Examining Gender Inequality in Intimate Relationships

In the intricate dance of love and partnership, the steps are often choreographed by deeply ingrained societal norms and expectations. While romantic relationships are ideally built on mutual respect and equality, the reality for many couples is far from this ideal. Gender inequality within intimate relationships remains a pervasive issue, subtly influencing dynamics and shaping the experiences of both partners.

From decision-making power imbalances to the unequal division of household labor, gender roles continue to dictate the terms of many relationships. Women often find themselves bearing the brunt of emotional labor, managing not only their own feelings but also the emotional well-being of their partners. Meanwhile, men may unconsciously wield economic power, further entrenching disparities.

This article delves into the various facets of gender inequality in romantic relationships, exploring how these imbalances manifest and their profound impact on relationship satisfaction and individual well-being. By shedding light on these issues, we aim to foster a deeper understanding and encourage steps towards more equitable and fulfilling partnerships.

Introduction to Gender Inequality in Relationships

The grace and beauty, along with the gifts and passion of new love, gently (sometimes dramatically) must incorporate the practical. Among the complexities of need fulfillment, self-esteem and growth-oriented living, bills must be paid, dishes washed, and children taken to school. Love inevitably collides with the nitty-gritty of the daily grind. Successful relationships evolve with the growing demands of sharing a life, removing common gender inequality that exists in relationships.

A common stumbling in relationships is directly related to division of power, responsibilities, and opportunities. Childhoods, along with wider cultural expectations model the pattern for the roles that gender will play in our relationships. However, these examples may not fit the roles our partner expects from their chosen companion. As two people begin a life together, they must work through these differences. Traditional divisions of power and responsibility often fail to meet relationship demands.

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Various Domains for Inequality

Any relationship that shares the burdens of running a household requires a division of responsibilities. However, the journey to equitably arrive at a fair division without discounting the autonomy and freedom of one partner or the other is a challenge for many. Inequality may play out in various domains within a relationship. It is not an all or nothing trait.

Gender inequality represents an unequal distribution of power, responsibilities, and opportunities between partners based on gender. This inequality can manifest in various ways, including:

• Decision-Making Power: One partner, often the male, may dominate decision-making processes, leaving the other partner with little influence over important matters.
• Division of Labor: Traditional gender roles often dictate that women take on more household and caregiving responsibilities, while men may focus on financial provision.
• Emotional Labor: Women are frequently expected to manage the emotional well-being of the relationship, providing support and nurturing, often without reciprocal effort from their partners.
• Sexual Dynamics: There can be disparities in sexual satisfaction and autonomy, with women’s desires and needs often being deprioritized.
• Economic Inequality: Financial control and access to resources can be skewed, with men typically having more economic power.

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These imbalances can lead to frustration, resentment, and a lack of intimacy, ultimately affecting the overall health and satisfaction of the relationship

Transitional Stage

Many couples stumble at the transitional stages of a relationship because they fail to develop the art of loving. The attraction stage comes effortlessly for most, requiring little discipline. When attraction is met with acceptance it feels good—very little skill required. However, transitioning to building a loving connection requires work and skill.

There is an art to loving. Creating a healthy companionship by transforming the passion into a productive and protecting relationship is a skilled endeavor. David Richo in summing up his enlightening book on relationships writes, “Still, no one can blame us for not getting relationships right in one lifetime. It takes courageous depth and humor to get the point of it all and to follow the long, winding road to wholeness” (Richo, 2002). Erich Fromm in his classic, the Art of Loving, reminds that succeeding at any art requires discipline, concentration, patience, and supreme concern (Fromm, 2006, pp. 91-92). 

We use this skill to equitably divide tasks, power, and responsibility, allowing each partner to maintain autonomy while still intimately connecting. Some people struggle to understand this concept. Intimacy is often confused with oneness of desires, hopes, and needs. However, this idealistic view of love ignores the individuality we continue to maintain, even after marriage.

Creating New Patterns

When it’s time to do the dishes, certain ways of interacting with others have already been established. Our childhood experiences come to the forefront. However, childhood programming may not fit our adult relationships. Ensuring a fair distribution of household tasks can be significant, as it prompts us to reflect on how we unconsciously adhere to traditional gender roles and how gender inequality can affect the relationship.

Equality in relationships is sometimes warmly received but blindly rejected. Other times, vehemently attacked. Several years ago, when I first posted a draft to an article titled, I Love You, You’re Free to Leave, I received some very poignant and attacking responses. One befuddled man was completely confused, “but then she will do whatever she wants.” Another accused me of cheating and wanting out of a relationship. Sadly, their views of relationships were built on imbalances of power.

Relationship patterns eventually form in any new relationships to fit the context of the relationship. In relationships where a couple lives together, they must form patterns for accomplishing daily and weekly tasks.

John Gottman, a prominent psychologist known for his extensive research on marriage and relationships, found that when men were unable to accept influence from their partner it was “a stable predictor of relationship meltdown.” Influence, he explains, “is not compliance; it is lively give and take. To be powerful in a relationship, we must be capable of accepting influence on some things our partner wants” (Gottman, 2011).

A partnership must find a comfortable pattern for their relationship together through openness and compromise.

Dominant and Compliant Style Relationships

​The success of a relationship, in their view, is based upon a dominant/compliant style, relieving them of the skills identified by Fromm as necessary to love. Relationship failure often surprises many of the men in these relationships. They can’t fathom how their lover would leave when they (the man) was so happy. The imbalance of power served them well, accepting the gender inequality in relationships and they felt no need to adjust.

Gottman and Silver (1999) found in their longitude study found that men who stingily maintained power, unwilling to empower their wives had an 81% relationship failure rate. Egalitarian marriages have more stability.

Sometimes we are love starved. We want to belong. We want to be accepted. Often, these needs hasten our choice of partners. However, after we enter a relationship, we may find our partner has a different picture of relationships. The bond instead of a source of bliss is a struggle. Many relationships are mixed with what author and psychoanalyst Michael Eigen refers to as ‘toxic nourishment.’ Often, love comes mixed with a variety of pollutants (Eigen, 1999). We want love so we settle and suffer. Hoping in time that it will improve.

Sometimes, providing a loving environment may heal the ills of these relationships, removing the toxins. Sadly, often the toxic loving remains a constant throughout the entirety of the relationship. Dominance does not always play out in traditional ways. Sometimes the dominance is established through emotional charged demands for one partner to always placate the desires of the other. “Do what I say. Make me happy.” Many partners are held emotionally hostage, constantly serving the needs of their partner while constantly sacrificing their own relationship needs of love and acceptance.

Cultural Norms and Relationship Imbalances

For most, however, the choice isn’t one of choosing dominance or submission; but a quiet acceptance of cultural norms that continue to persist. The implicit biases piggyback into relationships unnoticed by the hosts. Many studies continue to show a discrepancy in household work distribution. Although women in many industrialized societies continue to carry the brunt of household chores (approximately two-thirds), nearly 40 percent do not perceive this division of housework unfair (Greenstein, 2009).

In wonderful progressive strides for equality, gender still is “the most reliable determinant of time spent doing housework among heterosexual couples.” Gender inequality in relationships persists.

Power and Autonomy

Power in relationships is the power to influence decisions in the partnership towards fulfillment of one’s own goals, interests and well-being (Knudson-Martin & Mahoney, 2005). Marital power (or any relationship’s power) is typically unseen, hiding in the shadows of accepted norms. Just because there is no overt power conflict, doesn’t substantiate claims of equality. Basically, there is no conflict because the wife is acting within the set boundaries of the husband.

When I was still in college, I had a part-time job in the evening at a bank processing center. I worked with a young woman who was around the same age as me. She was in a committed long-term relationship. They owned a condominium together and were students. She told me they were focused on their careers and not interested in starting a family or getting married. She said, “It’s just not my thing.” As time passed, their relationship slowly deteriorated and eventually ended. She then met another young man and they got married. I often wonder if when she said, “it’s just not my thing,” she actually meant, “it just wasn’t his thing.”

​The husband often constrains the wife’s autonomy establishing boundaries and maintaining the ultimate veto power. A 1996 study of couples found that examined couples that reported making decisions together discovered that outcomes of those mutual decisions tended to favor the husbands needs and goals (Zvonkovic et al. 1996; as cited from Knudson-Martin & Mahoney, 2005).

Battles Over Dominance and Power

There are exceptions. Some women are dominant and men submissive. Sometimes the power role is constantly sought by both partners. Chaotic fights for power also stunt relationship growth, each partner intent on beating the other into submission. Accordingly, these relationships come with their own set of problems and solutions. Relationships built around inequality eventually falter. “It is increasingly hard to keep giving without taking as the years and decades go by. Typically, a viable, long-term relationship requires greater equality” (Hindy et al., 1990).

Gay and Kathlyn Hicks suggest in their book, Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment, that “relationships can only exist in equality; inequality is the hallmark of co-dependence” (Hicks & Hicks, 2020). The journey to co-commitment is through equality. They suggest spending a lifetime mastering this wider perspective of equality.

Four Traps to Establishing Gender Equality

Our work for equality begins with rooting out the latent imbalances of power. Carmen Knudson-Martin and Anne Mahoney provide direction, identifying four common traps to establishing gender equality (Knudson-Martin & Mahoney, 1999).

First Trap

The first trap is believing that men’s and women’s behavior arises from “natural” differences and can’t be changed. This mode of thought is a common defense to avoid combating the issue. This justification pokes its nasty head into all discussions of inequality. Our versions of masculinity and feminism must be unfused from characteristics of inequality. Until we do so gender inequality in relationships will continue.

Typically, those that champion these ideas are those holding the dominant position.

Second Trap

The second trap is the unconsciously acting out invisible gender scripts. This pernicious trap allows imbalances of power to work unchecked. We claim equality but in action still march to the traditional beat and roles. Aaron Beck in his classic book, Love is Never Enough, refers to these as the belief we carry into the relationship. He writes, “People enter into a marriage with fixed beliefs about the meaning of certain actions, or non-actions, by their spouses. These beliefs lead them to attach exaggerated significance to those actions” (Beck, 1989, p. 121) His answer to the problem, “To function as a team, both partners have to incorporate the viewpoint of the other into their own perspective” (p. 135).​

Working towards change is difficult. We tire, fatigued by the emotions and energy necessary to adjust faulty patterns. So instead of fight for equality, we return to the norm and allow the differences to unconsciously exist.

Third Trap

A common response to inequality is simply to ignore power differences, assuming that by doing so, the issues of disparity will somehow resolve themselves over time. However, this approach often leads to a perpetuation of existing injustices, as it fails to address the root causes of the inequalities that exist within the relationship. Ignoring these power imbalances can result in a lack of awareness and engagement from those in the privileged position. Change requires us to confront and acknowledge the disparities in order to foster meaningful conversations and implement effective solutions that promote equity and justice for both partners.

What we choose to ignore typically continues to exist, often expanding when left unchecked.

Fourth Trap

The fourth trap preventing equality is prematurely concluding that gender inequality is no longer an issue. Attitudes towards gender and roles are stubborn. A momentary adjustment does not resolve deeply ingrained patterns of behaviors and beliefs. Attitudes live on, acting invisibly against the background of our biased mind. Like a car out of alignment, forces will continue to exert pressure, pulling us from our intended path. We must continue to pay attention to balances and continually adjust.

Complexity

Couples face a confusing, complex and changing world. Strictly defined roles made life was significantly easier. Human beings progress. We’ve moved from the caves, to the fields, to the factories, and now to the offices. Both male and female work hand in hand. We must reshape our cultural beliefs to fit the modern world, bringing equality into our homes. “Shared power is the cornerstone of shared partnerships” (Rabin, 1996. p. 84). To survive these changes, we must keep active negotiations alive, challenging entitlements, and learn new competencies (Knudson-Martin & Mahoney, 2005).

We must keep in mind as we strive to improve the equality of our relationships the path is not always easy. Fighting against perceived norms is a challenge. Alan E. Fruzzetti wrote, “Change requires a lot of effort and often a lot of compromise, and therefore, it involves a certain amount of pain (adjustment pain, sadness over loss and change, and so on).” Fruzzetti continues, “of course, change also can be quite invigorating and fulfilling. But with every new excitement, by definition, something previously cherished is lost, at least in a way” (Fruzzetti, 2006).

Associated Concepts

• Entangled Relationships: These are codependent relationships where the relationship impairs rather than expands the individuals in the relationship.
• Emotional Vulnerability: This refers to the state of being open to and affected by emotions, often in a raw and authentic manner. It involves the willingness to expose and share one’s feelings, fears, and insecurities with others, fostering genuine connections and empathy.
• Separation-Individuation Theory: This theory proposed by Margaret Mahler describes the process through which a child develops a sense of individual identity and separates from their primary caregivers.
• Attachment Theory: This theory is a psychological framework that explains how human beings form emotional bonds and connections with others, particularly in early childhood.
• Complimentary Stereotyping: These are stereotypes that are positive but still reinforce traditional gender roles. While they may seem positive on the surface, they can limit individuals’ potential and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
• Role Theory: This theory seeks to explain how individuals understand and act out their social roles in society. According to this theory, each person has a set of roles that they fulfill, which are defined by a specific position or status in a social group or organization.
• Relationship Trauma: This refers to the emotional and psychological impact of distressing experiences within interpersonal relationships. This can encompass a wide range of negative events such as betrayal, emotional or physical abuse, neglect, or the loss of a significant relationship.
• Fear of Abandonment: This refers to an intense psychological state of fear of rejection that keeps individuals in unhealthy relationships.

A Few Words By Psychology Fanatic

In conclusion, we face the significant challenge of not only sharing in domestic work but also embracing the nuances of emotional attunement, nurturing behaviors, and emotional intimacy. This endeavor is particularly demanding for those who have been socialized in traditional Western contexts, where stoicism and self-reliance are often valued over vulnerability and connection. The art of love requires a skillset that encompasses empathy, effective communication, and an openness to growth—qualities that demand our continued focus and effort. Fortunately, as we strive to refine these abilities, we open ourselves up to deeper connections with our partners. By fostering equality within our relationships, we can cultivate a space where both individuals feel valued and understood.

Ultimately, honing our skills in loving allows us to keep the fear of abandonment at bay. When we consciously choose to abandon traditional gender inequalities that may hinder genuine connection, we pave the way for greater closeness and security between partners. Rather than engaging in power struggles or manipulations rooted in outdated norms, we encourage an environment where both individuals can flourish independently while still cherishing their partnership. As we navigate this journey together—embracing challenges with patience and understanding—we can transform our intimate relationships into fulfilling partnerships characterized by mutual support and respect. In doing so, we move toward a healthier future for ourselves and those around us.

Last Update: December 23, 2025

References:

Beck, Aaron (1989). Love Is Never Enough: How Couples Can Overcome Misunderstandings, Resolve Conflicts, and Solve Relationship Problems Through Cognitive Therapy. Harper Perennial; Reprint edition. ISBN-10: 0060916044
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Eigen, Michael (1999). Toxic Nourishment. Routledge; 1st edition. ISBN: 9781855752122; DOI: 10.4324/9780429484124
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Fromm, Erich (2006). The Art of Loving. Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Anniversary edition. ISBN: 9780061129735; APA Record: 2006-01589-000
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Fruzzetti, Alan E. (2006). The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation. New Harbinger Publications; 1st edition. ISBN-10: 1458746127
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Gottman, John M. (2011). The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples. W. W. Norton & Company; Illustrated edition. ISBN-10: 0393707407; APA Record: 2011-06848-000
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Gottman, John & Silver, Nan (1999) The Seven Principles for Making Marriages Work. Harmony; 1st edition. ISBN-10: 0553447718
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Greenstein, T. (2009). National Context, Family Satisfaction, and Fairness in the Division of Household Labor. Journal of Marriage and Family, 71(4). DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00651.x
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Hicks, Ester; Hicks, Jerry (2020). The Astonishing Power of Emotions: Let Your Feelings Be Your Guide. Hay House Inc.; 3rd edition. ISBN-10: 1401960162
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Hindy, Carl; Schwarz, J. Conrad; Brodsky, Archie (1990). If This Is Love, Why Do I Feel So Insecure? Learn How to Deal With Anxiety, Jealousy, and Depression in Romance—and Get the Love You Deserve! Fawcett; 1st Ballantine Books Ed edition. ISBN-10: 0449218597
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Knudson‐Martin, C., & Mahoney, A. (1999). Beyond Different Worlds: A “Postgender” Approach to Relational Development. Family Process, 38(3). DOI: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.1999.00325.x
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Knudson-Martin, C., & Mahoney, A. R. (2005). Moving beyond Gender: Processes That Create Relationship Equality. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy,31(2), 235. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2005.tb01557.x
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Rabin, C. (1996). Equal Partners – Good Friends: Empowering Couples through Therapy. New York: Routledge. ISBN: 0415116155
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Richo, David (2002) How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving. Shambhala; 1 edition. ISBN-10: 1611809541
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