The ways in which partners manage their money provide important clues to gender inequality in and the nature of couple relationships. Analyzing data from nationally representative surveys, I examine changes across British cohorts born between the 1920s and 1990s in their household financial management, and how the changes vary across individuals and couples occupying differential income positions. The results show divergent, nuanced cohort trends toward gender equality in couples’ money management. Across successive cohorts of low-earning women, there has been a (...) subtle relaxation in the form of male control, reflected in a decrease in the proportion of men adopting “back-seat” management by retaining the majority of the couple’s money while delegating the chore of managing daily expenses to their partners. By contrast, the empowerment of high-earning women is reflected primarily in an individualization of financial management, evident in a cohort decrease in joint financial management and an increase in independent management. The trend of individualization is particularly prominent among couples in which both partners have equally high earnings. The findings provide new insights into and important extensions of the theorization of gender relations in and the individualization of couple relationships. (shrink)

Russia’s gender revolution notoriously produced women’s economic empowerment without domestic equality. Although the Soviet state vastly expanded women’s employment, this had little impact on a starkly unequal gender division of domestic labor. Such “stalling” is common, but in Russia its extent and persistence presents a puzzle, requiring us to investigate linkages between macro-level factors and micro-level interactions regarding the gender division of domestic labor. We do this by focusing on gender ideology, an important variable explaining the gender division of domestic (...) labor that bridges the macro level of the gender order and the micro-interactional level. We use longitudinal qualitative data to examine continuity and change in young Russian women’s gender ideologies between 1999 and 2010. Based on an analysis of 115 in-depth interviews from 23 respondents, we identify traditional and egalitarian trajectories and the processes underlying them, showing how the male breadwinner schema and an ideology of women’s independence support traditionalism, while non-traditional breadwinning and interactional support from men facilitate egalitarianism. Our analysis enables us to explain the Soviet gender paradox and distinguish sources of change in the post-Soviet era. Our theoretical contribution is to situate gender ideology in a multilevel framework, the efficacy of which we demonstrate in our empirical analysis. (shrink)