Married Women's Family Status in Hong Kong
Women's educational level and labor participation rate have obvious increased in the past decades. With the traditional patriarchal family system in Chinese societies, have these social changes enhance women's status? To answer the question, a random sampled survey with the involvement of 232 married women and 139 married men was held in Hong Kong. Two follow up focus groups involved 6 pairs of couples from professional background and working class background were also conducted to facilitate a more indepth understanding on the quantitative data collected from the survey.
Working status, education of women and attitude on gender role were identified to be significantly associated with their subjective family status, and housework and childcare burden of the female respondents. Full-time employment, a higher education level and a nontraditional gender attitude associated with a higher subjective family status of the women. They were also significantly associated with a lesser burden on childcare and housework due to the higher participation rate of other family members in sharing the burden.
Both quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that a nontraditional gender role identity is a significant intervening factor of the relationship of women's working status and their decision making power. Decision making on family or child related issues was perceived more as responsibility than power for couple with nontraditional gender role attitude. Availability of time of the women was an important consideration in who would take up the repsonsibility of decision making. In nontraditional families, husbands tended to have more involvement in family or child related decision when their wives had to work full-timely. In family with full-time housewives, women were more likely to be the major decision making. However, in traditional family, women form both professional background and working class background expected their husband to make the final decision no matter these women were working or not working.