Post 3

        This post is going to be more directed towards how accurate the stereotype is. Below there is a video that shows clips of commercials that show gender stereotypes in the home. Sometimes I think people tend to over look stereotype in commercials and Television programs.  The commercials portrayed in the video clip show woman’s roles as the caretaker and shows men as the working and sitting around relaxing. My personally opinion is that this is true, but not to the extent in which the commercials make it seem, I feel that we have made progress.

        The article I looked at for this blog was about a study done in Taiwan by Hu and Kamo (2007). The study looked at married men and woman in Taiwan and their positions on household labor, and compared them to those of western civilization in the United States.  The article states that the rate of females in the workforce has increased from 32.6% in 1966 to 46.1% in 2001; this goes to show that there is some improvement with women working.  Hu and Kamo (2007) had five different hypotheses for their experiment, but only a few go along with the stereotype. The first was “Egalitarian gender ideology is positively related to men’s relative share of household work but negatively related to women’s,” and the second was “Individuals occupational status is negatively related to their share of household work,” Hu and Kamo (2007).

       The study was done through a survey called the Taiwan Social Change Survey, and it was conducted by the Institute of Ethnology of Academia Sinca of the Republic of China.   There were fifty two cities that were randomly chosen to participate in the research, and from the cities there were ninety eight villages selected. The study consisted of 1008 males and 916 females between the ages of twenty and seventy five. The participants were all married.  Hu and Kamo (2007) asked questions such as who does the shopping for groceries, laundry, home improvement tasks, taking care of the children, and more.

       Hu and Kamo (2007) found that Taiwanese women seemed to have more egalitarian gender ideology than men did. The results also showed that there was a large difference between men’s and women’s occupational status, income, and household work time. 42% of married women were full time housewives and they themselves estimated that they performed 72% of the household chores and their husbands did about 28% of the chores. Men, however, felt that they did about 35% of the household chores.  The results proved hypothesis two to be correct, it showed that woman’s participation in household work declined if they had a higher occupational job. Hu and Kamo’s (2007) study also showed that men who were more educated were found to do more housework.

      Overall the study states that Taiwan division of household labor perspectives can be related to those of the Western societies.  The only difference they found was that occupational status does not seem to matter as much in the United States; it is more of individuals’ views on the matter.  The discussion section states that woman who have higher occupational status may have more power because they can negotiate the division of household chores with their spouse.

        I did find this study interesting in that it goes to show that Western Societies are not the only ones with the stereotype of the stay at home moms and the working dads. One of the most interesting findings I thought was that occupation status plays a role in the division of labor in Taiwan. I hope to explore more of the United States views on the division of labor in my next post.



This is the Video that talked about in the first paragraph. Check it out!

References

Hu, C., & Kamo, Y. (2007). The division of household labor in Taiwan. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 38(1), 105-124. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Post 2

      As I stated in my first blog post I wanted to look at how stereotypes in the home affected children. I wanted to know if children followed what their parents do, and how they think about stereotypes. Sinno and Killen (2009) performed a study on children in different grades on their perceptions of stereotypes within the home. In their review of other literature they found that even though women’s role in the work force has increased in the United States, there is still division of labor within the home. Sinno, and Killen (2009) also found in their reviews that parents are the biggest contributor to children’s knowledge of gender roles. 

      The purpose of their study was to find out what children’s judgments were about career and caretaker roles, relating to their own life of parents and what role they played. Sinno and Killen (2009) hypothesized that the desire to work a full time job is acceptable for both parents, that children would view fathers who wanted to stay at home and be a caretaker as unacceptable, also they thought that children would use more gender stereotypes views when mothers and fathers desired stereotypical roles, and then a more personal choice view when parents chose a counter-stereotypical role. Sinno and Killen (2009) also believed that children would see making dinner as more of a stereotypical chore for woman to do, and it would be more acceptable for woman to take on masculine roles. In their research Sinno and Killen (2009) wanted to look at difference of age and their views on gender roles. 

       To conduct their study they took 67 second graders and 54 fifth graders. The students were interviewed for 30 minutes by a trained female research assistant. The students were given four different scenarios. Two of which focused on female stereotyped parental role, such as making dinner, and cleaning and the other two focused on male stereotype roles, such as working full time. After given the scenarios the students were asked questions, for example is it alright for both mom and dad to want full time jobs, and stay at home.

        Sinno and Killen (2009) results found that it was more acceptable for mothers to stay at home with the children and that the fathers should be outside of the home working a full time job. The results showed that the children fell into the stereotype that woman should be the stay at home moms and dads should be out making money for the family, and that it was not acceptable for that role to switch. Looking at age, however, the fifth graders found it more acceptable for a father to want to stay at home. The date also proved their hypothesis of traditional families who follow stereotypical roles, and untraditional families. Children who grew up in a traditional family were more apt to look at mothers being the caretakers and fathers being the worker as the way to go, when untraditional families were more for personal choice. 

        Overall this study shows that stereotypes in the home do strongly affect what children believe, even though as they seem to get older they are more flexible towards different ideas. I want to look more into different studies to see just how these stereotypes affect different people. I think it would be interesting to see how gender roles in the home are seen in different countries, and also do a little more research on gender roles and the affect on children and their beliefs.




Reference:
Sinno, S. M., & Killen, M. (2009). Moms at work and dads at home: Children's evaluations of parental roles. Applied Developmental Science, 13(1), 16-29. doi:10.1080/10888690802606735