Habib Rima R, Zohry Ayman, Nuwayhid Iman, Najdi Faten
Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, 3 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 8th floor, New York, NY 10017-2303, USA e-mail:
Eur J Ageing. 2006 Sep;3(3):137-145. doi: 10.1007/s10433-006-0031-3.
The gendered division of domestic labor has been widely studied over the last three decades. However, older adults' contribution to housework, especially in patriarchal communities in the Middle East, has been largely overlooked. This article examined the participation of older members of the household in domestic labor in three communities in the outskirts of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Drawing on a sample of 2,797 households, the results revealed that three salient factors seemed to have the major impact on older adults' participation in domestic labor; these were the presence of adult women (18-59 years old) in the household, the marital status and age of older adults. Older men's participation in domestic labor was much lower than that of older women, suggesting that a gender divide exists among older adults in the patriarchal setting of the study. Housework remains feminized in the later stage of life.
在过去三十年里，家务劳动的性别分工得到了广泛研究。然而，老年人对家务的贡献，尤其是中东父权制社区中的老年人，在很大程度上被忽视了。本文考察了黎巴嫩首都贝鲁特郊区三个社区中家庭老年成员参与家务劳动的情况。基于2797户家庭的样本，结果显示，三个显著因素似乎对老年人参与家务劳动有重大影响；这些因素是家庭中成年女性（18至59岁）的存在、老年人的婚姻状况和年龄。老年男性参与家务劳动的比例远低于老年女性，这表明在该研究的父权制环境中，老年人之间存在性别差异。在人生的后期阶段，家务劳动仍然女性化。
