The Influence of Women’s Money on Cooking, Cleaning, and Laundry

Liana C. Sayer, Ohio State University
Sanjiv Gupta, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Which is more important for women's core housework — their relative earnings, or their own, individual earnings. Recent research suggests own earnings may have more influence, but assumes the relationship between earnings and housework is the same for all types of housework. Using a sample of partnered, employed women from the 2003-2008 American Time Use Survey (ATUS), we disaggregate routine housework into the core activities of cooking, cleaning, and laundry to determine if the relationship between women's absolute and relative earnings and housework varies with type of housework. We expect earnings will have different associations with different types of housework because of three reasons: differences in their gendered meanings; differences in their temporal dimensions; and differences in their outsourcing markets. Preliminary results indicate earnings affect only cooking and doing dishes but have no association with other cleaning tasks.