Gender Roles, Domestic Labour , Power Relationships Flashcards
Sexual division of labour
Difference between the roles of men and women within them family. Then being the breadwinners and women completing housework, emotional work and childcare.
GERSHUNY - families in which the wife works full time , husbands carry out more domestic labour
Symmetrical family
When a family has equality of power relations and responsibilities
Joint conjugal roles
When a couple share all duties and responsibilities of the relationship and household
Triple shift
Green 1996: unequal leisure time for women who have a break from both paid and unpaid house work
Term to explain women’s responsibility of being in paid employment, domestic labour and emotional work
March of progess
Modern couples have abandoned old fashioned and unequal marital roles and now have joint conjugal roles which was shaped by four major social changes in the 60s and 70s :
- slum clearance programmes which relocated many working class families to council estates
- greater educational and job opportunities resulted in greater geographical mobility
- women went out to work in greater number and made a significant economic contribution to the standard of living
- dual career symmetrical families could now afford to buy goods and labour saving devices
Marxist feminism
Sees capitalism affecting women as well as patriarchy
Sees gender as constructed
And draws attention to the ‘dual burden’ women face under both capitalism and patriarchy - women must provide emotional stability for their husbands who suffer under capitalism.
Functionalism
Does not accept the sex/gender distinction.
Believe that gendered roles are grounded in biological differences between males and females
Parsons
Men’s and women’s roles are necessary within the family for it to perform its two main functions: socialisation and adult stabilisation
A mans roles as the breadwinner is instrumental
A woman’s role is expressive
Feminism
Gendered differences are a product of the patriarchy.
Feminine characterises are assumed to be lesser than masculine thereby creating a social system in which women are devalued and oppressed
Murray
Women are inherently more inclined to be emotive and caring
If the nuclear family is a natural form of society, so must be the gender divisions
Radical feminists
Domestic gender roles don’t just socialise boys and girls differently but are specifically created by men, for men
Delphy (feminism)
Reproduction of gender roles is in the oppression and exploitation of women.
Duncombe and Marsden
Many women have now moved into the workplace heightening their oppression.
They also perform a ‘triple shift’
Beck
Men now define their identity based on their status as a father, rather than by their career.
ONS - increased by 30,000 between 2002 and 2012 of the number of men who fit into this category
Househusband
A man who performs tasks traditionally viewed as feminine
However.. mothers still provide 74% of all childcare time
Power-radical feminists
Men maintain control of the family deliberately through enforcing female submissiveness
Pahl
Men continued to maintain control of financial expenditure, even within families were both partners were earning
Financial power can allow for a significant level of control
ONS- domestic abus e
1.2 million experienced domestic abuse, in comparison to 700,000 men
Radical feminists argue what about domestic abuse
It is used as a tool employed by men to assert and maintain their power over women
Dobash and Dobash
Draws attention to issues when studying domestic abuse : underreported and hard to fine
Masculinity may deter men from reporting incidents .
Elizabeth Bott 1957
Working class couples in the 1950: are more likely to organise their domestic labour along segregated lines- men being breadwinners and women taking responsibility of housework and childcare
Middle class couples had joint conjugal roles and were more likely to share house work
Ann Oakley
Critical of young and Wilmott cause they don’t distinguish between childcare tasks and responsibilities l. Husbands saw housework and childcare as “her work” rather than a joint chore
The dual burden - ferri smith
Surveyed 1589 families in which both mothers and fathers worked and they found that just 4% of fathers equally shared childcare responsibilities
Distribution of domestic labour
Craig 2007 found that women do between one third and half more housework than men and this inequality begins when a couple move in together
Distribution of domestic labour : Ben Galim and Thompson
Challenges wilmott and young’s findings and found that 8/10 married women did more housework than men
Decision making : Edgell
Study of professional couples found that very important decisions were either taken by the father alone or taken jointly and important decisions are either or seldom by the wife alone
