GENDER INEQUALITIES AND THE ROLE OF MONEY IN SPANISH DUAL-INCOME COUPLES Open Access

This article analyses to what extent the incorporation of women into the labour market and their consequent economic contribution to family income affects couple's relationships. We focus particularly on Spanish couples, using a qualitative method that consists of 48 in-depth interviews of 16 couples. The partners in each couple were first interviewed together and then separately. From the analysis of the interviews, we have identified three types of dual-income couples: ‘traditional’, ‘egalitarian’ and ‘false egalitarian’ couples. According to our findings, these three types of couples differ in the meaning that men and women attribute to money and in the dynamics and processes related to the control and expenditure of money. Whereas for the majority of women money is linked to personal autonomy, their salaries do not automatically generate a balance between the partners. Moreover, despite social changes, gender socialisation and gender roles persist within the couple, reinforcing, for instance, the belief that men symbolically remain the main providers in dual-income couples.

In Spain, as in many other countries, especially in the western hemisphere, the position of women as far as equality is concerned has advanced notably during the second half of the twentieth century in terms of legislation and in the public sphere (labour market, politics, media, etc.). However, it does not appear that the levels of equality reached in the public domain have been subsequently reflected in private life, since women continue to bear the weight of household tasks, what is known as the ‘second shift’ (Hochschild and Machung 1989).

Gender inequality within traditional couples used to rest mainly on the sexual division of labour between men and women (breadwinners and housewives). The fact that nowadays women contribute to the family income and have a professional life could, in principle, be considered as a basis for more egalitarian relationships. There is not enough research on the potential egalitarian effects of women's income in couples’ relationships. The aim of this paper is to show the role that money plays with respect to gender equality in dual-income couples and how money affects couple building and personal-identity building for its members.

The importance of addressing these issues lies, on the one hand, in the increased number of dual-income couples in our societies and the consequent need to understand their particular features. On the other hand, the so-called late, second or reflexive modernity in which we live is characterised, among other things, by new definitions of the individual (Beck et al.1995) and it would be of interest to know the role that money plays in these new definitions, particularly how money affects the building of personal identity: that is, the perception of one's reality at some level.

This article focuses on the Spanish case; as most of the research about this question has been done in Anglo-Saxon and Nordic European countries, the analysis of Spain provides a different cultural perspective. In the last 30 years, this country has experienced important and fast social and political changes, which have transformed it into a society similar to the rest of the European Union. As it moved from dictatorship to democracy, and as women have notably increased their access to the labour market, there has been a sharp decrease in birth rates, new family models have appeared (such as single-parent families or homosexual married couples), and traditional family values have lost their influence, especially among young people (González and Requena 2005).¹

Another important tendency related to family life is the considerable growth in dual-income couples. In 1992 such couples constituted one-third of total households with partners aged between 20 and 59, whereas in 2000 the percentage had reached 45 percent (Franco and Winqvist 2002). Most Spanish families adopt this model currently: in 43.6 percent of couples aged between 25 and 49 both the man and the woman have a full-time job; in 14.2 percent of dual-income couples the man has a full-time job and the woman a part-time job;² and 34.08 percent of Spanish couples are composed of a breadwinner and a housewife (INE 2008).³

Analysis of the relationship between money and the couple is not new to social science; it has been part of the research tradition since the 1960s when the first studies on the role of money within the household started.

This first research was addressed towards understanding the social meaning of money beyond its conventional meaning as a neutral medium of exchange. Within this field, Blood and Wolfe developed the ‘Theory of Power Resources’, which basically links power within the household to the income level and prestige of each member of the couple, which arises from having a paid job (Blood and Wolfe 1960). According to this theory, if women contribute to the family income, they will have a corresponding improvement in their household position which will produce a new balance in power relations in the couple.

Blood and Wolfe's theory was strongly criticised, above all by Safilios-Rothschild (1970) and Gillespie (1971), who considered that it was not able to explain the complex reality of relations within the household. Roman and Vogler (1999), in more recent research, also found numerous problems with this approach. First, the Theory of Power Resources only takes into account the amount of money and not the way in which management of the household finances can compensate for or reinforce the effects of these resources. Second, this theory analyses what occurs in the household in isolation, without taking into consideration the social system of gender inequality. Furthermore, it focuses exclusively on economic resources and does not pay attention to other factors such as those related to culture or ideology, which may play an important role by reinforcing or weakening economic differences.

New lines of research had already been opened up in the 1990s by authors such as Zelizer (1989, 1997) and Burgoyne (1990), who made another step forward in the understanding of the social meaning of money. Viviana Zelizer advocates the idea that money is socially constructed and influences, as it is influenced by, social relations. Hence the obvious need to introduce the gender variable into the analysis and to understand that money is not gender neutral. A number of questions have been analysed from this perspective, such as the ownership of income (Brines 1994; Schwartz 1994; Nyman 1999; Diaz et al. 2004), the patterns of allocation and management of money (Pahl 1989, 2005 ; Vogler and Pahl 1994), and, more recently, decision-making in dual-income couples (Dema-Moreno 2009). The present article falls within these later theoretical developments and focuses on the analysis of dual-income couples (two people, two salaries), which in principle could be considered more egalitarian than traditional ones (two people, one salary), as the men and women have their own job and their own salary.

Although this paper refers only to Spanish couples, it is part of a wider international research study based on a common aim and a common methodology for the gathering of data.⁴ One criterion for selecting the interviewees was the length of the couple's relationship. We decided to focus on two groups: recent couples, those who have been together for less than 5 years, and consolidated couples, with more than 10 years together. We distinguished two age groups, those between 20 and 39 years old and those between 40 and 60. Half of the couples had children and the other half were childless. The people interviewed covered a wide variety of jobs, salaries and education levels. Following these criteria, we carried out 48 interviews with 16 couples in Spain, using a fairly limited sample of couples to study the couples’ dynamics and processes in more depth. All couples were heterosexual and all but two of them were married, although we did not consider this last circumstance as a criterion in selection.

The couples were selected following the ‘snowball’ technique.⁵ We interviewed each member of the couple twice: first both members of the couple were interviewed together and, after a quick analysis of this first interview, each partner was interviewed separately. The information obtained from the joint interview was used as input for the individual ones. The interviews were lengthy (between 2 and 3 hours each) and broad in scope, exploring many areas in the couples’ lives, such as money, education, the meaning of the relationship, housework, children, leisure time and sex and intimacy.

The method of analysis was a combination of a comparative case study (Ragin 1994; Crompton 2001) plus what we have called ‘team analysis’. The comparative case study approach aims at keeping the integrity of the couple as a whole, which means that the three interviews of each couple have been considered as a single case. After the analysis of each couple as a case, we carried out a systematic comparison with the rest of the cases. Team analysis consists of several analysts studying the same text alternating solo and team interpretation of the interviews. This technique proved very useful for refining and double-checking the analysis (Stocks et al.2007).

Following the aforementioned analytical procedures, two ideal models of couples emerged: the traditional couple with an accepted gender division of roles and the egalitarian couple with shared commitments. Most of the dual-income couples interviewed considered themselves to be based on egalitarian principles, but analysis of their everyday practice showed that this was not always the case. Therefore we cannot consider dual-income couples as a homogeneous group; on the contrary, being aware of their diversity, we have identified three types of dual-income couples: traditional couples, with gender division of roles within the house, in which men exercise control over the management of money and financial decision-making; egalitarian couples, which actually share financial decisions, household chores and care of dependants; and false egalitarian couples, which, despite their egalitarian discourse, in practice reproduce gender inequalities with respect to the sexual division of roles, the use and management of money, and decision-making. The majority of the dual-income couples interviewed in our sample should be categorised as false egalitarian, since only one can be considered traditional and three egalitarian.⁶

Paid work and resources of a financial or other nature – such as relatives, social networks, education – are elements of great importance when analysing intimate relations, due to their relevance in the personal identity-building of men and women and in couple-building itself.

Paid work and money are the basis for female autonomy,⁷ as one of the women interviewed states very clearly:

The majority of women interviewed, whose ideal of the couple was egalitarian, agree with Maria that having a paid job and one's own money is essential for achieving personal and financial autonomy. They say that earning their own money is important because it prevents them from being dependent on their husbands or families. We observed that financial independence favours personal autonomy and both are fundamental pillars on which to build egalitarian couples.

Although having a paid job appears as a necessary pre-condition for women's autonomy it is not a sufficient one. In the interviews we have identified many obstacles related mainly to the great difficulties that women deal with in the labour market. The domestic and caring responsibilities assumed mainly by women result in a burden added to these labour market difficulties.

In effect, despite the current legislation in Spain aimed at fostering equality, women enter the labour market under adverse and disadvantaged conditions.⁹ There are institutional factors, such as the remains of the old social, legal and political structure, reflected in welfare policies, the economic system and cultural norms and values that favour gender inequality.

These circumstances affect many aspects of women's everyday life. The difficulties women encounter in getting a job, the precariousness of female labour, as well as their occupational segregation has led some of the women interviewed into occupying low-quality jobs. The desire to overcome this circumstance pushes them to devote substantial efforts to furthering their education or training in order to get promotion or a better job, which ends up as a ‘third shift’ (job + housework + studies).

Thus, the majority of the women interviewed (the ones in traditional and false egalitarian couples) have to endure a double or triple daily workload: their jobs, the household chores and in many cases the additional education. In contrast, the majority of interviewed men do not assume domestic activities; only the men in egalitarian couples share home duties on an equal footing with their spouses.

Women's experiences of inequality within and without the household feed on each other. As a consequence, women find themselves in a problematical situation both when building their personal identity and when contributing to the construction of an egalitarian relationship, as we explain in the next section.

From analysis of couples’ life histories, it appears that the norms and habits set up, in more or less explicit ways, at the beginning of the relationship can be decisive when it comes to determining whether women develop as autonomous individuals within the couple or become dependent, in spite of having a paid job.

The women in our sample had a paid job before starting their life in a couple and, except for one,¹⁰ their jobs granted them at a certain degree of autonomy which was not just financial. However, most of them found themselves obliged to choose between their paid job and their relationship as part of a couple or family at a certain moment in their relationship. These enforced choices, called ‘structural ambivalence’ by Oakley (1974) and ‘hard choices’ by Gerson (1985) conceal a trap: no matter which alternative is chosen, it will deliver unfavourable consequences for the woman.

For a woman to become a paid worker is not always achieved without conflict. To combine a job with the household chores and caring for dependants often causes tension. In our sample, we found several cases of problematic choices, where women find themselves trapped, having to choose between their roles as care-givers, wives and mothers and their roles as paid workers. Faced with this dilemma, most of them give priority to their couple and family life in accordance with traditional gender role and societal expectations, surrendering their personal autonomy.

This is the case of Fatima, married to Fernando; they have been together for more than 10 years, both are in their late thirties and have two children. Both of them have a university degree. Once she had graduated, Fatima got a good, stable job in a city far away from her home town. After a short while, however, she gave up her job to go back to her partner in her home town. She prized maintaining her relationship with her partner over and above ensuring her professional and financial independence. Although her ideal is that of an egalitarian couple, Fatima gave up her job and lost her financial independence in order to live with her partner. Ten years later, at the time of the interview, she had a short-term contract and earned a lower salary than her husband. The attitude of her partner, Fernando, was the opposite. Initially, he followed Fatima to the new city, but since he could not find the job he expected, he returned to their home town. In other words, Fernando placed his financial independence and professional career above his life as part of a couple, just the opposite of how Fatima acted. From the time that Fatima returned until the date of the interview, she had been unable find a job that matched her previous one. Fernando, on his side, had achieved a status and a salary that gave him a privileged position in the family, as we will explain later on.

Another false egalitarian couple, Elisa and Ernesto, has undergone a similar process. Elisa and Ernesto are in their early twenties and met as classmates at university; both were living on a grant and doing occasional student jobs. Since Ernesto had to move back to the city which they are both from to attend to his family business, Elisa also left the university city to follow her partner and married him. She tried to continue her studies via distance learning. Her opportunities of getting a job related to her studies were reduced and, at the time of the interview, she was preparing for an exam to become civil servant. Once married she assumed most of the housework:

The woman understands that this situation is only temporary and believes that the current roles will be reversed if she has a proper job, with a salary and a status similar to her husband's.

Ernesto's higher income gives him the greater input into decision-making on matters of large expenditures. As can be observed in the following comments, Ernesto, encouraged by his wife, fixes the economic limit and Elisa then budgets within that limit or tries to come in even lower:

Elisa still carries on doing student's irregular jobs and does not even consider them jobs as such, assuming that her husband is the only provider who therefore has authority in economic matters. He establishes a limit that should not be passed and she accepts her husband's decisions even when she does not consider them correct or, as happens in this case, trying to find a flat for even less than the amount mentioned by her partner. In addition, she establishes extremely strict limits on daily expenses, for which she is directly responsible, and reduces her own personal expenses to those that are absolutely necessary, with the aim of reducing her dependence on the man.

Both women, Fatima and Elisa, put their relationship in a couple before their professional career and financial independence at the beginning of their life as a couple. Although both of them wanted to set up as an egalitarian couple when their relationship began, they have accepted an unequal division of labour that they like to see as temporary. The (intended) temporary nature of the inequality may be prolonged indefinitely, reducing the possibility of change towards equality, even if, in the future, the financial imbalance changes.

Only one of the interviewed women, when faced with the choice between a paid job and her relationship in a couple, put her professional career and financial independence first. Lidia and Luis, both unqualified workers, without children, were in their late thirties at the time of the interview. Right at the beginning of their relationship, she had difficulties in finding a job in their home town and decided to move to another town. The separation caused some conflict between them, but after a few months Luis went to live with her and to work in the new town. After a period of time, both returned to their home town to start a business. By showing that she was financially independent and that she could also be emotionally independent, Lidia earned the respect of her husband. From the outset, their relationship was based on equality and Lidia consciously worked at keeping it so. The marriage has now lasted more than 10 years and it was evident that the couple's relationship is built on the autonomy of both partners. Both contribute to the partnership with a similar income and they share household responsibilities in an equivalent manner, maintaining their autonomy in their individual use of money. When making decisions they try to find a balance, both express their opinion and the interests of both partners are taken into account. They are the kind of couple that we categorise as egalitarian. When we asked about how they decide on making large expenditures, beyond daily purchases, they show their negotiating process:

Paid work and money need to be approached from two apparently contradictory directions: not only as factors favouring women's autonomy, as we have explained before, but also as instruments of power that promote traditional gender relationships. Our results indicate that money can be both a facilitator in and an obstacle to the building of female autonomy and gender equality within the relationship of a couple. Money has been and remains an instrument of power in our societies and financial dependence is one of the forms of women's subordination to men. Our findings show that to have a job and one's own money can have a liberating effect and can favour women's autonomy, but money per se does not modify gender relations within the home. In dual-income couples women earn their own living, but they are not free from inequalities within their relationship.

In our sample, the meaning given to money and paid work was not the same for men and women. Although in traditional and false egalitarian couples women earn their own money, men are still considered the main providers. As Jean Potuchek (1997) argues, for someone to be considered a provider it is not enough to have a paid job, it is also necessary to have the obligation to sustain the family. Therefore, for a provider, having a job is not voluntary in nature and he/she cannot entertain the idea of giving it up, even temporarily.

In traditional and false egalitarian couples, women who earn less than their spouses are seen, and see themselves, as lesser providers. Not only is this because they earn less but because men hold the symbolic position as the main providers in the household, although, in many cases, the family could not cope without the woman's wages. In the following excerpts it can be appreciated how the man appears as the main provider in Potuchek's sense:

This man assumes that the family's future depends fundamentally on his job, whereas the woman stresses the stability of the man's job in comparison with her own temporary job, even though it is, in practice, quite stable. The actual difference in wages in this couple is not so high; she earns around 20 percent less than her husband. However, this difference and the stability of Fernando's job compared to hers lessen the value of Fatima's income.

Men's role as main providers favours their greater control of money, as well as their greater influence in financial decision-making and their spending power, as we can observe in the following comment:

Although in Spain joint ownership of money is the most widespread model among couples (Díaz-Martínez et al. 2004), Elisa finds it difficult to accept that the money earned by her husband belongs to her, as it goes against her conception of being an independent woman. Moreover, in order to avoid this dependence she restricts her own spending to an exaggerated degree, adopting extreme thrift in her daily spending and, when they talk about a major financial outlay, she accepts her husband's criteria, as we saw above.

In this couple we find two patterns of spending. Ernesto imposes – gently and subtly – his criteria in major expenses as well as in his individual expenses, which Elisa accepts as the breadwinner's prerogative. She, on her side, reduces her individual expenses to a minimum as a way of rejecting her economic dependence on her husband.

For this woman, and for the majority of interviewed women, money is linked to their autonomy. Men, on their side, once freed from their family of origin, think of paid work and money as means of achieving their well-being, as Ernesto does. Probably they do not need to assert their independence through paid work, since it is taken for granted that they are free and independent. Paid work and money are factors that define their masculinity and, consequently, their absence questions it. However, money and paid work are not linked to independence and autonomy, since men continue being autonomous even when they are temporarily unemployed or when they earn less money than their partners, as we will explain in the next section.

Going back to Fatima and Fernando, money legitimises masculine power to a certain degree, but it is also a source of conflict. Very often Fatima and Fernando do not agree on priorities with respect to large expenditures. As an egalitarian couple (albeit false) they discuss their big expenditures, but they do not always reach an agreement and when this happens, Fernando's priorities win out. He has the last word:

These are two clear cases of men keeping the role of main provider in dual-income couples.

Money can, indeed, be a source of power. As Burgoyne (1990) argues, one of the most widespread social norms is that whoever earns the money has the right to decide how it is spent, and whoever possesses money is its owner. Yet despite this statement, our findings show some flaws in this rule; in the couples in which women earn more than men, the equation ‘greater income = greater power’ proved false and, in our sample, women did not convert their larger incomes into greater power, as might have been foreseen.

In principle, earning less or working less outside the house does not make men lose power in the household. However, it creates difficulties for both men and women when a woman earns more than her partner. Both parties use strategies to conceal this fact, such as overvaluing the man's salary and undervaluing his spending. There are various ways of exaggerating the man's contribution and minimising the woman's. In some couples, when they have a joint account, the difference in income is hidden and the female contribution is absorbed in the common pool. In others, if the couple have separate accounts, the money is allocated differently and used for different expenditures, likewise with different symbolic value. For instance, the man's income is made more significant by using it for the more important expenditures, such as the car and mortgage, i.e. durable goods, whereas the woman's money is spent on day-to-day expenses, on consumables, which, once consumed, vanish. This is the ‘domestic money’, referred to by Zelizer, a special kind of money influenced by the domestic sphere in which it circulates (Zelizer 1989: 367–71). Other researchers, as Tichenor (1999) on US couples, have identified similar strategies for hiding the financial superiority of women to the ones that we have found in Spain.

As we can see, a change in material conditions within the household does not lead to the automatic rethinking of gender relations. Subtle and informal mechanisms clearly related to traditional gender socialisation persist.

Cultural norms, values and traditions of gender identity are crucial to understanding the structure of couples’ relationships. In fact, traditional gender socialisation of men and women constitutes one of the main obstacles that women have to face when they are trying to achieve their autonomy and to establish egalitarian relationships.

In recent decades, in most Western countries women have experienced a change in their opinions, their practice and their self-perception that has been wider and more radical than men have experienced. Women have taken on roles traditionally considered as male, but men have not taken on female roles to the same degree. Women take part in paid work or managing money, but men do not adopt female roles on an equal footing with women – roles such as doing the housework and looking after dependants, and which lack social value.

While for women becoming paid workers means greater social recognition, for men taking on household and care-giving duties is not accompanied by greater social acknowledgement; rather the opposite. In dual-income couples, men's identity might undergo two devaluations: the first, due to the fact that the man ceases to be the sole provider, and the second, because he has to do household tasks, which are socially undervalued. Hence, in our opinion, the strategies mentioned in the previous section are practised by couples to avoid the social questioning of the man's role as the main provider, which used to be symbolically related to his masculinity.

The exchange of roles continues to be frowned upon socially and sharing roles still clashes with traditional male identity. Even in couples who try to set up an egalitarian relationship, where women manage the family money, both spouses feel the need to justify it in some way. This is the case of Jacinta and Juan, a remarried couple. She is in her early forties and he is in his mid-fifties. Both have a well-paid job:

In this excerpt, the woman explains that she assumes the role of the administrator of the total home income due to the nature of her job. However, there are other elements that must be taken into account to understand why, although she is empowered to manage the household finances, she feels the need to justify it:In her first marriage, Jacinta did not enjoy personal autonomy in relation to the use and managing of money. However, Jacinta assumed the responsibility of dealing with her finances without difficulties when she got divorced. In Jacinta's first marriage, the fact that she did not have a paid job and that they adopted a gender division of roles right from the start meant that Jacinta did not take care of financial matters, even when she became an accountant and got a salary as big as that of her then husband.

It did not occur to Jacinta that she could manage money until she got divorced. Living without a partner, taking care of her two daughters, keeping a home on her own, meant that she had to organise her finances. In the process she was gaining autonomy and she was learning to become an independent woman. Alongside this learning and empowering process, Juan, her current husband, moved into her house and they have agreed on some egalitarian rules. These factors have undoubtedly influenced Jacinta and Juan's decision that she is the one who manages the couple's money. In this case, we see an interesting process of generating female autonomy and how this helps to consolidate a new relationship on an egalitarian basis, breaking with the traditional gender socialisation that operated in their previous marriages.

However, this couple needs to justify why she manages the family money. In contrast, when men assume the managing role couples do not need to justify it, since they are not breaking any traditional norm. Moreover, there are differences in the way Jacinta manages the money when compared with men doing the same task. Men tend to assert their masculinity by managing the more important financial tasks. As Bourdieu (2000) states in his research on the economy of real estate, it is possible to detect disdain in the attitude of men towards the concerns of household finances, such as checking bills, asking about prices, and bargaining, which they consider lower management problems and which are often left to women. This disdain appears clearly in our interviews. Even in the case of Jacinta, who manages the family money, she takes care of the small expenditures, as we can observe in the next excerpt when they explain how they restrict some expenses in order to buy a house in the countryside:

Traditional couples show most clearly the effects of gender socialisation. In Spain, this type of couple is no longer common. In fact, only one of the interviewed couples, Inés and Ivan, maintains this traditional couple pattern. Inés and Ivan are in their late fifties, both are skilled workers, they have two teenage boys and have been married for more than 20 years.

Inés, in spite of having had a job most of her life and earning as much as Ivan, feels that her paid work tops up her husband's wages. Yet though she is proud of being a good professional, she would leave her job if her husband's wages could cover the family's expenses:

Inés and Ivan are a clear example of the pre-eminence of tradition over objectively equal material conditions: both spouses earn the same in jobs of a similar status, the woman's even being slightly higher, as she has a university certificate and he does not. However, Inés is a typical traditional woman who does not aspire to being autonomous. She gives priority to her husband's and children's desires. She accepts her husband's authority without question and without feeling any wish to oppose it. Although she may sometimes disagree with the financial decisions adopted by her husband, her views on spending do not prevail. This type of relationship does not differ greatly from the traditional couple model of the man as provider and the woman as housekeeper.

The fact that there are an increasing number of dual-income couples does not mean that men and women share professional and domestic roles in an equal manner and that we have done away with gender inequality in the family. The couples that we interviewed are in transition towards second, late or reflexive modernity, in which novel elements emerge mixed with elements left over from the past that favour the continuance of gender inequalities, often under new forms.

Spanish dual-income couples move in a continuum from traditional to egalitarian patterns. The majority of couples that we interviewed share the ideal of an egalitarian relationship. However, it is difficult to put the ideal into practice, due to the numerous obstacles that hinder, and occasionally obstruct, the building of egalitarian relationships.

Having a paid job, and above all the power to use their own money freely, is a fundamental factor for women to become autonomous individuals and to achieve an egalitarian couple relationship. However, earning their own money does not bring about an immediate modification of gender relations. Women's paid work does not automatically generate a balance between the partners. Often it means a considerable increase of women's working hours, since, besides their paid work, they also carry out the majority of the household work and the work of caring for dependants. At the same time, the situation of social inequality that women suffer, especially discrimination against them in the workplace, influences gender relations that arise in the home, since it favours the financial dependence of women and the persistence of men's role as providers.

Likewise, women cannot construct their autonomy to the same extent as men, because this idea stands in opposition to their gender socialisation and to the exercise of their traditional roles as mothers and care-givers. The different bonds that bind women to their families and to the values of care-giving hinder the possibility of creating autonomous relationships, but also imply an unequal distribution of personal opportunities that creates obstacles for the building of their individuality within the couple.

Especially in families sharing a traditional gender ideology, money is an instrument of power in the hands of men. This was even the case in law in Spain until the advent of democracy in 1975. However, contrary to Blood and Wolfe's theory, our research shows that power is not always linked to money, especially when women are the main breadwinners. Certainly, women who earn less than men are usually in a subordinate position in the couple, particularly when making financial decisions, but in couples with equal income or with women earning more than men, there is no automatic change in power relations.

In spite of the social changes that have taken place in recent decades in the public domain, gender roles, stereotypes and traditional sexist ideology persist and prevent substantial changes in gender relationships within the family. Even in those dual-income couples with an egalitarian ideal, it appears to be very difficult to achieve a balance of power and an equal sharing of caring and household tasks. Women's assumption of professional roles in the public domain, while they stay in traditional roles at home, is undoubtedly a source of conflict.

In most dual-income couples, men remain the symbolic main providers. In some cases, this is due to traditional socialisation which attributes a secondary nature to the woman's contribution to family finances. In other cases, this role is further reinforced by the man's higher income. There are also cases in which, despite the man's lower income, both spouses endeavour to allow the man to maintain his role as the main provider to avoid a clash between the woman's higher income and one of the bases of masculinity, i.e. financial pre-eminence. In many cases both partners are unwilling to acknowledge publicly that the woman is the home's main provider and that the man's salary is secondary.

We may, therefore, conclude that gender difference within dual-income couples is a complex issue which requires that we highlight the dynamics and processes that are generated within a couple's interior life, as we have done in this paper. Knowledge of the processes that generate inequality lays the basis for achieving a shift towards more egalitarian relationships.

This article is part of a larger study conducted by researchers from the University of Oviedo (Spain), the Ludwig Maximilian University (Germany), the Carnegie Mellon University and Pittsburgh University (USA) and the University of Umeä (Sweden). We would like to thank all our colleagues, particularly the other two members of the Spanish team, Cecilia Diaz and Marta Ibáñez, without whose collaboration this research would not have been possible. We are also very grateful to the German Research Foundation, the Asturian Women's Institute and the Spanish Women's Institute (Ministry of Social Affairs) for financial support. We thank Paul Barnes and Neil Mann for their help with the English. And finally, our gratitude extends to the Editor of European Societies and the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.

Sandra Dema-Moreno is an Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Oviedo (Spain). She has worked on numerous research projects on the inequality of women, both in the labour market and within the family, focusing in recent years on the financial decision-making processes within couples. She has published several articles and books, including: two chapters in the book Modern Couples Sharing Money, Sharing Life, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007, and two recent articles: ‘Behind the Negotiations: Financial Decision-Making Processes in Spanish Dual-Income Couples’, Feminist Economics 15(1), 2009, and ‘Gender and organizations: The (re)production of gender inequalities within Development NGOs’, Women's Studies International Forum 31, 2008.

Capitolina Díaz-Martínez is an Associate Professor at the University of Oviedo, currently working as Director General for Equality in Employment (Spanish Ministry of Equality). She has conducted cross-national research on the meaning of money, gender and science, gender and education, public policies and feminist methodology. These studies include topics such as the patterns of women's access to higher education and to higher management positions in higher education; the relationship between gender and ICTs; and the role of money within the household. She has authored several books and articles, including: Modern Couples Sharing Money, Sharing Life, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007 (co-editor); ‘Conversational Heuristics as a Reflexive Method for Feminist Research’, International Review of Sociology no. 12(2), 2002; and the entry ‘Affirmative action’ in The International Encyclopaedia of Men and Masculinities, Michael Flood, Judith Kegan Gardiner, Bob Pease and Keith Pringle (eds), Routledge, 2007.