Economic relations between women and men: New realities and the re-interpretation of dependence

Women's lives and opportunities in the advanced industrialized countries have changed dramatically during the last decades of the 20th century. One of the important changes is that women's economic power has increased considerably, with women's labor force experience and earnings capacity much closer to that of men's than has ever been the case. In this paper I focus on how these changes have affected economic relations between men and women who share a household. Of special interest is how women's greater earnings affect their partnership, spouses' dependence on and independence of each other, and the meaning of their economic contributions to household income. Is there a new gender regime, where women's income no longer should be considered a threat to the stability of the partnership, where women's economic dependence no longer has the meaning it did when few women made significant contributions to family income, and where men increasingly are dependent on women's income?