Gender Roles in Family

Question 1

What does Conjugal roles refer to

Answer 1

The roles played by men and women in marriage and families

Question 2

How does Parsons see Gender roles in the family

Answer 2

Sees men as ‘instrumental leaders’ who are biologically best suited to the role of breadwinner, while he describes women as ‘expressive leaders’ who are best suited to an emotional role as nurturers responsible for primary socialisation and stabilising their husbands personality

Question 3

In the 1950s and 60s what did sociologists claim

Answer 3

That conjugal roles were evolving, especially in middle-class families

Question 4

How were conjugal roles evolving

Answer 4

From segregated conjugal roles in which men and women occupied distinct and separate roles both in the family and in their leisure time, to joint conjugal roles, in which husbands and wives became more dependant on each other because geographical mobility meant they no longer lived close to their extended kin and more likely to share housework etc.

Question 5

What did functionalists Young and Wilmott (1973) argue

Answer 5

That marriage was becoming more egalitarian and democratic and that joint conjugal roles were becoming the norm in nuclear families

Question 6

What idea are feminists critical of

Answer 6

Of both Parsons and Young and Wilmotts ideas

Question 7

What did Ann Oakleys (1974) study find

Answer 7

Her study on housewives found little evidence of equality in marriage. She found that only 15% of husbands in her study demonstrated a high level of participation in housework. This rose to only 25% in childcare.

Question 8

What did Oakley observe

Answer 8

That men did not see housework or childcare as ‘shared’ work. Most saw themselves as ‘helping’ women with ‘her work’

Question 9

What do Radical feminists argue

Answer 9

That the way gender roles are organised in families reflects the patriarchal nature of traditional family life. They argue that patriarchal ideas dominate all aspects of British culture.

Question 10

How are Feminist theories criticised

Answer 10

They often fail to explain why women’s roles vary across different cultures and why the mother-housewife role does not exist in all societies

Question 11

What do Marxist feminists argue

Answer 11

That domestic labour performed by women serves the needs for capitalism in that it maintains the present workforce and reproduces future labour power.

Question 12

What do Cox and Federici argue (Marxists)

Answer 12

That under capitalism women have assumed the role of breeders, housewives and consumers of the goods manufactured by capitalism’s factories

Question 13

What is some supporting evidence for the Marxist Feminist theory that women’s unpaid labour benefits capitalist economy

Answer 13

It was estimated in 2016 by the ONS that unpaid work at the home, mainly carried out by women, is officially valued at £1.01 trillion a year, which is equivalent to 56% of the UK’s gross domestic product.

Marxist feminists have long argued that women should receive a wage from the state for the hours they spend on housework and childcare

Question 14

What do many studies suggest about women

Answer 14

That women often carry a dual burden. They often hold down full-time paid jobs but are unfairly still largely responsible for the bulk of the domestic labour

Question 15

Define dual burden

Answer 15

Many married women work full-time but are still primarily responsible for the bulk of housework and childcare

Question 16

What did Jonathan Gershuny do

Answer 16

Used a ‘time budgeting’ approach to record how much time women spend on domestic labour compared with men. He asked men and women to keep a time diary documenting how much time they spend on housework and childcare

Question 17

What did Gershuny find

Answer 17

That women, despite holding down jobs, were often responsible for 60% of domestic work

Question 18

What did Gershuny argue

Answer 18

That there had been a process of lagged adaptation in which women’s roles have changed more quickly than men’s.

Question 19

What did Gershuny predict

Answer 19

That the next generation of men is more likely to practise symmetry with regard to domestic labour

Question 20

Define lagged adaptation

Answer 20

The idea that men are slow to adapt to social change

Question 21

What do Duncombe and Marsden (1995) argue

Answer 21

That any measurement of equality within households must take account of emotion work. This role involves acting in ways which are emotional benefit to others.

Question 22

Define emotion work

Answer 22

The work involved in meeting the emotional needs of family members which is mainly carried out by women

Question 23

What do Duncombe and Marsden say about women taking the responsibility of emotion work

Answer 23

That women do take on the major responsibility for the emotional wellbeing if their partners and children in addition to paid work and responsibility for housework and childcare.

In this sense, women actually work a triple shift

Question 24

What do Postmodernists point out

Answer 24

That family practices are increasingly diverse and fluid and subject to change as family circumstances change.

Question 25

What have studies shown about diversity in the domestic division of labour

Answer 25

That traditional and patriarchal ideas or ‘gender scripts’ may not dominate in households that are not heterosexual.

Question 26

What was Gillian Dunne’s study and what did it find

Answer 26

Of 37 cohabiting lesbian couples with dependant children found evidence of symmetry in how they organised their domestic division of labour.

She found that both partners gave equal importance to each others careers and viewed childcare positively

However, she found that where one partner did more paid work that the other, the time that each partner spent on domestic work was likely to be unequal

Question 27

What did Man Yee Kan (2008) find

Answer 27

That middle-class women do less housework than their working-class counterparts because they can afford to employ others to do the work for them

Question 28

What does Smith observe

Answer 28

That despite all the advances in women’s rights and choices, there are still constraints operating in women’s lives that prevent equality with men in the home.

He points out that social policy favours maternal leave over paternal leave and that because men earn more than women, the latter are more likely to choose flexible working in order to care for the child’s needs.