Gender roles (Unit 3) Flashcards
What are conjugal bonds?
Where the partners share responsibility for domestic tasks and both do paid employment.
What is a social construct?
Concept that exists not in objective reality, but as a result of human interaction. It exists because humans agree that it exists.
What does Parsons view on conjugal roles?
He believed that men take up the instrumental role of breadwinner and women the expressive role of mother and homemaker because they are biologically suited to these specific roles. Women have the ability to bear children, so they are “naturally” best suited to raising them as well. At the same time, men’s physical abilities set them up best for working and earning wages. (It is biological) - done through primary socialisation.
What is the march of progress’s view on conjugal roles.
The ‘March of Progress’ view is the assumption that there has been a move from segregated to integrated conjugal roles. This idea is put forward by Willmott and Young in ‘The Symmetrical Family’. They noted a trend towards joint conjugal roles and the symmetrical family, where conjugal roles are shared equally.
What is Anne Oakley’s view on conjugal roles?
Anne Oakley researched housework and found that women do the majority of it. Noticed that when men claim they participate in domestic activities such as ironing their clothes. This meant that women took up a “dual burden” of a paid job and domestic duties”.
