Division of Labor by Gender and Postmarital Residence in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Reconsideration

Abstract

First theories proposed to explain determinants of postmarital residence connected it with the division of labor by gender. However, at the moment all the cross-cultural tests of this hypothesis using worldwide samples have failed to find any significant relationship between these two variables. In the meantime, the alternative explanations of the postmarital residence led the author to expect that such a relationship would be found if the societies with an extremely low female contribution to subsistence were contrasted with the rest of the world cultures. There are reasons to expect that an extremely low female contribution should predict more or less strongly the nonmatrilocal residence and less strongly (but still significantly) the patrilocal residence. A series of worldwide cross-cultural tests performed by the author using five various sets of coded data on female contribution to subsistence has fully supported this hypothesis.