Shared or separate? Money management and changing norms of gender equality among Norwegian couples

Abstract

Over the last generation the male breadwinner/housewife family has gradually become outdated as the dominant normative model for family households. The new ideal has become the adult worker family model, where gender equality defined as economic independence and sharing of household work and childcare between spouses/partners is the norm. The Nordic countries are the frontrunners of this development, and the Nordic welfare model is assumed to be well adapted to this new ideal. However, this ideal does not hold clear norms of how money should be managed and shared in family households, and Nordic families have to establish their own systems. Norwegian survey data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in 1994 and 2002 are used to analyse patterns of money management in family households. Our study indicates that, even if sharing of economic resources and responsibility remains the most common pattern, a greater number of families are choosing separate and independent systems of financial allocation. This increase in divided systems of money management may lead to new gender inequalities because of the lack of recognition of the value of domestic labour and family care as part of the common provision.

La familia formada por un marido proveedor y un ama de casa ha ido desapareciendo como la norma durante la última generación. El nuevo ideal es ahora familias dominadas por adultos trabajadores. La norma de igualdad de genero se define como independencia económica y la división del trabajo atendiendo a los niños y las tareas caseras entre la pareja. Los países Nórdicos van en cabeza en estos cambios y el modelo de bienestar Nórdico se ha adaptado a estos cambios y a estas nuevas normas. Pero este modelo no define claramente las normas que deberían regular gestiones económicas y por lo tanto las familias han desarrollado sus propias formas de gestión y manejo del dinero disponible. Este articulo usa datos de encuestas del Programa de Sondeo Social Internacional entre 1994 y 2002 para analizar las pautas de las gestiones monetarias en familias Noruegas. Nuestro estudio indica que aunque la norma es que las familias comparten los recursos económicos y las responsabilidades, cada vez una mayor parte de las familias escogen sistemas de asignación presupuestaria de forma separada e independiente. Este aumento en sistemas de gestión económica dividida en las familias puede llevar a un aumento en desigualdades de género debido al poco reconocimiento del valor del trabajo domestico y de cuidado familiar.

Keywords:

• income allocation systems
• family provision
• gender equality
• genuine pooling
• family models

Palabras claves:

• sistemas de distribución de ingresos
• provisión familiar
• igualdad de género
• modelos de familia

Acknowledgements

This research was carried out under the program ‘The Work–Life Balance’ at the International Research Institute of Stavanger (IRIS), with funding from the Research Council of Norway (NRF). The work was also part of the Family and Welfare Research program at the University of Bergen (UiB) and the University of Stavanger (UiS), and had some financial support from the Norwegian Ministry of Children and Gender Equality. We thank Liv Syltevik, Christine Oppong, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions at different stages in the process.

Notes

1. From 2007 the housewife/male breadwinner family model has been substituted by the adult family worker model in German family policy for economic support to parents after the birth of a child. Instead of two years’ flat-rate cash allowance for all, mothers now get an income-related allowance for one year and the fathers are given two months’ paid leave. The motivation for this reform is to increase the fertility rate, and Nordic family policy has been used as the model (see Ostner, 2006).

2. In 2002 respondents were somewhat older and scored higher on educational level while the gender distribution and measure of income rank were roughly the same (no significant difference).

3. In line with the suggestion of one of the reviewers, we have also done regression analyses with the number of children in the household included. The effect of children in the household is insignificant and the remaining effect patterns stay basically the same.