GENDER RELATIONSHIPS

Question 1

Jan Pahl and Carolyn Vogler (Money management)-

Answer 1

• There’s two main types of control over family income: the allowance system
• (where men give their wives an allowance out of which they have to budget to meet the family’s needs, with the man retaining any surplus income for himself),
• pooling (where both partners have access to income and joint responsibility for expenditure, for example, a joint bank account), with pooling on the increase and becoming the most common money management system, which suggests a move towards a more equal split in financial decisions.
• However, where pooled income is controlled by the husbands, this tends to give men more power in major financial decisions; they found that even where there was pooling, the men usually made the major financial decisions.
• Also, as Pahl notes, just pooling money doesn’t necessarily mean there is equality.

Question 2

Eval (Jeffrey Weeks et al)-

Answer 2

Found that the typical pattern was pooling some money for household spending, together with separate accounts for personal spending. This money management system thus reflects a value of ‘co-independence’- where there us sharing, but where each partner retains control over some money and maintains a sense of independence.

Question 3

Carol Smart (PLP, differences between hetero and same-sex money management)-

Answer 3

• The personal life perspective focuses on the meanings couples give to who controls money.
• From this perspective, the meanings that money may have in relationships cannot be taken for granted. For example, while we might assume that one partner controlling the money is a sign of inequality in the relationship, for some couples it may not have this meaning.
• For example, there is evidence that same-sex couples often five a different meaning to the control of money in the relationship.
• Smart found that gay men and lesbians attached no importance to who controlled the money and were perfectly happy to leave this to their partners.
• They did not see the control of money as meaning either equality or inequality in the relationships.
• She also found there is greater freedom for same-sex couples to do what suits them as a couple.
• She suggests that this may be because they do not enter relationships with the same ‘historical, gendered, heterosexual baggage of culture meanings around money’ that see money as a source of power.

Question 4

Eval (Feminists)-

Answer 4

• Feminists argue that the reason behind these differences is not because of couples re-defining their own meaning of money, but as result of the lack of patriarchal restrictions upon family members.
• Same-sex couples are not bound by the same restrictions that heterosexual couples are, such as inequality in earnings or ‘cultural conditioning’, meaning that their financial positions are naturally more equal.

Question 5

Russell and Rebecca Dobash (Feminist, domestic violence)-

Answer 5

• Domestic violence does not occur randomly, but follows particular social patterns and these patterns have social causes; most strikingly is that it’s mainly violence by men against woman.
• The Dobash’s also confirm this pattern, with their research in Scotland being based on police and court records and interviews with woman in woman’s refuges.
• They cite examples of wives being slapped, pushed about, beaten, raped or killed by their husbands.
• They found that violent incidents could be set off by what a husband saw as a challenge to his authority, such as his wife asking why he was late home for a meal.
• They argue that marriage legitimates violence against woman by conferring power and authority on husbands and dependency on wives.

Question 6

Eval (Crime Survey for England and Wales 2013)-

Answer 6

It found a relatively narrow gender gap: 7.3% of woman (1.2 million) compared with 5% of men (800,000) reported having experienced domestic abuse in the previous year.