Analyzing the Gender Division of Labor: The Cases of the United States and South Korea

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present women’s reality in the context of the gender division of labor in the family. For this purpose, I conduct practical as well as normative analyses of the gender division of labor. By examining women’s situations and their choices in the family and in the labor market in the United States and South Korea, the article shows why and how American and South Korean women similarly suffer from the major injustice caused by the gender division of labor. In both countries women and men tend to do (are expected to do, or are likely to choose to do) different kinds of work. Many women perform housework and childcare whether they work outside the home; many men perform market work and have less responsibility for housework and childcare than women do. This gender division of labor is one of the main causes of women’s oppression, especially in current society, where women’s work is less valued than men’s work. I examine the mechanisms by which the gender division of labor creates, maintains, and reproduces disadvantageous situations for women in different cultural and national circumstances.