GENDER IDEOLOGY, MARITAL DISRUPTION, AND THE EMPLOYMENT OF MARRIED-WOMEN

The present research studies the process through which gender ideology moderates the effects of wives' employment on marital stability. A model proposed here suggests that gender ideology functions as a lens through which inequalities in the division of household labor are viewed. Nontraditional women are hypothesized to view these inequalities as unjust because they view marriage as an egalitarian partnership, while traditional women do not perceive these inequalities as inherently unfair. Marital stability is presumed to be linked to perceptions of the fairness of the marital relationship. The model is confirmed by results from piecewise-constant exponential models of marital disruption for the 3,284 women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth who experienced a first marriage between 1979 and 1990. Number of hours of paid employment per week is negatively related to marital stability for women holding nontraditional gender ideologies, but not for women with traditional views.