Social Justice Research, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1998

From Unfulfilled Wants to the Experience of Injustice: Women's Sense of Injustice Regarding the Lopsided Division of Household Labor Heribert H. Freudenthaler12 and Gerold Mikula1

The present research deals with factors that contribute to women's sense of injustice regarding the lopsided division of household labor. The proposed model of perceived injustice combines elements of the distributive justice framework of Major (1993) and Thompson (1991), the two-factor model of relative deprivation (Crosby, 1982), and the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice (Mikula, 1993). The results of a study with 132 employed women are consistent with the proposed model and show that unfulfilled wants, perceived violations of entitlement, and attributions of blame directly affect women's perceptions of being unjustly treated by their partners. Beyond that, women's judgments of injustice were indirectly affected by the outcomes of various comparison processes through their impact on perceived violations of entitlement. Finally, attributions of responsibility and perceived lack of justifications contributed indirectly to the experience of injustice through their impact on the amount of blame attributed to the partner. The findings provide evidence for the usefulness of the theories considered in this study to understand and predict women's sense of injustice, and their integration into a single model of perceived injustice. KEY WORDS: injustice; attribution; social comparison; household labor.

In response to women's increased participation in the paid labor force, the division of household labor between women and men has recently received 1Department of Psychology, University of Graz, Austria, 2A!1 correspondence should be addressed to Heribert

H. Freudenthaler, Department of Psycholo^, University of Graz, A-8010 Graz, Austria (e-mail: FREUDENT@BALU. KFUNIGRAZACAT). 289 088S-74«98/0900-0289$lS.OO/0 C 1998 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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increasing attention as a research topic of social sciences. Numerous studies have consistently shown that women continue to do much more housework than men even in dual-earner households (for reviews see Shelton and John, 1996; Spitze, 1988; Thompson and Walker, 1989). Although the majority of the employed women get little assistance from their partners with domestic labor they do not necessarily feel unjustly treated. The existing literature suggests that only a relatively small percentage of the employed women perceive the lopsided division of household labor as unjust (Berk, 1985; Pleck, 1985; Lennon and Rosenfield, 1994; Mikula, 1998; Mikula et al, 1997; Yogev, 1981). Research to date, however, was not very successful in predicting women's justice evaluations. For the most part, family scholars have assumed that equality (i.e., a strict 50:50 split of the household labor) is the most prominent rule women use to judge their domestic arrangements. Accordingly, many studies examined the associations between measures of the division of household labor and women's judgments of injustice. Their findings suggest that perceived inequality is indeed connected to perceived injustice but the association is rather weak (Blair and Johnson, 1992; Demo and Acock, 1993; Mederer, 1993; Mikula et al., 1997; Robinson and Spitze, 1992; Sanchez, 1994; Ward, 1993). Some authors argued that women may also take other aspects into account when assessing the fairness of the division of household labor, such as gender differences in the workload outside the home or the resources provided to the family. However, empirical studies found almost no effects of employment hours and earnings on women's justice evaluations (Benin and Agostinelli, 1988; Sanchez, 1994; Ward, 1993). Another group of studies tested the assumption that women with egalitarian gender ideologies will evaluate the unequal division less fair than women with more traditional ideologies. The results reveal that women's gender role orientations account for a relatively small amount of variation of the justice evaluations either as main effects or in the interaction with measures of household labor (Blair and Johnson, 1992; DeMaris and Longmore, 1996; Greenstein, 1996; Lennon and Rosenfield, 1994; Mikula et al, 1997). In general, there is little empirical evidence on what determines women's sense of fairness (for exceptions see Hawkins et al., 1995; DeMaris and Longmore, 1996; Lennon and Rosenfield, 1994). Various reasons for the lack of success of previous research in predicting women's justice evaluations have been discussed. John et al (1995) criticized that the existing studies failed to develop a coherent conceptual framework of judgments of injustice. DeMaris and Longmore (1996) emphasized that researchers typically did not include factors of competing theoretical perspectives of

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women's sense of fairness into their studies. Hawkins et al. (1995) noted that the majority of studies primarily focused on structural and ideological variables, whereas social-psychological cognitions have hardly been considered. Based upon social justice theory and research, one would expect that cognitions about the division of household labor (e.g., comparisons between the household labor of women's partners and various comparison standards, attributions of responsibility, and perceived justifications for the unbalanced distribution) should be particularly important for women's justice evaluations about family work. The present study provides a test of a model of women's sense of injustice that integrates elements of different theories of social justice and relative deprivation. We assume that women's sense of injustice about family work is not restricted to evaluations of the allocation itself. In line with Thompson (1991), we conceptualize the sense of injustice as a judgment of a person that (s)he feels unjustly treated. Based on this conceptualization, we address the question under which circumstances women feel unjustly treated by their partner.3 Social Psychological Models of Perceptions of Injustice Most theories of social justice consider the concept of entitlement as the central aspect of justice. Justice is often defined as a state where people get what they deserve or what they are entitled to. People should perceive a situation, event, or treatment as just, if they get what they are due by virtue of who they are or what they have done (Lerner, 1991). Judgments of entitlement are assumed to be experienced affectionally or motivationally as a moral imperative or right (Lerner, 1987). If people's sense of entitlement is violated, they should feel aggrieved and motivated to seek for change. Obviously, there is a strong agreement that the perception of violated entitlements is the most basic element of the experience of injustice. Some writers even equate violations of entitlements with injustice (Lerner, 1977, 1991; Major, 1987, 1993, 1994). However, other scholars point out that it is important to distinguish between these two concepts. They argue that the perception of violated entitlements is a necessary but insufficient 3

Although perceptions of being unjustly treated by the partner regarding the division of household labor imply that the division is perceived as unjust, women may perceive an unbalanced division of labor as unjust without necessarily feeling unjustly treated by their partner. For instance, if they regard the society, and not their partner, as responsible for the unbalanced division. Our focus on perceptions of being unjustly treated by the partner was additionally motivated by our interest in testing the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice (Mikula, 1993; see below), which particularly applies to perceptions of injustice which result from somebody's action or omission.

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condition for the experience of injustice. Further elements of the experience of injustice which have been discussed frequently are unfulfilled wants, attributions of responsibility to agents other than the victim, and perceived lack of justification (e.g., Crosby, 1982; Crosby and Gonzales-Intal, 1984; Mikula, 1993; Montada, 1991). The Distributive Justice Framework The most substantial conceptual analyses of women's perceptions of entitlement or fairness in the household domain have been provided by Major (1993) and Thompson (1991). These authors proposed a distributive justice framework to interpret women's justice evaluations of the division of household labor between sexes. The framework offers three classes of explanations to understand why the majority of women do not perceive their greater share of domestic labor as unjust. Briefly speaking, women do not feel unjustly treated, or their entitlements violated, because the distribution (i) matches the comparison standards they use to evaluate what they are entitled to; (ii) is perceived as justifiable; and/or (iii) matches what they want or value from their relationship. Women will feel unjustly treated only if they want their husbands to do more housework, if they compare their husbands' contributions to household labor to someone who performs more housework, and if they do not perceive the lopsided division as justified.

Comparison Standards In line with most justice theories, Major and Thompson assume that women's sense of entitlement primarily derives from comparison processes. But they question the core assumption of many previous studies that women primarily would engage in comparisons with their partners, and perceive a 50:50 split of housework as the adequate comparison standard. Referring to central assumptions of social comparison theories, the authors discuss several reasons why women may not make between-gender comparisons (i.e., comparisons between themselves and their partners) but rather compare themselves to other women, and their partners to other men (i.e., making within-gender comparisons), when evaluating the fairness of the division of family work. In addition, they propose that the more women make within-gender comparisons rather than between-gender comparisons the more likely they are to perceive themselves and their partners as performing the amount of housework they should do.

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Further comparisons that may affect women's sense of entitlement are normative comparisons. Major argued that the awareness of what is a socially acceptable or appropriate distribution can also shape women's ideas of what they and their partners should contribute to household labor. Existing research reveals that traditional norms of gender roles are still prevalent in our society. Even though most women do paid work and contribute to the family income, the majority of women and men tend to agree that wives should be primarily responsible for housework and childcare (Thompson and Walker, 1989). Thus, women may derive their views of their male partners' shares of household labor they feel entitled to from various different comparison standards. Independent of whether they make social or normative comparisons, the prediction can be made that women are more likefy to perceive their entitlements violated the lower their partners' contributions to household labor are compared to the social or normative standards which are used to evaluate what the partners should do. Justifications The perceived legitimacy or justification of the unequal division of household labor is regarded as a further critical determinant of women's sense of entitlement in addition to comparison standards. People who perceive a disparity between their own outcomes and those of comparison referents will not necessarily take the view that they deserve the same outcomes as those received by others. If women perceive the gap between their own and their partner's contributions to household labor as legitimate or justified, they should not feel entitled to get more "help" with housework from their partner. Family researchers have discussed numerous reasons or circumstances which women may regard as acceptable justifications for the "gendered" division of household labor (see Major, 1993; Mikula, 1998; Thompson, 1991; Thompson and Walker, 1989 for reviews). Independent of where the justifications come from, it is predicted that women are more likefy to perceive their entitlements violated the less they regard the lopsided division as justified. Wants and Values Finally, the distributive justice framework assumes that women's justice evaluations are also affected by what women want and value from their relationship. From a conceptual point of view, wants and outcome values define what people desire. Compared to the sense of entitlement, wanting

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only means that an individual would like to have something independent of whether she feels it is legitimate to get what she desires. Although perceptions of entitlement are deduced primarily from comparison processes and justifications, they may also be shaped by individuals' wants. Thompson criticized that scholars have focused too strongly on labor time and tasks as valued outcomes and neglected that women might value the interpersonal outcomes of family work more than the task outcomes. For instance, the male partners' responsiveness to women's personal needs is supposed to be more important for women's sense of fairness than men's actual contributions to household labor. Independent of what women actually want and value from their relationships, the distributive justice framework proposes that women will be more likely to perceive their entitlements violated the more they regard their wants as unfulfilled, Altogether, the distributive justice framework points to a number of factors and processes that may contribute to women's sense of entitlement or fairness about family work. However, the equation of the perception of violated entitlements with the experience of injustice possibly is a limitation of the framework. Other theoretical approaches to injustice, such as the two-factor model of relative deprivation (Crosby, 1982) and the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice (Mikula, 1993), suggest that the perception of violations of entitlement is not the only element contributing to feelings of deprivation or injustice. The Two-Factor Model of Relative Deprivation

The two-factor model of relative deprivation proposed by Crosby (1982) specified two conditions that have to be fulfilled in order to develop a sense of deprivation or injustice. The perception of violated entitlements is not sufficient to produce feelinp of deprivation, resentment, or injustice. Wanting is considered a further necessary precondition for feelings of deprivation or injustice beyond perceived violations of entitlement. Unfulfilled wants, however, should only lead to the experience of injustice or deprivation when people additionally have the notion that they deserve (i.e., are entitled to) what they desire. This model predicts that feelings of injustice or deprivation should be low or absent when either or both unfulfilled wants and violated entitlements are absent, and high when both are present (see Crosby et al, 1986). Accordingly, women should perceive their partners* behavior more unjust the more they want them to do more housework and the more they think that they are entitled to larger contributions from their partners with the household labor.

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The Attribution-of-Blame Model of Judgments of Injustice

Similar to the two-factor model of relative deprivation, the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice (Mikula, 1993) holds that the perception of violations of entitlement is only a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the experience of injustice. The model assumes that observations of violations of entitlements elicit attributional thinking, and the attributions which are finally arrived at will influence the assessment of injustice. Attributions of blame for the violation of entitlement to an agent who is not the victim are proposed as a further basic element of judgments of injustice beyond perceived violations of entitlements. The model further assumes in line with Shaver's (1985) work, that attributions of blame presuppose the attribution of responsibility and perceived lack of justification for the critical behavior. The amount of responsibility of an agent depends in turn on attributions of the agent's causality, controllability, intention, and foreseeability. With regard to the division of household labor, the partner is the agent whose responsibility and blameworthiness are assessed. A woman should perceive her partner more responsible the more she causally attributes the perceived violation of entitlement to his behavior rather than to her own or somebody else's behavior, the more she thinks that her partner could do more housework, and the more she thinks that her partner intentionally does not do more housework. A woman should blame her partner to the extent she regards him responsible for the violation of the entitlement and does not perceive sufficient justification for his not doing more housework. To summarize, the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice predicts that women should regard their partners' behavior more unjust the more they feel their entitlements violated and the more they blame their partners for the given state of affairs. A Combined Model of Perceived Injustice

The theoretical models discussed above differ with respect to (i) whether they equate perceived violation of entitlement with perceived injustice and (ii) which variables they regard as relevant for the perception of injustice. Most of the assumptions, however, are not contradictory but rather complementary. Thus, we suggest a comprehensive theoretical framework of women's sense of injustice that integrates the complementary propositions and assumptions of the above theories into a single model of perceived injustice (see Fig. 1).

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Fig. 1. A proposed model of perceived injustice combining elements of the distributive justice framework, the two-factor model of relative deprivation, and the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice.

The newly developed model postulates that three factors should contribute directly to women's sense of injustice: Unfulfilled wants (i.e., perceived discrepancies between 'wants' and 'is'), perceived violation of entitlement, and the amount of blame attributed to the partner. Women should be more likely to feel unjustly treated the more they want their partners to do more housework, the more they feel their entitlements violated by their partners' contributions, and the more they blame their partners for not doing more housework. The perception of violation of entitlement and the attribution of blame presuppose further conditions in turn. Based on the distributive justice framework and the attribution-ofblame model of judgments of injustice, the present comprehensive model predicts indirect effects on women's perceptions of injustice of unfulfilled wants, perceived comparison outcomes, and perceived lack of justification through the impact of these variables on perceived violations of entitlement. In addition, perceived violations of entitlement, perceived responsibility of the partners, and perceived lack of justification are predicted to indirectly affect women's perceptions of injustice through their impact on the attributions of blame.

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The present study first provides separate and independent tests of the factors that are proposed to contribute to the perception of violation of entitlement, to the blaming of the partner, and to perceived injustice. In addition, the proposed comprehensive model of perceived injustice is tested in its entirety in a final step.

METHOD Participants The study was run with a convenience sample of 150 employed women. The data of 18 women who contributed either the same or a lower amount of household labor than their partners were excluded from the statistical analyses. This was done for two reasons. First, we were interested in analyzing the factors of the experience of injustice of women who do more housework than their partners. Second, it would have been inappropriate to ask these women questions about their partners' responsibility and blameworthiness for not doing more housework if the partners contributed at least 50% to the household labor in general. Therefore, the results presented here are based on a subsample of 132 women. Women were recruited by a snowball method in an Austrian town and met the following criteria: They had a workload of at least 20 hours per week (x = 35.9 hours/week), they were between 20 and 50 years of age (J = 34), they were married (n = 87) or cohabitating (« = 45) with employed men, and had either no children (n = 64) or children who were not older than 9 years (n = 68).4 Variables and Procedure Women were interviewed individually at the Department by the first author and received 200 Austrian Schillings (about $15) for their participation. Interviews took about 60-90 minutes. They contained about 120 questions and addressed various issues of the division of household labor that have been raised in recent theory and research. Most of the topics were extensively introduced by the interviewer before they were answered on rating scales. This was done in order to make the women familiar with the meaning of the items (i.e., providing insight ''The latter restriction was imposed in order to keep constant the number of people within the household who are able to contribute to the household labor. By the age of 10, children may already take on chores for the family (White and Brinkerhoff, 1981).

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to the participants into the theoretical concepts used) and to reduce the vagueness of what they had in mind when answering the provided questions. For example, the concept of household labor, which is of particular relevance in this study, was clearly specified to the participants at the beginning of the interview. It was described as an important domain of unpaid family work which is necessary for the maintenance of family life and clearly distinguished from other domains of unpaid family work such as child care or emotional work. Housework, as introduced in this study, included chores typically performed by women (e.g., preparing meals, tidying up, cleaning house, washing dishes, doing the laundry), chores typically performed by men (e.g., yard work, lawn care, snow shoveling), and tasks less likely associated with a particular gender (e.g., finances, shopping). The sequence of the items in the interview was carefully designed to avoid any undesirable influences or interferences. For instance, items referring to similar theoretical concepts (e.g., partners' responsibility and blameworthiness) were separated by a number of unrelated items. The following description of variables is confined to those items which are of immediate interest for the purposes of the present study. The present listing of the items is organized around theoretical concepts and does not reflect the sequence in which these items were presented in the interview. Women were asked to rate the relative amount of housework they and their partners actually do ("In general, what percentage do you and your partner contribute to the household labor respectively?") and the relative amount of housework they wanted them to do ("Which proportional distribution of household labor between you and your partner would you like?"). The size of women's unfulfilled wants, i.e., the discrepancy between partners' actual contributions to household labor and those desired by women was operationalized as the difference between these two variables. (Because of several shortcomings of difference scores, we computed also residual scores for the partners' actual contributions to household labor partiaiing out the size of the contributions desired by women. All relevant analyses reported in the following were conducted twice, once with the difference scores and the other time with the residual scores as predictors. Since the two types of analyses provided the same results, we report only those analyses using the difference scores.) Several items referred to perceived outcomes of social and normative comparisons. Women assessed their partners' present contributions to housework compared to their own contributions ("How much housework is your partner doing compared to you"), compared to the contributions of other men ("How much housework is your partner doing compared to other men?"), and compared to what they regarded as an appropriate contribution ("How much housework is your partner doing compared to what is socially

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expected from men in that respect?"). Women answered these questions on 7-point scales ranging from much less housework to much more housework.5 Since the ratings of the percentages of housework done by the women themselves and their male partners add up to 100%, this variable was used as a further measure for the perceived outcomes of between-gender comparisons. As all women who were retained in the sample did more housework than their partners, the partners' proportional shares of housework (%) indicate the perceived deviation of the division of household labor from a 50:50 split. The correlation coefficient between the proportional share measure of the between-gender comparison and the rating measure was r = .70, p < 0.01. Further topics of the interview which are relevant to the present purposes referred to women's perceptions of violations of entitlement and their perceptions of being unjustly treated by their partners. Perceived violation of entitlement was measured with the item "To what extent does your partner fulfill his household duties?" Responses were measured on a 7-point scale ranging from not at all to very much. Perceived injustice was based on a question regarding the perceived frequency of feelings of being unjustly treated by the partner ("How often do you feel unjustly treated by your partner regarding the division of household labor?"). Responses were scored on a 7-point scale ranging from never to very often. Finally, women's perceptions of their partners' responsibility ("15 what extent is your partner personally responsible for not doing more housework?"), and blameworthiness ("Tb what extent is your partner to be blamed for not doing more housework?") were assessed on 7-point rating scales ranging from not at all to very much. Perceived justification of the given state of affairs was assessed with the question "Tb what extent is it justified that your partner is not doing more housework?" (1: not at all, 7: very much).

RESULTS Structure of Analyses We conducted three separate hierarchical multiple regression analyses to test the predictive power of the proposed factors of the three criterion 5

Major (1993) proposed a number of additional comparison processes referring to women's own household contributions (i.e., within-gender comparisons, normative comparisons, and self comparisons) as relevant factors of women's justice evaluations of the unbalanced division of household labor. These comparison processes have not been considered in the present analyses because they are less relevant for the present topic of women's perceptions of being unjustly treated by their partners.

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variables of interest: perceived violation of entitlement, blaming of the partner, perceived injustice. Part of the regression analyses considered as predictor variables not only the proposed factors of the respective criterion but also some further variables which, according to our model, should not directly contribute to the prediction of the criterion itself but rather to one of the proposed factors of the criterion. For instance, perceived comparison outcomes, which were assumed to have a direct impact only on perceived violation of entitlement, were considered as possible predictors also (i) of the blaming of the partner and (ii) of women's perceived injustice. These additional variables were included in the set of predictors to test not only the convergent but also the discriminant validity of the assumptions of our model. The hierarchical regression analyses used the following procedure. First, the proposed factors of the respective criterion were entered as a single block into the regression equation by a forced-entry procedure. Second, we tested whether those variables which were considered as possible additional predictors contributed to a significant increment of the explained variance of the criterion after the proposed factors have been entered into the equation. The variables had to pass a criterion for inclusion (PIN < 0.05; see Norusis, 1994) in order to be entered into the equation. The proposed comprehensive model of perceived injustice was tested in a final step by using the structural modeling technique of LISREL 8 (Joreskog and Sorbom, 1993). Factors Contributing to Perceived Violation of Entitlement

According to the distributive justice framework of Major (1993) and Thompson (1991), women's perceptions of violated entitlements should depend on three factors: unfulfilled wants (i.e., the perceived discrepancy between what they have and what they want), the perceived outcomes of various comparison processes, and the perceived justifications for the unbalanced division. These hypotheses were tested by means of a multiple hierarchical regression analysis regressing women's perceived violation of entitlement on unfulfilled wants, the assessments of their partners' contributions to household labor as compared to (i) their own contributions, (ii) those of other men, and (iii) their opinion of what is socially expected from men in this respect. Finally, the perceived justification of the partner's not doing more housework was also used as a predictor in this analysis. The results are in line with the assumptions and show that the perceived discrepancy between actual and desired housework of the partner, the perceived outcomes of different comparison processes, and the perceived lack of justification significantly contributed to perceived violation

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Division of Household Labor and Women's Sense of Injustice Table I. Regression Model of Women's Perceptions of Violated Entitlements Predictors Perceived discrepancy between actual and desired housework Perceived Partner Partner Partner

comparison outcomes vs. woman herself vs. other men vs. social norms

Perceived justifications

£/T adjusted F(3, 128)

Standardized regression coefficients

.19"

.12 -.29° -.21" -.17° .58 .56 34.17°

"p < 0.01.

of entitlement (Table I). The less partners' housework corresponded to women's wants (P = .19), the less housework the partners did compared to other men (P = -.29) and social norms (P = -.21), and the less women regarded it as justified that their partners were not doing more housework (P = -.17), the more women felt their entitlements violated. The perceived outcomes of between-gender comparisons did not contribute to the prediction of women's perceptions of violations of their entitlements. As described in the Method section, the partners' proportional shares of the household labor can be considered as an alternative measure of perceived outcomes of between-gender comparisons. To test the predictive power of this alternative measure, we conducted two further regression analyses using the same set of variables as before with one exception. In one analysis, we replaced the rating measure of the between-gender comparison by the proportional share measure. In the second analysis, the proportional share measure was considered in addition to the rating measure. Neither of the two analyses revealed any significant effect of this additional measure. Factors Contributing to Blaming the Partner

The next analysis referred to the factors that had been proposed to contribute to women's blaming of the partner. These hypotheses were tested by means of a multiple hierarchical regression analysis regressing the perceived amount of blame attributed to the partner on perceived violation of entitlement, the amount of responsibility attributed to the partner,

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and perceived justifications for the partner's behavior. To test the discriminant validity, we used the perceived discrepancy between actual and desired housework of the partner and the perceived outcomes of the various comparison processes as additional predictors. The results were in line with our hypotheses (Table II). The amount of perceived violation of entitlement significantly contributed to the blaming of the partner (fJ = .41). In addition, women attributed more blame to their partners the more responsible they regarded them for not doing more housework (P = .34) and the less they regarded their partners' behavior as justified ((J = -.24). The remaining variables did not meet the entry criterion (PIN = 0.05). Factors Contributing to Women's Perceptions of Injustice The third hierarchical regression analysis dealt with the factors that were proposed to contribute to women's perceptions of injustice. The hypotheses were tested by regressing the perceived frequency of women's feeling unjustly treated by the partner on perceived discrepancy between actual and desired housework of the partner, perceived violation of entitlement, and attributions of blame to the partner. As a test of the discriminant validity, we considered the perceived outcomes of the various comparison Table II. Regression Model of Women's Blaming of the Partner Predictors

Standardized regression coefficients8

Perceived discrepancy between actual and desired housework Perceived violation of entitlement Perceived Partner Partner Partner

comparison outcomes vs. woman herself vs. other men vs. social norms

Attributions Responsibility Justification R2

adjusted F(3, 128)

R2

"n.e. not entered into the equation (PIN = 0.05). bp < 0.01.

n.e. ,41* n.e. n.e. n.e. .34* -.24*

.53 .52 47.89*

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Table III. Regression Model of Women's Perceptions of Injustice Standardized regression Predictors coefficients" Perceived discrepancy between actual and desired housework

.18*

Perceived violation of entitlement

.38*

Perceived Partner Partner Partner

n.e. n.e. n.e.

comparison outcomes vs. woman herself vs. other men vs. social norms

Attributions Responsibility n.e. Justification n.e. .28* Blame R* .50 R2 adjusted .49 F(3, 128) 42.93* "n.e. not entered into the equation (PIN = 0.05). bp < 0.01.

processes, the perceived responsibility of the partner, and the perceived justifications for the partner's behavior as further predictors (Table III). The results are consistent with the predictions and show that the amount of unfulfilled wants, i.e., the difference between actual and desired housework of the partner (P = .18), the amount of perceived violation of entitlement (p = ,38), and the amount of blame attributed to the partner (p = .28) significantly contributed to women's judgments of injustice.6 The other variables did not meet the entry criterion (PIN = 0.05). Hesting the Proposed Comprehensive Model of Perceived Injustice In a final step, a path analysis (LISREL 8; Joreskog and Sorbom, 1993) was performed to test the proposed comprehensive model of perceived injustice. The chi-square of the proposed model was not significant, %2(8) = 10.20, p = 0.25. The other indices of model fit were also within 6Strictly

speaking, the two-factor model of relative deprivation (Crosby, 1982) does not postulate an additive but an interactive effect of unfulfilled wants and violated entitlements on perceived injustice. Therefore, we conducted two additional regression analyses in which the interaction term of the two variables was considered as a predictor of perceived injustice (i) instead of and (ii) in addition to unfulfilled wants and violated entitlements. Both analyses failed to substantiate the predicted interaction effect.

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the acceptable range (OFI = .98, AGFI = .91, CFI = 1.00) suggesting that the theoretical model fits the data quite well. Figure 2 shows the path model and the standardized path coefficients. In line with the predictions, unfulfilled wants (fj = .18), perceived violation of entitlement (p = .38), and the amount of blame attributed to the partner (P = .28) had direct effects on women's sense of injustice. In addition, significant indirect effects on perceived injustice were obtained of unfulfilled wants through their impact on perceived violation of entitlement (P = .23), and of perceived violation of entitlement through its impact on perceived blameworthiness of the partner (P = .41). Furthermore, women's judgments of injustice were indirectly affected by perceived comparison outcomes (social: P = -.31; normative: p = -.25) and perceived lack of justifications (P = -.17) through their impact on perceived violation of entitlement. Finally, attributions of responsibility (P = .34) and perceived lack of justification (p = -.24) contributed indirectly to judgments of in-

Fig. 2. The effects of unfulfilled wants, violation of entitlement, comparison outcomes, attributions and justifications on perceived injustice. All paths shown are the standardized path coefficients and are significant, p < 0.05.

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justice through their impact on the amount of blame attributed to the partner (see Fig. 2). Several alternative causal models also were tested. One model included direct paths from comparison outcomes, responsibility, and justification to perceived injustice in addition to the relationships proposed by our comprehensive model. The difference between the chi-square statistics for the proposed and the alternative model was nonsignificant. xii«(4) = 5.79, p > 0.05. This shows that the proposed comprehensive model could fit the data equally well as the less restricted alternative model. Two further alternative models eliminated the direct paths from unfulfilled wants to perceived injustice (Model A), and from perceived blameworthiness to perceived injustice (Model B), in order to test more explicitly the importance of unfulfilled wants and attributed blame on women's judgments of injustice beyond perceived violation of entitlement. Both alternative models had a poorer fit to the data than did the originally proposed comprehensive model, Model A: xiiff (1) = 5.58, p < 0.05; model B: Xliff(l) = 19.57, p< 0.05.

DISCUSSION The present research investigated women's sense of injustice regarding the lopsided division of household labor on the basis of a theoretical model that combines elements of the distributive justice framework recommended by Major (1993) and Thompson (1991) with the two-factor model of relative deprivation (Crosby, 1982), and the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice (Mikula, 1993). The results of our study provide good support for the proposed comprehensive model. The amount of variation in women's judgments of injustice that could be explained by the perceived discrepancy between actual and desired housework of the partners, the perceived violation of entitlement, and attributions of blame was quite high (50%). The model was also able to account for substantial proportions of variance of women's perceptions of violations of entitlement (58%), and the perceived blameworthiness of their partners (53%). Women's Perception of Violations of Entitlement The results are in line with the propositions of the distributive justice framework and reveal that perceived discrepancies between actual and desired contributions of the partners to the housework, perceived deviations of partners' housework from social and normative standards, and perceived

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lack of justifications make independent contributions to women's perceptions of violated entitlements. With regard to social comparison processes, the findings suggest, in agreement with the propositions of Major (1993) and Thompson (1991), that within-gender comparisons are more important for women's sense of entitlement than between-gender comparisons. Women felt their entitlements more violated the less housework their partners did compared to other men. The outcomes of comparisons between women's and their partners' contributions to household labor, however, did not affect women's perceptions of violated entitlements. The significant effect of the outcome of normative comparisons on women's perceptions of violations of their entitlements suggests that normative beliefs about gender-related family roles additionally shape women's sense of entitlement and enter into the evaluation of women's and men's behavior in the household. The observed association between unfulfilled wants and perceived violations of entitlement provides support for the proposition that women's sense of entitlement about domestic labor is also shaped by what women want and value from their relationships. According to Thompson (1991) it is not simply the amount of housework their partners do (absolute as well as relative to some comparison standards) that matters to women. Interpersonal outcomes of family work may be more important to women than task outcomes (see also DeMaris and Longmore, 1996). Accordingly, women can feel taken care of even if their partners are doing less housework (Hochschild, 1989). Unfortunately, the present study did not analyze in detail which particular outcomes women want and value with respect to household labor. The present evidence further reveals that women consider the legitimacy and possible justifications of the unequal division of family work besides wants, values, and comparison outcomes when assessing the violation of their entitlements. According to Major (1993), women's perceptions of the legitimacy of the unequal divisions can be based (i) on the perceived appropriateness of the procedures or processes that produced the existing distributions or (ii) on the perceived appropriateness of the rules and arrangements which are used in the distribution of household chores. Unfortunately, we have no data available to prove this proposition in detail. Considering the importance of within-gender comparisons, normative comparisons, wants, and justifications for women's sense of entitlement, it is not surprising that mere inequality of women's and men's contributions to the household labor is not enough to produce feelings of injustice. Furthermore, this fact makes clear why the association between measures of the division of household labor and women's justice evaluation is not very strong in most cases. As the outcomes of between-gender comparisons,

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which indicate the perceived deviation of the division of household labor from a 50:50 split (equality), made no significant contributions to women's perceptions of violations of their entitlements, these results additionally undermine the core assumption of many previous studies that equality is the most prominent rule of distributive justice which women use to evaluate the fairness of existing domestic arrangements. Women's Sense of Injustice The present study supports the usefulness of the distributive justice framework of Major (1993) and Thompson (1991) to understand women's sense of entitlement or fairness about the sexual division of household labor. But the empirical findings are not completely in accordance with this framework. Inconsistent with the proposed equation of the perception of violated entitlements with the experience of injustice, the data support our assertion that it is important to distinguish between these two concepts. The perceived discrepancy between the actual and desired housework of the partner, and the amount of blame attributed to the partner for not doing more housework, made further significant contributions to women's judgments of injustice in addition to the perceived violation of entitlement. These findings are in line with the proposition of the two-factor model of relative deprivation (Crosby, 1982) that unfulfilled wants and perceived violations of entitlement both contribute to feelings of deprivation or injustice. The observed direct path between unfulfilled wants and women's sense of injustice is also in accordance with Williamson and Clark's (1989) notion that the absence of keeping track of other's wants and needs may cause family members to feel unjustly treated. The present study also provides evidence for the proposition of the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice of Mikula (1993) that the attribution of blame is a further basic element of perceptions of being unjustly treated beyond the violation of entitlement. Also in line with the propositions of the attribution-of-blame model, assignment of blame to the partner was affected in turn by the perceived responsibility of the partner and the perceived justification for the partner's not doing more housework. Each of the observed direct and indirect effects of the various cognitive processes on women's judgments of injustice is in line with the predictions made by theories of social justice and relative deprivation. At the same time, each of the theories considered in this study would have predicted only part of the observed effects. For example, justifications are regarded as relevant to justice evaluations both in the distributive justice framework and hi the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice.

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But the two models differ in their assumptions about the way in which justifications affect women's judgments of injustice. The distributive justice framework regards justifications as a critical determinant of perceived violations of entitlement. The attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice considers justifications as a component of the attribution of blame. The present results provide support for the assumptions of both theories.

Conclusions The results of the present study prove the usefulness of integrating the complementary assumptions of different theories in order to understand women's sense of injustice regarding the sexual division of household labor. The findings illustrate multiple reasons why many women do not regard it as unjust that they do a larger share of housework than their male partners. First, for some women considerations of entitlement and justice may be irrelevant, because the existing domestic arrangements correspond to their wants. Second, the comparisons which turned out to be relevant to women's sense of entitlement are exactly those that are apt to encourage women to believe that they get what they deserve. If women compare their partners' household contributions to those of other men, and to traditional normative standards, they frequently conclude that their partners are not doing less than they should do, and judge their own situation as not so bad (Major, 1993). Third, womens' justifications for the lopsided division of domestic arrangements impede the occurrence of a sense of injustice in two ways. They reduce the probability of the perception of violated entitlements and inhibit the assignment of blame to the partner. There are of course further possible reasons why women may not regard their partners as blameworthy. For instance, women may be reluctant to blame their partners for a perceived violation of entitlement in order to keep peace at home. Attributions of blame to the partner are very likely to provoke marital conflicts, and threaten women's positive view of their partner and the relationship as a whole. If women indeed value interpersonal outcomes of family work more than task outcomes, getting their partners to do more housework should be less important to them than keeping peace at home. Before concluding, it is appropriate to add some further comments on the present study and its limitations. First, the evidence for the proposed comprehensive model of perceived injustice does not imply that each individual woman follows in all details the proposed processes of judgments and attributions in the course of assessing the injustice of their partner's behavior. Injustice may be experienced without considering the complete set of elements proposed by the theoretical model. If, for example, certain

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women equate injustice with perceived violation of their entitlements, attributions of responsibility and blame may be irrelevant to their judgments of injustice. In addition, women may differ in the comparison standards they use to evaluate their partners' contributions to household labor (cf. Blair and Johnson, 1992; Greenstein, 1996). Second, one might argue that part of the cognitive processes which have been conceptualized as independent variables in the proposed model may themselves be affected by women's perceptions of injustice. For instance, the assessment of the comparison outcomes, the perceived justifications, and the attributions that are made, may be shaped by women's justice evaluations. Thus, different causal orderings of the variables than those assumed in our model are conceivable and cannot be ruled out due to the correlational nature of our study. Nevertheless, we think that evidence for a reversed causal ordering is not very convincing. At least one argument speaks against this possibility. Starting from a reversed causal ordering, it would be very difficult to provide plausible explanations for the indirect paths that have been obtained between the comparison outcomes and attributions of responsibility on the one hand and the judgment of injustice at the other hand. Tb explicitly test these speculations, we generated a new model in which the causal directions of all paths proposed by our comprehensive model were reversed. This alternative model provides, in line with our assumptions, only a poor fit to the empirical data. The chi-square was highly significant, %2(19) = 64.70, p = < 0.001, and the other indicators of model fit also were not within the acceptable ranges (e.g., GFI = .89, AGFI = .79). Third, a possible alternative interpretation of the observed associations between the attributions of responsibility and blame, and their respective components, and the judgments of injustice is discussed briefly. We interpret the observed associations as evidence for our proposition that attributions of responsibility and blame contribute to judgments of injustice. However, one might argue that the associations between women's perceptions of injustice, their attributions, and perceptions of justification, result, at least in part, from the semantic similarity of the words used to operationalize these concepts. However, the empirical data do not support this speculation. The correlation coefficients for the associations in question are not higher than those for the associations between women's perceptions of injustice and the perceived comparison outcomes or the perceived discrepancies between actual and desired housework of the partner (Table IV). Besides the critical issues just mentioned, the present study has several other limitations. One limitation is related to the snowball method of sampling of the participants. Using this technique, selection biases cannot be ruled out and may have influenced the findings. Considering the main

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Table IV. Intel-correlations Between the Variables of the Proposed Model of Perceived Injustice Variable 1. Unfulfilled wants 2. Social comparison 3. Norm, comparison 4. Viol, entitlement 5. Responsibility 6. Justification 7. Blame 8. Injustice

2

3

4

-.51* __

-.51* .67*

.57" -.65" -.64"

—

—

5

6

7

8

.08

-.29* .33* .33* -.42* -.28*

.40* -.43* -.47* .59* .50* -.51*

.51* -.50* -.46* .65* .18° -.43* .58*

-.15 -.18" -.23*

—

—

—

—

"o < 0.05. ep < 0.01.

purposes of the present research, the representativeness of the sample was of secondary importance. We regarded it as more important to recruit women who are motivated and willing to give detailed and sincere answers to questions referring to their privacy. Nevertheless, the proposed model of women's sense of injustice should be tested with different, and more representative, samples in future research (e.g., women from different social classes, mothers vs. nonmothers, full-time employed vs. part-time employed vs. nonemployed women). Another limitation is that all the theoretical concepts considered in the present study were measured by single-item questions and, thus, probably have restricted reliabilities. For some of the concepts, e.g., attributions and comparison outcomes, this limitation is due to the fact that we were not able to create additional adequate items. In conclusion, we think that the present research contributes to our understanding of the factors that shape women's sense of injustice with regard to the lopsided division of household labor, even though part of the critical issues and limitations that have been raised above cannot be definitively answered on the basis of our study and need to be addressed in future studies, using more suitable methodologies, before firm conclusions can be drawn.

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