Gender roles and domestic labour

Question 1

Technology affecting domestic labour

Answer 1

• technology making housework easier (eg robot vacuums) - Hertog suggests that 50-60% of housework could be performed by technology
• Schor argues that these developments haven’t saved any labour as they’ve increased standards of cleanliness

Question 2

Reasons the family is more symmetrical (based on functionalism) - they support the ‘march of progress’ view

Answer 2

• new technology saving time on housework
• improved living standards - people spend more time at home so men also want to take care of it
• commercialisation of housework and the middle class outsourcing housework
• economically active mothers - since 2014 parents can share parental leave how they want (only for the first year) but this doesn’t necessarily affect housework
• decline in extended families - men have to step up for childcare as can’t rely on other relatives
• weakened gender identities - postmodernists suggest there’s been a shift away from ‘biologically determined’ gender roles

Question 3

Young and Wilmott (functionalists) - march of progress view

Answer 3

• conducted studies of (mostly working class) family life in London 1950s-70s
• believed families were becoming more equal and democratic
• argued that families in the 70s were ‘symmetrical’
• less patriarchal, less male-dominated and more equally balanced
• they concluded that 72% of men do housework

Question 4

Evidence of more symmetry in the household

Answer 4

• more than 90% of families have both parents working or seeking work
• more women in higher education - 51% female in uni in 2021 (HESA)
• 70% of working age women have jobs
• 36% of couples say the woman is the main carer
• fathers do around twice as much paid work as mothers

Question 5

Parson’s conjugal roles (functionalist)

Answer 5

• argued that the ideal model of the family was characterised by segregated conjugal roles with a clear division of labour
• women should play the expressive role and men should do the instrumental role
• believed that these roles are biologically predetermined

Question 6

Evidence that the family is not symmetrical

Answer 6

• 1 in 3 people in 2012 believed a mother should stay home with a child below school age
• 60% of women say they do more than half the housework in their household
• the most common housework for men is repairs, gardening etc which all can be done on weekends but women do laundry, cleaning, cooking etc which must all be done during the working week
• women take on the mental load of organising housework - Daminger found husbands referred to their wives as ‘project manager’
• Oakley found that 70% of women (1970s) were dissatisfied
• UK time use survey suggests mothers do almost twice as much care work and housework
• 15% of men never cook a meal compared to 3% of women (ONS 2001)
• 54% of women in 2022 said they did all the laundry (Yougov)

Question 7

Oakley (feminist) criticism of Wilmott and Young’s idea of the ‘symmetrical family’

Answer 7

• criticises suggestion that 72% of men help with housework - their study only asked if they help at least once a week so it could just be taking the bins out once
• found that domestic labour allocation was more equal in middle class than working class

Question 8

Sanz and Sanz - impact of housework on the wage gap

Answer 8

• housework reduces energy and flexibility for work
• women tend to do jobs that are routine and can’t be put off until weekend (eg cooking) but men can delay their jobs (eg repairs)
• therefore housework is more likely to interfere with women’s paid employment

Question 9

Daminger (2019) - ‘cognitive dimension of household labour’

Answer 9

• men referred to their wives using terms like ‘project manager’ or ‘keeping track of more’
• identified 4 stages of mental work relating to housework - anticipating needs, identifying options, deciding among the options and monitoring results
• women did more in all 4 stages

Question 10

Boulton - definition of housework

Answer 10

childcare is “essentially all about exercising responsibility for another person who is not fully responsible for themselves and it entails seeing to all aspects of the child’s security and wellbeing, their growth and development at any and all times”
- “all times” so it’s constant labour

Question 11

Kan et al - male contribution to housework

Answer 11

• it has risen from 90 mins per day in 1960s up to 148 mins per day in 2004
• but - inequality is especially pronounced in families with children under 15

Question 12

Craig - women doing more housework than men

Answer 12

• found there’s a ‘partnership penalty’ for women as their housework increases when they have a partner (for men it decreases)
• after having kids there’s also a ‘motherhood penalty’ where it increases even more

Question 13

The average housewife’s labour is worth

Answer 13

at least a salary of £31 000 per year (Legal and General, 2013)

Question 14

Who benefits from domestic labour

Answer 14

Radical feminists suggest men only benefit as the family is patriarchal and reinforces male power

Marxists feminists suggest it benefits capitalism by creating free labour, teaching capitalism to new generations and supporting worker’s happiness

Question 15

Measuring domestic division of labour

Answer 15

• Oakley points out that in Wilmott and Young’s study, 72% of men said they helped at least once a week, but this could just mean hoovering once or ironing their own clothes, not an equal split of housework
• Boulton argues many surveys exaggerate how much childcare men do
• both Bott and Oakley’s research use very small samples in London - not very representative

Question 16

Women’s triple shift

Answer 16

many female partners now take on three jobs - paid work, domestic labour and emotional work

Question 17

Delphy and Leonard - women’s emotional work

Answer 17

• emotional work is concerned with maintaining the bonds of affection, moral support, friendship and love which underpin cohesion and solidarity
• it requires active effort
• this is an important part of women’s emotional work in the home

Question 18

Duncombe and Marsden - women’s emotional work

Answer 18

• many long-term relationships are held together by women putting in emotional work
• fits with Parsons’ idea of women’s ‘expressive role’

Question 19

Evidence for women’s emotional labour

Answer 19

• after separation, 1/3 of father have no or little contact with their children, and 1/8 lose contact altogether

Question 20

Taylor-Gooby (2005) - public attitudes to domestic labour

Answer 20

whilst the public assume a high degree of gender equality in the workplace, many presume women still do most domestic labour - 48% of the public said mothers should not work when their children are under school age

Question 21

Oakley quote on domestic labour (1974)

Answer 21

“as long as the blame is laid on the women’s head for an empty larder or a dirt house it is not meaningful to talk about marriage as a ‘joint’ or ‘equal’ partnership”

Question 22

Inequalities in power and authority in contemporary families - decision making

Answer 22

Edgell (1980) - women usually are responsible for relatively unimportant decisions like home decoration and clothes, whereas men have the final say in important decisions like moving house or taking out loans
However, there is now more equal decision-making

Question 23

Inequalities in power and authority in contemporary families - final decision-making and money management

Answer 23

• Pahl (2008) - growing individualisation in couple’s finances with each partner having some independence (eg their own bank accounts and credit cards) and this is more common among younger couples, but as more women work part time or not at all, some men still play the breadwinner role
• Pahl also suggested that sharing finances can increase inequality in relationships because men earn more than women (on average 8% in the UK 2023) and as women are more responsible for paying the costs of children

Question 24

Effects of housework and childcare on women’s careers

Answer 24

• limits the jobs and hours mother can do
• 3/4 of part-time workers are women
• 42% of women in paid employment work part time, compared to 12% of men

Question 25

Inequalities in employment

Answer 25

• women who have children can be seen as unreliable (could get pregnant again or be absent)
• employers may not want women to be in training programmes because they think they’ll eventually leave to have a family
• women with promising careers may leave for childcare and therefore miss out on promotions etc (esp between 20 and 30) - so more women have children later (30.9 years old on average 2023)
• Gatrell (2004) - women returning to work after children are discriminated against and may be forced to take a lower position or labelled as ‘jelly heads’
• it is mainly women who give up work to care for children, the elderly or the sick
• married or cohabiting children may be more likely to move house for their male partner’s work
• Gatrell et al (2011) - employers’ views about mothers being the main or only carer are increasingly out of date