Abstract Through thinking about and empirically analyzing lesbigay domestic arrangements in Sweden, this paper aims at broadening the understanding of gender and further developing the “doing gender” perspective as applied to housework division. It begins with a review of empirical findings of and the application of the “doing gender” approach to housework division, identifying problems associated with a focus on heterosexual units in a context where gender norms are seemingly homogeneous and conventional. To make full use of the perspective, it is necessary to allow for contradictions in and resistance against normative expectations of gender. Empirically, this translates to exploring domestic arrangements in a variety of settings with different normative expectations of gender. This paper takes a small step in this direction through undertaking an empirical study of the division of housework in lesbigay households in Sweden and finds a strong pattern of egalitarianism that consists less in a 50% split between the couple in all household tasks but in the fluidity, complexity, and deliberateness in which housework is shared, especially among lesbian couples. The analysis further underscores the importance of gender in lesbigay households.

“Doing Gender”: A Critical Review and an Exploration of Lesbigay Domestic Arrangements

Qualitative Research Methods: A Health Focus

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307/3343529.pdf

Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work

By situating men within the country and time period in which they live, social scientists are better able to understand men's housework and child care behaviors. The author proposes that national c...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30039013.pdf

Care in Context: Men's Unpaid Work in 20 Countries, 1965–2003

This wide-ranging and accessible contribution to the study of risk, ecology and environment helps us to understand the politics of ecology and the place of social theory in making sense of environmental issues. The book provides insights into the complex dynamics of change in `risk societies'.

Environmental Sociology: Theory and Practice@@@Environmental Sociology: A Social Constructionist Perspective@@@Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology

Injury and death rates mark motorcycling as a hazardous activity. However, this article argues that such indicators of risk have little resonance for those who ride motorcycles. Central to motorcyclists’ understandings of their pursuit is the celebration of technique and a belief in the ability to control their riding experiences. The importance of the lived experience of riding encourages motorcyclists to marginalize expert systems of knowledge in favour of their own practical experience. Through these processes, the potential of injury and death are downplayed.

Motorcyclists' Interpretations of Risk and Hazard

/pdf/pathways-from-out-of-home-care-9e3jtekv1a.pdf

Pathways from out-of-home care

The authors explore the sociospatial relationship that exists between where households reside and consumption spaces: places specially built or redeveloped for people who visit to buy and consume within these locations the fun goods and services on sale. Consumption spaces are categorized here according to the opportunities they provide for stimulating the senses, and focusing empirically on the Australian city of Brisbane, they were found to be disproportionately concentrated in a community ringing the central business district. This community contained about one-quarter of the metropolitan area’s 1.5 million residents, and it was characterized by nontraditional households, high socioeconomic status, and a significant ethnic presence.

Cities and consumption spaces

Share households composed solely of men are a site in which masculine identities in the home are disembedded from marital ideologies. This allows us to unravel the connections between housework, power and what it means to be a man. The study finds that the domestic labour practices of men who reside with their peers reflect those traditionally associated with husband-hood, although the bases for these interactions, and the associated play of power, differ in the absence of a wife. It is evident that gender continues to be an important organizing principle of domestic labour outside marital homes.

'I'm not his wife'. Doing gender and doing housework in the absence of women

This article explores the question ‘Why do fathers resist paying child support?’ through interviews with 26 separated or divorced non-residential fathers in Australia. Drawing on Zelizer’s typology we argue that the men in this study attempt to define child support as a gift — a payment that emphasizes the power and beneficence of the payer and the obligation of the receiver — but struggle to do so in legal and bureaucratic structures that position its receipt as an entitlement. The tension between child support as a gift and child support as entitlement is informed by gendered power over money, a key element of fathering in traditional and non-traditional family structures.The payment and non-payment of child support is used to reinforce the economic dimensions of fathering identities and define family relationships in remarkably traditional ways.

Kristin Natalier

Papers

Motorcyclists' Interpretations of Risk and Hazard

Pathways from out-of-home care

Cities and consumption spaces

'I'm not his wife'. Doing gender and doing housework in the absence of women

'It's Not Just About the Money': Non-resident Fathers' Perspectives on Paying Child Support