Gender Inequality

Question 1

What are the four explanations for gender inequality?

Answer 1

1. Women must be submissive wives to ensure a pure bloodline
2. Men need to exercise their control in the home if they do not have control of other areas of life
3. Women do unpaid labour in home and this is essential to the smooth running of capitalism
4. Women act as disposable and cheap part of the workforce which benefits capitalist society

Question 2

Who said women must be submissive wives to ensure a pure bloodline?

Answer 2

• Engels (Marxist)

Question 3

Who said men need to exercise their control in the home if they do not have control of other areas of life?

Answer 3

• Zaretsky (Marxist)

Question 4

Who said women do unpaid labour in home and this is essential to the smooth running of capitalism?

Answer 4

• Benston (Marxist feminist)

Question 5

Who said women act as disposable and cheap part of the workforce which benefits capitalist society?

Answer 5

• Bruegel (Marxist feminist)

Question 6

Why must women be submissive wives to ensure a pure bloodline?

Answer 6

• women’s subordinate position is a result of ownership of private property and the development of nuclear family
• exploiter - exploited relationship that Kant faced in the workplace become reflected in the home and within relationships between men and women

Question 7

Why do men need to exercise their control in the home if they do not have control in other areas of life?

Answer 7

• family life gave proletarian men something they could control and a space where they would be the boss
• Marxists see families as a conservative institution that helps to preserve capitalism

Question 8

Why do women do unpaid labour in the home and this is essential to the smooth running of capitalism?

Answer 8

• unpaid domestic labour of women helps support the capitalist system
• on a daily basis women renew men’s ability to go out of work and create profits for the ruling class by doing unpaid labour in the home
• Benston is critical of the nuclear family and women’s role within it

Question 9

Why do women act as a disposable and cheap part of the workforce which benefits a capitalist society?

Answer 9

• because of women’s unpaid domestic labour, they are readily available to work outside the home when society require them to do so
• ruling class use women as a cheap reserve army of labour