedwomen'shouseworkobligations and increased the demandfor female labor in the market(Cohen 1998; Cohen and Bianchi 1999; Cotter,Hermsen,and Vanneman2001;Cowan 1983; Presser 1999; Strasser 1982; Uttal 2002). The movement of careworkfrom within the family to the marketrepresentsa fundamental hift (Folbreand Nelson 2000). We have notreached hepointatwhich we might eliminate hehome as a place of work andhousewives as a functionalgroupof the population(Durand1946, 222), but we have unquestionablymoved in thatdirection(Stacey1993).With women more likely to be employed, the segregationof paid work hasincreased n importanceas acomponentof genderinequality.Chang(2000, 1658)argued hat the ong-standingpresumptionhas been thatoccupationsarethe back-bone of the class stratificationystem,but aswomen enter ntothe formaleconomyin ever-increasingnumbers, he occupationalstructurebecomes the mainlocus ofgender stratificationas well. This echoes an earlierbody of researchon the shiftfrom home to market,which stressed the continuityof gendersegregation n thenew context of the labormarket:The sexualdivisionof labor eappearsn the labormarket,wherewomenworkatwomen'sjobs, often theveryjobs theyused to do only at home .... As thesejobs arelow-status nd ow-paying, atriarchalelations emainntact,houghheirmaterial


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Cohen / GENDER DIVISION OF LABOR 241

baseshifts omewhatrom hefamily o thewagedifferential,rom amily-basedoindustrially-basedatriarchy.Hartmann981,25)Thereclearlyis a connectionbetween thework women do athome andtheoccupa-tions thatare female dominated n the labormarket.However,it is misleading tocollapse the two entirelybecause therearevery few paid occupationsthat are asfemale dominatedas women's work n the home.

Manypeople who studythesegregationof paidoccupationsareconcerned heo-reticallywith the overallgenderdivision of labor.Forexample,in his internationalcomparison,Jacobs(1989) revieweddataon thegenderdivision of labor, ncludingpaid and unpaid work. But in the data analysis, he examined paid work only.Because women tend to move between occupationsthat are more or less femaledominatedduringthe course of theircareers,through revolvingdoors, he sug-gested that gender segregationis continually reproducedthrough processes ofsocial controlthat define male- andfemale-dominatedwork,rather hanwomen'staste or certain obs or theirhumancapitalassets. The questionhe examined-how gendersegregation s reproduced-is important or all kinds of work,but thelaborforce data he used restricthis analysisto paid employment.Similarly, n ValerieOppenheimer's 1970) landmark tudy,she acknowledgedthat censusstatisticsbest reflect . .. paid employment outside the home, ratherthan the trends in all kinds of productivework carriedout by women. But sheadded, This imitationshouldnot,however,be a serious drawback n the analysisof the labor force of an industrialsociety (p. 10). From the perspectiveof theselaborforce studies,then,a definingcharacteristic f industrial ociety-of moder-nity, in fact-is that the paidlabor marketreplaces the home as the central site ofgenderinequality.Thus,manyresearchers oncernedwith genderinequalityhavemoved to focusprimarilyonoccupational nequality,even as most feminists stressthecontinuity nthe division of laborbetweenhome andmarket CohenandHuffman2003; Cotteret al. 1997).But thetransition romunpaid aborathome topaidlabor nthemarketis itself a source of changein the genderdivision of labor.Directcomparisonsaredifficult to find, but consider the examples of cooking and cleaning. In 1995,womendid 74 percentof allunpaidcookingathome,but inthemarket,only45 per-cent of all cooks were women (this category excludes those working in privatehouseholds,atinyfractionof thetotal).Similarly,women did 80 percentof unpaidhousecleaningathome, butonly 35 percentof janitorsandcleaners werewomen.1Insofar as the division of laboris a cornerstoneof genderinequality, hen,womenleaving home and going to workmay itself reduce gender inequality.In fact, themarket's ability to pull women from the household (Cotter, Hermsen, andVanneman 001) hasbeen a leadingfactor nthepartialredivision of housework nthe pastfew decades. This may be seen in the many studies thatshow less genderinequality ncouples'houseworkwhenwomen areemployed(BatalovaandCohen2002; Bianchiet al. 2000; Coltrane2000).


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242 GENDER & SOCIETY / April 2004

Existing studies of trendsin occupationalsegregation implicitly treatwomenwho enter he labormarketas if theyare ustbeginningto work:The level of gendersegregation s assessed only in theirpaid work capacity.2 n this analysis, I treatwomenwho leavehome for the labormarketas if theywereexchangingonejob foranother.This is possible because the CurrentPopulationSurvey(CPS) until 1993identifiedrespondentswho were keepinghouse. Although this methodraisesdefiniteproblems,as discussedbelow, it also offers auniqueopportunity o see therole of women's increasing abor force participationn the overallgenderdivisionof labor.

KEEPING HOUSE: COUNTING HOUSEWORK AS WORKFeministsarguethat women's work is devaluedby the failureof mainstreameconomics to accountfor unpaidwork,bothinternationally Waring1999) andinthe United States.As FolbreandAbel (1989, 547) reported, n the nineteenthcen-

tury, thecensus institutionalizeda definitionof 'work' as 'marketwork'that iter-ally devaluedwomen's unpaidwork -and it still does. Women'sparticipationnthepaidlaborforce didnot reach50 percentuntil the late 1970s,evenamongBlackwomen, whose participationrate was historically higher than white women's(Goldin1990, 17).Thus,neithernationaleconomic accountsnor aborforce statis-tics take into account the workthat formuch of Americanhistorywas the focusofmost women.Similarly,contemporaryanalyses of occupational segregationdo not includethedisproportionatehareof unpaid abor womenperform.ReskinandHartmann(1986, 7) acknowledged hisproblem ntheirstudyof sex segregation,notingas anasidethat theoccupationof mostwomennotinthe laborforce,homemaker,s oneof the most segregatedoccupations. Thatselectivity is appropriateor studyingsome labor marketdynamics, but it precludes us from evaluating the overalldivision of labor.The U.S. Census Bureau ntroduced he term keepinghouse in 1870. In theinstructionsto assistant marshals for the 1870 census, under occupation, heBureauwrotethe following:The erm housekeeper illbe reservedorsuchpersons s receive istinctwagesorsalaryor heservice.Women eeping ouse or heir wn amilies rfor hemselves,without nyothergainfuloccupation,will be entered s keeping ouse. Growndaughtersssistinghemwillbereported ithout ccupation.3Thosewomencoded as keepinghouse werenot included n tabulationsof thelabor force. British census takers,on the otherhand,countedkeepinghouse as an

occupation rom1851to 1881,asdid Massachusetts rom 1875to 1905 (FolbreandAbel 1989). In 1910, the U.S. Census Bureau instructedenumerators o countwomen doing unpaid labor on family farms as farmlaborers, esulting in an


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upward spike in the historical trend for women's labor force participation.Theysubsequently produced estimates to eliminate this anomaly, and the offendinginstructionto enumeratorswas not repeated(Oppenheimer1970, 2-6). Durand(1946, 221) defended theexclusion of farmwives from the laborforce, as strictlyaccurate igureswouldgreatlyoverstate he relativedegreeof participation f farmwomen in the laborforce becausea large percentageof them do very littlegainfulwork, buthe providedno evidence to support his conclusion.Some researchersof national ncome in the nineteenthandearlytwentiethcen-turies attemptedto estimate the value of this work, before interest apparentlywaned.FolbreandWagman 1993, 279) concluded that whatvaried acrossstatesand over time was women's participationn marketwork,probablynot theirpro-ductiveworkin general. f that s thecase, we shouldrecognize thatthe exclusionof houseworkersfrom existing occupational segregationstudies is an artifact ofpatriarchal ssumptions n the conceptionand collection of labor force data.Withthe work of Waring(1988, 1999), analystsonce again started o factor women'sunpaidwork into nationaleconomic estimates,but this newfoundintereststill hasnot reachedoccupationalsegregationstudies.

METHODTheanalysiscomprisesthreesections.First,I recodelaborforcedata orrespon-dents n theCPSto include thoserespondentswho wererecordedaskeepinghouse,andIcodekeepinghouse as anoccupation.ThenIcalculategender segregation ev-els with and without thekeepinghouse occupationacross theperiodfrom 1972 to1993 (when the questionwas dropped).Second, using the one-year longitudinal

propertyof the CPS, I broadenJacobs's(1989) revolvingdoor -which reflectsthe movementof women into and out of female-dominatedwork-to includethehouseworkoccupation.This will enable us to see the gender compositionof occu-pationsthat women enter when they shift between keeping house andpaid work.Finally,I decompose the trendto show the relative contributions o desegregationof women entering paidwork versuspaidoccupations becoming less segregated.The dataare from the CPS AnnualDemographicFiles (March).The CPS is alarge,monthly,nationallyrepresentative urveyconductedby the CensusBureau omeasureattributesof the labor force. Duringthisperiod,the samplefor the Marchsurvey consisted of approximately 50,000 households per year. My sampleincludes noninstitutionalized ivilianadultsages 25 to 54, theagesmostcommonlyused in labor force studies (except in the longitudinal analysis, where I includewomenages 18 to 64 to increasethesamplesize). Althoughthesesamplesare arge,I pool severalyears of dataat each point to decrease fluctuations due to randomvariation.I use the person weights providedby the CPS.Until 1993, the CPS asked the majoractivity question of each householdmember: What was X doing most of last week? The categories offered wereworking, looking for work, keepinghouse, going to school, unable to


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work, and retired. code all those who answered keepinghouse as workingand include keepinghouse in the new analysis of occupationalsegregation.Slightlymore than 10percentof people listed askeepinghouse in theCPSwerealso listed as in the laborforce on the CPS employmentstatusvariable.Presum-ably,thesepeoplewerekeepinghouse as theirmajoractivitybut alsogaveinforma-tion that led themto be coded as in the labor force. I include all those who chose

keepinghouse nthiscategory,regardlessof theiremploymentstatus,as thisrep-resents their self-describedmajoractivity.Tomeasurethe division of labor,I estimateoccupationalsegregationusing theindex of dissimilarity(Blau, Simpson,andAnderson 1998). The numberreflectsthe percentageof either menor women who wouldhave to change occupations oachieve anequaldistribution f menand women acrossoccupations.Jacobs 1989)and Baunach(2002) madea persuasivecase forusing more elaboratemeasuresofsegregation indexesof concentration ndisolation).However,my objective s lessto arriveat themostprecisemeasureof segregation han t is to show the differenceonce houseworkersareincluded,which is unlikelyto be affectedby the choice ofindex. Because the CPS has smallersamplesthanthe decennialcensuses usedbyothers,and small occupations are morelikely to be segregated by chance (Cotteret al. 1997;Wells 1999), I limitmy analysisto the largest100 paidoccupationsateach timepoint.However,the results were nearly denticalwhen I used 200 occu-pationsinstead.To analyze how the movementof women from houseworkinto paid occupa-tions, and vice versa,affects the genderdivision of labor,I takeadvantageof theone-year longitudinalpropertyof the CPS. Each household in the CPS is inter-viewed for fourconsecutivemonths,thenmisses eight months,andfinallyis inter-viewed againfor four moremonths(U.S. Census Bureau2000). As aresult,house-holds interviewed in March are supposed to be interviewed in the followingMarch'ssurvey.The matchingacross the two years is not perfect,however.Forexample, household composition may change, and people may move or diebetween Marchsurveys;thereare also nonresponseandrecordingerrors.Further-more, it is impossible to know for surethatmatches areperfect(for example,if aperson s divorcedand then marriesanother pouseof the sameage intheinterven-ing year).However,usingfairlyrestrictivecriteria, t is possible to achieve mostoftheeligible matcheswithahigh degreeof confidence(MadrianandLefgren1999).Iconductthelongitudinalanalysisusing the 1991to 1993MarchCPS,combin-ing threeyears of transitions o increasesamplesize. Individualsare matchedbyhouseholdnumberand individual ine numberand ncluded f theyarethesame sexandrace/ethnicityand have aged between


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women keepinghouse, while letting the distributionof men and women over thelargest100 paidoccupationschange through heperiod.Second, I repeatthe exer-cise holdingconstant he distribution f men and womenin the 100largestoccupa-tions andletting only the proportionkeeping house change over time.Severalcaveatsareinorder.Themostobviousproblem s thestrictassumptionsI impose. Foreveryoneto be in one andonly one occupation,no one may be bothkeepinghouse and in apaidoccupation.Thus,this method cannotcapture hedivi-sion of laborwithinhouseholdsbeyonda simpleindicatorof whethera respondentis keepinghouse. Of course, the fact that women shoulder most of the houseworkeven whentheydopaidwork s itself a sourceof gender nequality HochschildandMachung1989). Women'shigherrates of paid employmenthave in fact contrib-uted to an increase n theirshareof all work.Forexample,Sayer(2001) showed thatin paidandunpaidworkcombined,Americanwomen worked 11 minutesless perday thanmen did in 1975, but they worked26 minutes more in 1998. However,women's houseworkhoursstill droppedby 42 percentfrom 1965 to 1995, as totaltime spenton houseworkdeclined 21 percent.Furthermore,men who work pre-dominantlyfor pay also contribute some housework, and their housework timedoubledfrom 1965 to 1995 (Bianchiet al. 2000, 208).Some occupational segregation studies (e.g., Blau, Simpson, and Anderson1998) make theoppositemistake, ncludingthepaid occupationsof evenpart-timeworkers,most of whom spendmore time on housework hanonpaidwork.Accord-ing to datafrom the NationalSurvey of Families and Households, women in thelabor force part-time(less than 20 hours per week) in the early 1990s averagedmore than 35 hours per week of unpaidhousehold work (LianaSayer,personalcommunication). nfact,a significantportion 6 percent n 1992-1993) of currentlyemployedworkers isted keepinghouse as theirmajoractivity.Thus,theassump-tioninexisting occupationalsegregation tudiesthat abormarketoccupationover-rides houseworkerstatusis questionableas well.Theproblemof overlapbetweenkeepinghouse andpaid occupations s not dif-ferent in principlefrom theproblemof people workingin multiplepaidjobs, whohave been coded into one occupationin previous segregationstudies. I concludethatidentifyingsome houseworkers s better thanexcluding all of them from theanalysis.While imperfect,this method may still serve as a correctiveto existingoccupationalsegregationstudies-moving us in thedirection of an estimateof theoverallgenderdivision of labor.An additionalproblemcould result from social desirability n the identificationwithkeepinghouse. Folbre and Abel (1989, 548), in a review of databefore 1940,noted that some women may have self-identified as housewives because tradi-tionalpatriarchal orms attached ome stigmatomarriedwomenwho relinquishedtheirprimary dentityas housewife. However,they did not presentevidence con-firming hissuspicionof overreported ousewife status,so it is impossibletoevalu-ate.Furthermore,t is reasonable o expectthatthestigmaof notbeing ahousewifediminished n subsequentdecades as women's employmentbecame morenorma-tive. Onewoman nterviewed n 2002 for a separate tudyon women'swork/family


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histories saidof her decision to enter thelaborforce yearsearlier, Idid feel that twas veryimportant hatyou stayhomewithyourkids. But there s the outsidepres-sure to be productive.You'renot productive f you are a housewife.

RESULTSTable 1 shows the percentageof workingwomen and men who were keepinghouse from 1972 to 1993, at approximately 10-year intervals. Because the CPSchanged occupation coding schemes in 1983, andI includepairsof yearsthatusethe sameschemes, I had to use 1981-1982 insteadof 1982-1983. Forcomparison,Folbre and Nelson (2000, 125-26),under heassumption hat85 percentof womenage 16orolder withoutpaidjobs are full-timehomemakers,arrivedatanestimatefor 1990 that is within5 percentagepointsof theCPSfigure(33 percentversus 38percent)when I use the same age range(16 andolder).Table2 shows the 15 occupationswith the largestnumberof women in 1992-1993, rankedby percentage emale in theoccupation.Clearly,keepinghousewasthe largestoccupationfor women as late as theearly 1990s, and it was also amongthe mostsegregated,at96.5 percent emale. Note thatevenwhenwomen in thepaidlabor market work in reproductiveabor occupations (Glenn 1992)-such aswaitresses,nurses'aides, cooks, or teachersof young children-their occupationsare less segregatedthanhousehold labor.The basic results arepresented n Table3, which shows theindex of dissimilar-ity,orgender segregation,withand without ncludingkeepinghouseas anoccupa-tion.6First,segregation s morepronouncedwhen keepinghouseis includedas anoccupation, droppingonly to 62.6 by the end of the period.Second, becausetheproportionof womenkeepinghouse declinesduringtheperiod, ts inclusionin thecalculationmakes ess difference n lateryears.Finally, he declineinsegregationssomewhatsteeper-19.7 pointsversus 16.1-when keeping house is included.

RevolvingDoorsWherearetheformerhouseworkers oingwhentheyenterpaidwork?Women'smobilityinto andout of female-dominated ccupations s animportantmeasureofbarriersupholding segregationover time. Includinghouseworkers n an occupa-tionalanalysisbroadens hepictureof women's mobilitywithregard o thesegre-gationof work. Researchers rom the 1940s (Kyrk1947) to thepresent(BudigandEngland2001) have analyzedthe effect of women's spells outside the paid laborforce, but the data used for such studiescounthouseworkingwomen as out of the

labor force. We can address hisquestion by using the longitudinalpropertyof theCPS to track women from one yearto the next.For all women workers,andthose who changedoccupationsfrom one yeartothe next, I show the distributionacross male-dominated,balanced,and female-dominatedoccupationsin Table4.7 Foroccupation changers,the table shows the


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TABLE1: Percentage of Women and MenKeeping House, 1972 to 1993Year Women Men1972-1973 52.8 0.21981-1982 38.9 0.41992-1993 26.2 1.0NOTE:Civilian dultsages 25 to 54 (weighted),eitheremployedor keepinghouse.

TABLE : Occupations with 1 Percent or More of AllWomen, 1992/1993Percentage PercentageofAll

Occupation Female WorkingWomenSecretaries 99.0 5.2Receptionists 97.9 1.0Keeping house 96.5 26.2Registerednurses 94.5 2.6Bookkeepers,accounting,and auditing lerks 91.7 2.3Nursingaides, orderlies,and attendants 91.1 2.0Teachers,elementaryschool 86.7 2.4Cashiers 79.8 1.7Waitersand waitresses 79.4 1.1Administrativeupportoccupations,n.e.c. 74.8 1.5Teachers,secondaryschool 57.2 1.1Cooks (not privatehousehold) 51.1 1.1Accountantsand auditors 50.6 1.1Supervisorsand proprietors,ales occupations 34.4 2.1Managersandadministrators, .e.c. 31.2 3.0NOTE:Women,ages 25 to 54 weighted.n.e.c. = notelsewhere classified.

TABLE : Occupational Gender Segregation, with and without Keeping HouseWithout WithKeepingYear KeepingHouse House Difference

1972-1973 70.2 82.3 12.11981-1982 63.1 73.5 10.41992-1993 54.1 62.6 8.5Totalchange -16.1 -19.7 -3.6NOTE:Civilians ges 25 to 54 (weighted), alculated rom he 100 largestpaidoccupations.

compositionof theirdestinationoccupations.As expected,the female workforce smore skewed toward female-dominated occupations when houseworkers areincluded. Whether houseworkers are included or not, the table also shows thatwomen who change occupationsend up in less segregatedoccupations than the


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TABLE : Percentage Female in CurrentOccupation, 1991 to 1993Male Female

Dominated, Dominated,


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TABLE : Decomposition of Occupational Segregation Trends1972-1973 1981-1982 1992-1993

Observed abormarket rend 70.2 63.1 54.1Observedtrend ncludingkeepinghouse 82.3 73.5 62.6Change inpaidworkonly NA 78.3 74.5Changeinkeepinghouse only NA 78.0 74.7NOTE:NA= notapplicable.currentoccupation s .21. Once keepinghouse is included,the correlationrises to.28.Thus,theinclusion of womenasunpaidhouseworkersn thelaborforce revealsgreaterbarriers o women's mobility.8TwoPathsto Desegregation

If entering hepaidlabor marketandmoving outof female-dominatedoccupa-tions bothcontribute o declines in the overallgenderdivisionof labor,what aretherelative contributionsof these two paths to desegregation?The results of thedecompositionanalysisare shown in Table 5.Table5 shows thatfor each 10-year nterval,women leaving thekeepinghouseoccupationand the desegregationof paid occupationscontributedequally to theoverallerosion of thegenderdivision of labor.Thus,although he level of segrega-tion remainshigh at the end of the period,by these measures,women achievedasmuchdesegregationof work fromentering hepaidlaborforce as theydid from thechangingcompositionof paid occupations.This contributionhasnot beencapturedin previousstudiesof occupationalsegregation.

CONCLUSIONI have arguedthatwe need to takehousework into account when trackingtheoverallgenderdivision of labor-including bothpaidandunpaidwork.Thisanaly-sis is a firstattempt o do that.The results show thatthe inclusion of houseworkersas anoccupationaffects measuresof gender segregation n two ways. First,becausethe houseworkeroccupation s largeandpredominantly emale, estimatesof gen-der segregation are higher when these women are included. Second, becausewomenentering he formal aborforce are on averageenteringoccupationsthatareless segregated hanhousework,the rate of decline in gender segregation s some-what steeperover the period once houseworkersare included. However, the out-come is not a simpleone,because formerhouseworkersmove into moresegregatedoccupationsthanwomen who are alreadyin the labor market and because somewomen reenter he houseworkeroccupationwhen they leave the paid labor force.Finally, a decomposition of the trends shows that, over time, women leaving


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housework as an occupationcontributedas much to the overalldecline in gendersegregationas did the desegregationof paid occupations.Althoughwe havemanystudies of trends n the gendersegregationof occupa-tions (e.g., Blau, Simpson, and Anderson 1998; Cotteret al. 1995; Reskin 1993;Wells 1999),we do nothaveempiricalassessmentsof the overallgenderdivisionoflabor n theUnitedStatesor other ndustrial ocieties.This is disappointing onsid-ering the importanceof the division of labor to theories of gender inequality(Chafetz1991).Not only doexisting occupational egregation tudiesof paidworkunderstate he overallgenderdivision of labor;they also cannotcapturehow theshiftinglocationof women's work contributes o the trend n the division of labor.If, as Reskin argued,segregation s afundamentalprocess in social inequality(1993, 241), then some of itsdecline shouldbe credited o themovementof womeninto paidwork.

NOTES1. Housework iguresare calculated rom 1995,as reportedby Bianchiet al. (2000, Table1);labormarket iguresaremy calculationsfromthe 1995 MarchCurrentPopulationSurwy.2. A similarsituationexists instudiesof occupationalprestige,whichgenerallyexclude housework.In one exception,Bose and Rossi (1983) showedthatwhen housewife was includedamong 110occu-

pations in a 1972 survey,housewives'prestigescores (51) were lower thansome female-dominatedoccupationsnot associated withhousework,suchas practicalnurse(56.4) andprivatesecretary 60.9),but muchhigherthan some female-dominated ccupationsdoingsimilarwork,suchas waitress(24.4),shortordercook (21.5), andbabysitter 18.3).3. The instructions o enumerators or each censushave beencompiledbytheIntegratedPublicUseMicrodataSeries (http://www.ipums.org).4. Jacobs(1989) used asimplermethod,which relies on aretrospectivequestionaboutoccupationnthe previousyear,which he comparedwith respondents'occupationin the previousweek. However,becausethe keepinghouse occupation s derived romthe current major ctivity question, hereareno retrospectivedataon this occupation n the cross-sectional data.5. The CurrentPopulationSurveychangedtheoccupationcoding schemein 1992.Irecode a smallnumberof occupationsto allowoccupationmatchingacross the years 1991 to 1993.6. Forcomparison,usingdetailedoccupations n thedecennialcensus,Blau,Simpson,andAnderson(1998) foundsegregation ndexesof 67.7 in 1970,59.3 in 1980,and 53.0 in 1990;Baunach 2002)foundindexesof 60.8 in 1980 and50.0 in 1990.

7. Fora discussionof these cut-points n occupationpercentagefemale, see Jacobs(1989).8. The correlation acobs(1989) foundusing 1981 CurrentPopulationSurveydata s only . 11.Butinaddition to the time perioddifference,his method is not comparable see note4).

REFERENCESBatalova,JeanneA., andPhilipN. Cohen. 2002. Premarital ohabitationand housework:Couplesincross-nationalperspective.Journalof Marriageand the Family64 (3): 743-55.Baunach,Dawn M. 2002. Trends n occupationalsex segregationandinequality,1950 to 1990. SocialScience Research 31 (1): 77-98.


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PhilipN. Cohen s an assistantprofessor of sociology at the Universityof California,Irvine.Hisresearch nvolves the relationshipbetween amily structureand inequalitywithin and betweenfamilies. He also studies micro-macro inkages n social inequality,ncluding heeffectsof labormarketracial/ethniccompositionand inequalitywithin and between obs.

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