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Women’s Happiness in Contemporary China: The Relevance of Unpaid Work

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International Handbook on Gender and Demographic Processes

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Population ((IHOP,volume 8))

Abstract

Happiness is widely recognized to be a marker of overall health and well-being across populations. Most analyses of the correlates of happiness highlight the importance of economic factors such as paid work, paying little attention to unpaid domestic work, an activity disproportionately done by women. Using time use data collected from nearly 3500 married women across 12 provinces in China, we examine whether women’s time spent in housework is related to their self-reported happiness. In rural China, we find that women who do more housework hours report lower happiness. Yet, women who do a higher share of the couple’s housework, and who do a greater share of housework than other women in the community, report greater happiness. These relationships are not apparent in urban China. We draw two conclusions. First, absolute and relative time spent in unpaid work is associated with women’s well-being, although whether and how depends on local context. Second, in analyses of time use, notions of equity will miss the mark without a situated understanding of the motivations, meanings, and rewards attached to work and family time. To advance research on gender, family, and well-being, we must find ways to incorporate more fully the structural and ideological aspects of gender systems, both of which have important implications for happiness.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We use the terms of “subjective well-being”, “life satisfaction” and “happiness” interchangeably, as is usual in this literature, though we acknowledge that the meanings differ (Brockmann et al. 2009; Qian and Qian 2015).

  2. 2.

    We also conducted analyses using ordinal forms of the dependent variable (collapsed into three categories or retained original five) and found similar results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Ieva Zumbyte & Susan E. Short

  2. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Nancy Luke

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  1. Ieva Zumbyte
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  2. Susan E. Short
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  3. Nancy Luke
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Correspondence to Susan E. Short .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, USA

    Nancy E. Riley

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

    Jan Brunson

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Zumbyte, I., Short, S.E., Luke, N. (2018). Women’s Happiness in Contemporary China: The Relevance of Unpaid Work. In: Riley, N., Brunson, J. (eds) International Handbook on Gender and Demographic Processes. International Handbooks of Population, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1290-1_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1290-1_16

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