Non Domestic Women’s Work and Gender Relations: a New Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to determine the influence of non domestic women’s work on various aspects of gender relations within families, taking into account women’s sociodemographic characteristics and their social origin. The aspects of the gender relations analyzed include men’s participation in housework and child raising, the presence of women in key decisions, their freedom of movement and the presence or absence of domestic violence. The source of information used is the Survey on Family Dynamics (Dinaf) carried out in Mexico City and Monterrey in the late 1990s. The main result of the logistic regression models applied is that wives’ working experience after they marry or begin living with their partners is the only variable that significantly helps to explain the presence of more egalitarian relationships in all the aspects considered.