couples

Question 1

Statistics of domestic violence

Answer 1

• 1 in 4 women
• 6% of cases are men
• 30% of cases being during pregnancy
• 2 women die a week from domestic abuse
• affects children emotionally and socially
• a woman suffers 35 assaults before making a report
• police are reluctant to record as they are not willing to get involved with the family
• it is assumed that if a woman is experiencing domestic violence they are free to leave

Question 2

What are the radial feminist explanation for domestic violence?

Answer 2

• men are the enemy and they are the oppressors and exploiters of women
• men dominate through domestic violence
• they see the family and marriage as the key institution in patriarchal society
• domestic violence serves to preserve the power that all men have over women

Question 3

How can the radial feminist explanation for domestic violence be evaluated?
2 evaluations

Answer 3

• men can also be victims and also occurs and same sex couples
• HOWEVER, feminists would argue back and say tat only 6% of cases are men
• liberals believe that the march of progress allows for women to be able to escape, more laws in placebo give women the freedom to do so, eg marital rape act, divorce reform act, better protection like domestic shelters

Question 4

What are the materialistic explanations for domestic violence?

Answer 4

• economic and material factor like inequalities in income
• Wilkinson sees domestic violence as the result of the stress on family members caused by social inequality
• those on low incomes are more likely to experience higher levels of stress therefore reduces their chance of maintaining a stable relationship
• those with less power, status, wealth are at greater risk

Question 5

How can the materialistic explanations of domestic violence be evaluated?

Answer 5

• They do not explain why women are more likely to suffer domestic violence than men - marxist feminist seek to explain this

Question 6

What are the marxist feminist explanations of domestic violence?

Answer 6

• inequality because of capitalism causes domestic violence
• Fran Ansley ays that women are the ‘takers of shit’
• She argues domestic violence is the product of capitalism as male workers are exploited at work and take their anger out on women

Question 7

How can the marxist feminist explanations of domestic violence be evaluated?

Answer 7

• it is economically deterministic - it takes the blame away from the individual an not all working class men

Question 8

What do Millet and firestone argue about patriarchy?

Answer 8

Millet and Firestone argue that all societies have been found on patriarchy.

Question 9

What are Bott’s joint and segregated roles?

Answer 9

segregated - couple have separated roles and responsibilities. Leisure activities are separated.
Joint roles - couples share paid work, domestic tasks and child care. Share leisure activities

Question 10

What does Oakley argue about the division of labour?

Answer 10

• men’s ‘help’ with housework is tiny
• men are only involved in the fun bits
• cause mothers to miss out
• men only ‘take interest’

Question 11

What does Willmott and young argue about the division of labour?

Answer 11

• labour is equally divided
• family is symmetrical because their roles are symmetrical and shared equally
• earn a dual income

Question 12

What does Gershuny argue about the impact of paid work on women?
Does he believe women have a dual burden?

Answer 12

• Gershuny found that women who do paid work do less work within the home
• wives with no job did 83% of housework
• wives with part time did 82%
• wives with full time did 73%
• he also found that the longer a woman was in paid work for, the more housework her husband did
• women do not have a dual burden

Question 13

Do Hilary Silver and Schor believe women have a dual burden?

Answer 13

No
Hilary Silver and Juliet School argue that increased technology means women have less timely housework to do. They can afford it because they are now working (dual income)
They say this has led to the ‘death of the housewife role’

Question 14

Do Elsa Ferri and Kate Smith believe women women have a dual burden?

Answer 14

Yes
Elsa Ferri and Kate Smith provide evidence that women suffer from a dual burden - double the work because they go out to work and also have to work in the home.
They took a sample of 1,589 33-year-olds and found that in less than 4% of the cases the man was in charge of child care.

Question 15

Does Lydia Morris believe women have a dual burden?

Answer 15

Yes
She found that unemployed men see domestic tasks as ‘women’s work’.
Their masculinity may be already decreased from unemployment and they don’t want to ruin their ‘macho’ manly image any further.

Question 16

Do Duncombe and Marsden believe women have a dual burden?

Answer 16

Yes
They actually found that there may actually be a ‘triple burden’ because women are used for emotion support, as well as domestic and paid work.

Question 17

What does Gillian Dunne say about housework?

Answer 17

Gillian Dunne says that there are ‘gender scripts’ setting out male and female roles.
These are social expectations of men and women doing set things; similar to Warde and Hetherington’s idea of sex-typing tasks.
Dunne demonstrates her point by showing that in lesbian couple’s housework and childcare is because there are no gender scripts to live up to.
In her study of 36 co-habitating lesbian couples with children, she found domestic tasks were shared.

Question 18

Does Man-yee Kan believe women have a dual burden?

Answer 18

It depends
He found that income from employment, age and education affected how much housework women did; better-paid, younger women did less housework.