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Based upon the experiences of families with stay-at-home dads in China, this book offers an insightful analysis of gender inequality in families. It examines how couples re-negotiate household labor in ways that perpetuate male dominance within the family.

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In Chinese societies where both "money" and "gender" confer power, can a woman´s economic success relative to her husband´s bring about a more equal division of household labor? Lui´s qualitative study of "status-reversed" Hong Kong families, wherein wives earn more than their husbands, examines how couples re-negotiate household labor in ways that perpetuate male dominance within the family even when the traditional gender expectation that "men rule outside, women rule inside" ( nanzhuwai, nuzhunei ) is challenged. Going beyond the dyadic negotiation of household labor, this important study also explores the role of "third parties," namely the couples´ children and parents, who actively encourage couples to conform to traditional gender norms, thereby reproducing an unequal division of household labor. Based upon the experiences of families with stay-at-home dads, Lui further identifies a new mechanism of deconstructing gender, by which couples concertedly construct new norms of "work" and "gender" that they maintain through daily interactions to fit their atypical relative earnings. As a result, there are sparks of hope that both men and women can be liberated from a set of traditional social norms. Re-negotiating Gender: Household Division of Labor When She Earns More than He Does is essential reading in the fields of family and gender studies, sociology, psychology, and East Asian studies.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: literature Review

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

Chapter 4: Conceptualizing Housework and Who Does What?

Chapter 5: The Changing Gender Ideology of Contemporary Hong Kong

Chapter 6: Housework Battles and Gender Strategies

Chapter 7: Children, In-laws and "Doing Gender" of Couples

Chapter 8: Undoing or Redoing Gender

Chapter 9: Conclusion

References

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