Family Work

The purpose of this article is to use a distributive justice approach to understand women's sense of fairness about family work. Previous research on family work is reviewed and organized around three factors that contribute to sense of fairness: Outcome values, comparison referents, and justifications. Women sense an injustice if they lack some outcome they desire, have a high standard for comparison, and believe there is no acceptable justification for being deprived of desired outcomes. To understand women's sense of fairness, researchers need to consider (a) valued outcomes other than time and tasks, (b) between-and within-gender comparison referents, and (c) gender-specific justifications for men's small contribution to family work.