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.