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This thesis explores cultural constructions of couple relationships in contemporary urban Mexico in the context of recent processes of social change. Its main objectives are to explore the general understandings which young university graduates from Mexico City have regarding couple relationships and to examine the ways in which they draw on these understandings to account for relevant experiences and practices. To achieve these objectives, I conducted life history interviews with young men and women in Mexico City who at the time of our interviews were either studying or working in a range of professional and academic occupations. Furthermore, I document these young people's cultural environment and the gendered cultural logics present in it through the analysis of self-help books and self help texts in magazines.

There is a lack of knowledge about the effects of social and cultural context on partner abuse. This qualitative study uses interviews to explore the perceptions, experiences and relational interactions of 20 women with current psychological abuse from intimate partners, taking into account social and cultural context. Women were recruited from primary care practices in Hackney, east London and also from community groups and by adverts and snowballing. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants, following recruitment and in 12 cases also at four to six months after this. Interviews aimed to elicit rich narratives from the women, using open-ended questions. Eleven white British, five Caribbean and four African women were interviewed. The study took a social constructivist approach and was underpinned by symbolic interactionism. Analysis included a consideration of the similarities and differences across cultural and ethnic groups. All 32 interviews (from both first and second interviews) were audiotaped, transcribed, and analysed using grounded theory. Conceptualisations drew on Gillis’ and Smart’s work on social norms, Goffman’s approach to dramaturgy, and developments of aspects of Goffman’s work by Hochschild and Cavanagh in particular. This revealed the work the women did in setting up and managing their roles, identities and experiences, particularly gender and emotions work and the way they set and shifted boundaries in the relationship.

With its origins in sociological debates about individualisation, personalisation and the transformation of intimacy, this research explores the long-neglected subject of the surnames of married women. Drawing on in-depth biographical interviews with 30 married or once-married women, respondents are found to engage in complex negotiations with cultural assumptions about wifehood, motherhood and the family when called to change surnames upon marriage. Through their interviews, women account for their surname ‘choice’ via a range of, often-contradictory, discourses – thereby identifying marital naming as an issue of tension and struggle for wives, as well as for women considering marriage. Their ‘talk’ frequently calls upon debates of social stability and change, as well as ideas of autonomy and connectedness. Overall, their narratives speak of social control and a dominant institutional structure in life – and women either accepted the norms of naming or dealt with the consequences. This finding was underscored by the responses of 453 people to a street survey. For interviewees, the opposing role of surnames in marking out both individual identity and social connections led to conflicts. Relational identities were often placed in opposition to autonomy. Yet, women more frequently positioned themselves as interdependent negotiators rather than autonomous agents. For interviewees, surname ‘choices’ were imbued with social meanings and were not rated equally – their choice of surname either ‘displayed’ that they were ‘doing gender well’ or ‘doing gender poorly’. However, discussions of gender were largely absent or neutralised in the interviewees’ accounts, while women who kept their maiden names spoke about feeling the need to silence their naming decision. The research concludes that marital naming forms part of women’s exhaustive efforts at ‘relationship work’. Married women were accountable for their surnames as assumptions of marital naming were found to pervade notions about wifehood. Whatever surname an interviewee decided upon, she was responsible for conducting a gendered and classed performance, and her surname ‘choices’ involved both personal sacrifices and gains.

I use the German Socio-Economic Panel to explore three dimensions of couples' career success: career input (hours), career output (wages) and happiness. I focus on West German parents because, until recently, they faced low levels of state-level childcare support and adverse attitudes towards maternal employment. I investigate the extent to which couples specialize in paid work in the long term. Previous approaches – even those using couple-level longitudinal data – failed to explore this fully, instead examining men and women separately, or a single transition. I develop a “dual curve” approach and find that even among the 1956-65 female birth cohort (which faced low state-level support for dual employment) only a fifth of all couples adopt full specialization in later life. A sizable proportion – a third – moves into dual fulltime employment, while half of highly educated couples adopt such employment. Highly educated women are not only less likely to permanently specialize but also more likely to try working full-time, possibly because their partners' comparative advantages are lower. I explore whether the take-up of work hour flexibility relates to rises in both the respondent’s and their partner’s wages. Men and women benefit from working flexibly, even when controlling for selection into work hour flexibility with growth-curve and fixed effects analysis. Moreover, there is a positive cross-partner wage effect, which is particularly pronounced for mothers, suggesting that men – the main users of the policy – use this measure to support their wives' careers. Are dual career couples (equal human capital investment) happier than specializing couples? I create a human capital measure to account for differential human capital during periods of non-employment, which has been ignored in past analyses. I find that women in dual career couples are unhappier when the child is young but happier later in life. Conversely, women who give precedence to their partner’s career in terms of human capital investment grow unhappier.

This thesis investigates the experiences of Malaysian dual-career couples combining career and family. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were used to collect data from 23 dual-career couples. The findings indicate that being in a dual-career relationship impacts upon how they perceive the family’s provider role; career priorities; how decisions are made; and how family work is divided. The experiences described by the participants reflect their gender role ideologies and the salience of family and work roles. The results also reveal how interaction between partners can shape their ideologies and role salience, in addition to how religious and cultural values influence their gender attitudes. A number of challenges faced by the couples are identified. The supports and strategies that help them cope with housework, childcare and work demands are also critiqued. The thesis also highlights the implications of the government and organization’s policies and support to the couples and the kind of policies and support that the couples would like to see introduced. The similarities and differences between dual-career couples in the Malaysian context compared with the West are explored. Additionally, the findings extend the use of gender role ideology and role salience theories to develop an understanding of the couples’ experiences. A summarizing framework of their experiences based on the analysis is presented. In summary, the thesis firstly fills a gap in the dual-career couples’ literature which has previously focused upon Western couples only. Secondly, the study has examines the utility of gender role ideology and role salience as a framework to understand the context of dual-career couples. Thirdly, the current research also makes an important methodological contribution in a Malaysian context. Finally, it provides some recommendations for the government and organizations in Malaysia in terms of policies that promote work-family balance and gender equality for dual-career women.