Gender roles and Relationships Flashcards
What did Elizabeth Bott (1857) study?
The roles that men and women play in the family unit
What did Bott refer to the roles as?
Conjugal roles
2 types: Joint and segregated
What are joint conjugal roles?
Where couples share tasks such as housework, childcare and spend their leisure time together
What is segregated conjugal roles?
Where couples have separate roles
What did Young and Wilmott (1973) suggest?
- Take a march of progress view
- See family life is gradually improving for all its members
- Suggested the symmetrical family
What is the symmetrical family?
- Similar roles between men and women
- W now go out to work
- men help with HW & CC
- Couples spend their leisure time together
What did Wilmott and Young study?
- Found the SF was more common among younger couples, those geographically and socially isolated and the more affluent
Why have they seen a rise in symmetrical families?
- Changes in position of women
- Geographical mobility
- New technology
- Higher standards of living
What is the feminist view of housework?
Argue that little has changed and men and women remain unequal in the family
Why does Ann Oakley criticise Young and Wilmott’s view?
Argues it’s exaggerated and their evidence was hardly convincing
What did Oakley find in her research on housewives?
- Only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in HW
- Only 25% had high participation in CC
What did Mary Boulton (1983) find?
Found that fewer than 20% of husbands had a major role in CC
What is the dual burden?
- Fem & Smith (1996)
- Paid work outside the home & unpaid domestic work
What is the triple burden?
- Duncombe & Marsden (1995)
- Paid work outside home & unpaid domestic work & emotional work for immediate and extended family members
What did Gershuny (1994) find?
That W working FT is leading to more equal division of labour in the home
Man-yee Kans case study
- W in high careers do less HH chores than those in lower paid work
- Every £10,000 increase in a W wage reduces time spent doing HH by nearly 2hrs
Arber & Ginn case study
Found better paid MC W were able to buy commercially produced products and services
What did Crompton and Lyonette (2008) identify?
2 diff explanations for the unequal division of labour: Cultural and material
What is the cultural explanation for unequal division of labour?
- Determined by patriarchal norms and values that shape gender roles
- Equality will only be achieved when norms about general roles are changed
What is the material explanation for unequal division of labour?
- W generally earn less than M which means that it’s economically rational for W to do more HW & CC
What did Pahl & Volger suggest?
- 2 types of financial control: pooling and allowance system
What did Edgell (1980) study and suggest?
- Studied professional couples and how they made decisions
- 3 diff type of decisions made which were made by diff person: very important, important and less important
What did Laurie & Gershuny find about great equality in financial control?
- By 1995 70% of couples said they had an equal say
- However it was high earning women
How many murders involve a partner or ex-partner?
More then 2/3
What is the estimate of men and women suffering from domestic violence?
1 in 4 women
1 in 6 men
How many assaults are committed by men against their female partners?
89%
How many people are killed each year by a current or former partner?
150 people and 80% are women
How many victims do not seek help because they are afraid the violence will get worse?
2/3
How many serious domestic violence incidents are reported to the police?
1/4
How many domestic violence incidents that have been reported resulted in conviction?
1 in 20
How many women have been raped?
1 in 4
How many rapes are not reported to the police?
95%
How many roses take place in the home of the victim?
3/4
When was rape within marriage seen as a criminal offence?
1991
What do radical feminists say about domestic violence?
For men to exercise their patriarchal power, to control and intimidate women and to keep them in a state of submission
What do Dobash and Dobash argue abt make violence against women?
- The W’s subordinate role and unequal power is enforced and maintained and that it’s tolerated and reinforced by political and cultural institutions
