Global Economy 10: The Industrious Revolution

Question 1

Cite De Vries’ remark when he answered ‘was the Industrial Revolution a demand-side phenomenon?’

Answer 1

Economists are always ready to acknowledge supply and
demand - production and consumption - as paired forces in the
shaping market economics but they do not commonly accord
to demand a causative role in the process of economic growth.
Studies of modern economic growth are inevitably
founded on a decisive “supply-side” advance, which
economic historians have variously located in technological
change, enlarged supplies of capital, energy and raw materials,
and new institutions that allowed these factors of production
to be deployed more effectively… Yet the accumulating
evidence for an earlier increase of per capita income in
northwestern Europe paired with a major refinement of
material life casts serious doubt on the orthodoxy that
the Industrial Revolution was the actual starting point
for long-term economic growth. (De Vries 2008)

Question 2

Briefly state what the Industrious Revolution is

Answer 2

The Industrious Revolution was a period in early modern Europe lasting from approximately 1600 to 1800 in which household productivity and consumer demand increased despite the absence of major technological innovations that would mark the later Industrial Revolution. Proponents of the Industrious Revolution theory argue that the increase in working hours and individual consumption traditionally associated with the Industrial Revolution actually began several centuries earlier, and were largely a result of choice rather than coercion

Question 3

State McKendrick’s quote on the “Consumer Revolution”

Answer 3

The family household generated demand for manufactured
goods, as well as generating the income to pay for them.
Working mothers could no longer make their own clothes and
the clothes of their children, they could make less of their own
food… as one contemporary commented, everything a
working woman wore was manufactured except her face:
instead of being taught to mend, they were taught to
spend. (McKendrick, 1982)

Question 4

What was the “Consumer Revolution”?

Answer 4

• Focused on 19C consumption of manufactured goods
• Households demanded goods both to indicate status and to
  defend against the purchases of others
• Import bills for luxury products led domestic firms to import
  substitute
• Different technical and raw materials required innovation not
  just imitation
• Marketing and commercial skills also developed
• Income earning opportunities increased for women and
  children
• Women used their increased household power as consumers

Question 5

What is De Vries’ description on the Industrious Revolution?

Answer 5

• The industrious revolution was a process of
  household-based resource reallocation that increased both
  the supply of marketed commodities and labor and the
  demand for market-supplied goods. (De Vries, 1994)
• Draws on McKendrick’s “Consumer Revolution” in 18C
  Europe and Hayami’s “Industrious Revolution” in
  industrialising Japan
• Argues that the Industrious Revolution began before the 18C
  Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) → demand side
  phenomenon that preceded the IR
• Change in household-level consumption patterns → based on
  expanding trade empire and consumption choices
• Required a change in employment pattens to match (hours
  worked)
• Places the IR in a broader historical setting

Question 6

Describe the narrative behind a demand-side revolution (drivers)

Answer 6

• After the “Great Discoveries” there were many new products
  that became available for consumption
• America bought potatoes, maize, sweet and hot peppers,
  turkey and chocolate
• Increased trade made tea, silk, china and sugar readily
  available
• The rise of manufacturing replaced home with market
  production
• These extra choices led households to want to consume goods
  beyond their existing budget constraints
• Demand for new types and combinations of goods then drove
  the supply side
• Women and children became fully employed in the market
  economy in response to demand

Question 7

What are the ‘Great Discoveries’?

Answer 7

Christopher Columbus arrived in America in 1492 and Vasco da Gama opened up the route to India in 1498. Under the impetus of Portugal and Spain, new trade routes were opened to reach the « Indies » without having to pass through the intermediaries what were then the Arab coun­tries and Venice. The Portuguese chose to go round Africa via the Cape of Good Hope to reach India; this was done by Vasco da Gama in 1498. The Kingdom of Spain supported the project of Genoese Christopher Columbus to open a western route to India, which would eventually link Europe up to the Americas in 1492. These « Great Dis­cov­eries » mark the start of a globalization process by con­trib­uting to the strong growth of trade between con­tinents: the « tri­an­gular trade » between Europe, Africa and the Americas, the trade between Europe and Asia thanks to the pre­cious metals mined in the « new world » colonies

Question 8

What does a ‘demand-side revolution’ imply?

Answer 8

• Consumer demand grew regardless of wages → Households
  increased demand for goods in the marketplace
• Households also (simultaneously) increased both the supply of
  commodities and labour → Households increased the supply
  of money earning activities
• This was based on a complex decision on how to allocate
  time inside and outside of the household
  Driven partially by commercial incentives (relative prices,
  reduced transaction costs)
• Driven by changes in tastes (consumption vrs leisure)
• Impacted family considerations regarding quality and
  quantity of children, women’s labour, and home production

Question 9

How is the current UK government clamping down on ‘side hustles’?

Answer 9

They have recently began taxing the selling of second-hand items on sites like Etsy or Ebay

Question 10

How does the Industrious Revolution cause IR?

Include De Vries’ quote

Answer 10

• Men are forced to labour now because they are slaves to their
  own wants. (De Vries, 1994)
• De Vries (1994) argued that family or household labour per
  year increased in response to market changes
  =⇒ New consumption possibilities led to increased market
  labour
  =⇒ Households chose to put extra hours into the market and specialise
• Essentially the result was:
  ↑ Demand for Industrial Goods <=> [↑( L/N )][( Y/L ] = [↑( Y/N )]
  where N = population, L = Employment, Y = Total Output
  The IR was therefore a result of increasing labour force
  participation due to a change in tastes and consumption
  technologies (demand driven)
  But what drives this change?
  Is there a theory behind De Vries claims?

Question 11

State De Vries’ quote on Theories of Households

Answer 11

As demand led me to the consumer, the consumer led me to
the family and its household economy. (De Vries, 2008)

Question 12

State the 2 views on the nature of the household in the economy

Answer 12

• Reactive View (The Sociologists) - Exogenous Households
• Interactive View (De Vires) - Endogenous Households

Question 13

Describe the reactive view on the nature of the household in economy

Answer 13

• Reactive View (The Sociologists) - Exogenous Households
• “Structural-Functionalism”
• “Family Decomposition”
• “Marxist/Feminist” “Marxist perspective on the family” and
  “Feminist perspective on the family”…

Question 14

Describe & explain Structural-Functionalism

Include key believers

Answer 14

Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is “a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability”

This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole,[1] and believes that society has evolved like organisms.[2] This approach looks at both social structure and social functions. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms, customs, traditions, and institutions.

Functionalist thought, from Comte onwards, has looked particularly towards biology as the science providing the closest and most compatible model for social science. Biology has been taken to provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure and function of social systems and analyzing evolution processes via mechanisms of adaptation … functionalism strongly emphasises the pre-eminence of the social world over its individual parts (i.e. its constituent actors, human subjects).

— Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration

Auguste Comte believed that society constitutes a separate “level” of reality, distinct from both biological and inorganic matter. Explanations of social phenomena had therefore to be constructed within this level, individuals being merely transient occupants of comparatively stable social roles. In this view, Comte was followed by Émile Durkheim. A central concern for Durkheim was the question of how certain societies maintain internal stability and survive over time. He proposed that such societies tend to be segmented, with equivalent parts held together by shared values, common symbols or (as his nephew Marcel Mauss held), systems of exchanges. Durkheim used the term “mechanical solidarity” to refer to these types of “social bonds, based on common sentiments and shared moral values, that are strong among members of pre-industrial societies”.[1] In modern, complex societies, members perform very different tasks, resulting in a strong interdependence. Based on the metaphor above of an organism in which many parts function together to sustain the whole, Durkheim argued that complex societies are held together by “solidarity”, i.e. “social bonds, based on specialization and interdependence, that are strong among members of industrial societies”

Question 15

Describe the interactive view on the nature of the household in economy

Answer 15

• Interactive View (De Vires) - Endogenous Households
• Family is the site of alliances between husband and wife
• Family creates implicit contracts between parents and
  children
• Alliances and implicit contracts are sufficient to develop
  adaptive strategies for common consumption objectives

Question 16

Following the interactive and reactive theories of households, describe & explain the new theory as well as what the model predicts

Answer 16

• New Household Economics - Endogenous Households
• “A Theory of the Allocation of Time” (Becker, 1965) which revolutionised the modelling of household behaviour, by unifying Marshallian demand functions for goods with labour supply and related time use decisions within the household
• Household is an entity dedicated to consumption
  → just as firms are dedicated to production
• Households have a “consumption technology”
  → just as firms have a “production technology”
• Households buy market-supplied goods given resource
  constraints
• Some of these goods are used as intermediate inputs at home
• Labour is combined with market-supplied inputs to get
  ultimate consumption “Z-commodities” → for example, tea
  bags might be purchased and combined with labour to
  consume tea
• Households must balance time between home production,
  market (income generating) production and leisure
  What does this mean for the economy?
• Consider some interesting aspects of the model:
  1. Falling goods prices or rising market wages increase opportunity costs of household work and shift labour towards
  markets
  2. Households could specialise in agriculture, proto-industry,
  wage labour or commercial services
  3. An important issue is that individuals cannot respond to
  shocks unless others also do so → learning-by-doing and
  division of labour
  4. Increasing returns from division of labour depends on the
  solution to a major coordination problem → “division of
  labour depends on the extent of the market, but the extent of
  the market also depends on the division of labour”
  5. “Industrious Revolution” was societies’ market transition
  based on observed consumerism of others → coordination problem solved
  =⇒ Is there any empirical evidence for an “industrious
  revolution

Question 17

Give context, using Chiappori et al’s quote, about the acceptance of Becker’s model at the time

Answer 17

“Becker’s approach to family economics is so mainstream
today that it is difficult to recognise how revolutionary his
models and methods were at the time. Pollak (2003)
documents how many researchers were openly hostile to
Becker’s application of mathematical microeconomic tools to
intrahousehold decision making. Many believed Becker’s
analyses were sterile and vacuous, and it was considered cold
and immoral to think about loving families in such terms. In
contrast, the enormous literature on family economics that
exists today vindicates Becker’s methodology.” (Chiappori et
al. 2015 Economic Journal)

Question 18

Describe & explain ‘Saint Mondays’

Answer 18

The Industrial Revolution saw capitalism’s iron discipline imposed on a pre-industrial workforce. Previously, time had been structured not by clocking-in at factories or shifts down the mine, but by collective or self-directed labour revolving around the cycles of seasons and daylight. Pre-capitalist workers were also accustomed to kicking back at fairs, sporting events, and festivals which could go on for days.

E.P. Thompson argued that this earlier lifestyle — bursts of work interspersed with longer and more frequent periods of rest and leisure — may have been more logical and beneficial than the externally controlled and alienated routines we have grown used to.

Wage labour entails a delicate trade-off between freedom and financial obligation, and unreasonably demanding workloads have always risked a severe toll on the physical and mental health of workers.

As industrialisation entrenched a six-day week, with only Sundays and sporadic holidays like Christmas Day officially free, the pressure and intensity of industrial work found expression not just in organised conflict over wages and conditions but in more spontaneous forms of defiance driven as much by desperation as by apparent irresponsibility.

In the mines and ironworks of nineteenth-century South Wales, workers frequently downed tools and set off on days-long drinking sprees, sometimes having to be physically dragged back by employers’ agents.

Our ancestors’ right to time off work was more positively asserted by the pre-industrial custom of ‘Saint Monday’, which saw eighteenth-century artisans, having spent Saturday at work, habitually allow themselves Mondays off to recover from Sunday’s excesses.

Early industrial workers continued to observe this tradition, providing themselves with a justification for collective absenteeism based in popular cultural memory. Some, though not all, employers were prepared to tolerate it on the same basis.

Cultural references to Saint Monday often drew on its parody of religious holidays, which gave it a corresponding, subversively sacred position in the working-class calendar. An 1830s French print entitled Le Grand Saint Lundi: Patron Saint of Drinkers gently mocks traditional devotional images by showing Saint Monday presiding over a scene of artisan revelry like an Industrial Age Dionysus.

Besides looking backwards to pre-industrial folk culture, the wry veneration of Saint Monday perhaps also anticipates the irreverent resistance expressed in Situationist slogans like ‘Never work!’ and other forms of opposition to a life based around the dogma of work.

Despite employers’ complaints about its impact on productivity and Victorian culture’s increasing horror of ‘idleness’ over industriousness, nineteenth-century workers maintained Saint Monday as a day for leisure, sport, and culture, thronging music-halls and theatres, as well as political meetings and social clubs.

An 1851 writer described London’s botanical gardens on Mondays as full of ‘well-dressed, happy and decorous’ working-class patrons, while an 1855 print showing a mass picnic at Hampton Court is entitled Saint Monday, or the People’s Holiday.

As a more regulated working week and weekend developed — due not least to the organised efforts of trade unions — the observance of Saint Monday declined. Meanwhile, other customary holidays like Whitsun or Wakes Week were repurposed to take advantage of the greater availability of rail travel, with local workers day-tripping or holidaying as a group to new seaside resorts like Blackpool, Morecambe, and Scarborough.

Saint Monday allowed workers the right to autonomous free time in which they were not defined by their jobs. By contrast, modern working patterns absorb and intrude upon more and more of our non-working lives.

From exhausting overtime and the juggling of gig-economy jobs, to the anxiety of zero-hour contracts and the mental impact of unemployment, the common factor in having too much or too little work is lack of control over the balance of labour and leisure. The reaction of governments and employers around the world to Covid-19 has already demonstrated starkly that working patterns are not set in stone.

Saint Monday — a break from the daily grind which was declared by workers, not benevolently bestowed from above — reminds us that the forces capable of reshaping working life include workers ourselves.

Question 19

Describe & explain if people increased labour market hours, thus supporting an Industrious Revolution

Answer 19

• Before the IR there were as many as 50-60 religious holidays
  → 250-260 days work in 15C (not seem again until the 1950s)
• During the 17C people began to reduce their leisure time and
  give up holidays
• Some of this is explained by the Protestant attack on saints’
  days → “Calvinist’s” (a reformed christianity that was a major branch of protestantism) even attacked Lent, Advent and Christmas as holidays
• England abolished 49 holy days in 1536, Netherlands ALL holy
  days in 1574 → Catholic countries were much slower to reduce holy days (France abolished 15 days in 1666, Austria 24 days in 1754)
• Empirical evidence from payroll records in the Netherlands
  shows these changes DID increase actual work hours → 3700
  annual hours for manual workers in 1650 vs. max of 3100 in
  16C
  ⇒ Was this effect large in England? → Lead to the IR?
• There was speculated early work from Freundenberger and Cummins (1990) that argued that annual labour input increased from < 3000 hours to > 4000 hours between 1750 and 1800
• Thompson argued that historically it was common to avoid working Mondays to recover from the one-day weekend → “Saint
  Mondays”
• Describing Voth’s empirical evidence, there are 2 graphs:
  1. A weird bar chart where the end of one bar is on the same level as the start of the next bar. x-axis has key dates or events and y-axis has number of working days. During 1750, annual workload was 2763 hours (with an upper bound of 3020 hours). Then: an increase by 506 when Holy Days were abolished, an increase by 572 when St. Mondays were abolished, a decrease by 340 due to a change in % agricultural. So by 1800, annual workload was 3501 hours (upper bound of 3605).
  2. This is a scatter graph showing a positive trend in working hours from 1750-1800. But then a decrease in working hours onwards to 2000 from ~3500 hours to ~1500 hours.
• Logit regression results prove that Monday was still a holiday
  in 1750 but had disappeared by 1800
• Using this sample it is clear that hours worked did increase
  after 1750
• Hours worked peaked around 1800 during the IR
• This lends some support to the concept of an “industrious
  revolution” happening before the IR

Question 20

Describe & explain De Vires’ work on the Industrious Revolution research

Don’t include criticisms

Answer 20

• De Vires has argued for even earlier “Industrious revolution”
  → data might still support an upward movement from 17C
• However, De Vires “Industrious Revolution” requires the
  labour supply response to be demand led → key element of
  the De Vires theory
  Was the increase in hours a response to an increase in
  demand?
  → De Vires used probate (aka wills) inventories to support this claim. They showed that:
  1. Over-time, people started to leave higher-quality possessions to others
  2. Inventory values within wills rose WAY more than builders’ wages from 1600 to 1749.
  3. Also, a greater share of households owned luxuries in 18C, including looking glasses, books, earthenware and pictures
• Summary of Probate Evidence:
• Evidence on probate inventories from several studies reveal an
  increase in the quantity of market goods consumed
• The poor are under represented since fewer probates were left
  on their behalf → where evidence on paupers exist they do
  show a rise in goods consumed
• Characteristics of goods also changed → more luxury goods
  consumed by the poorer classes (e.g clocks)
• Cottons, linens and other more fragile but fashionable textiles
  replaced wool
  There does seem to be some evidence to support an increase
  in luxury goods demanded and a change in tastes from
  16C-18C
  → Should we simply believe this argument behind the IR? Well, we need to evaluate critics of this topic

Question 21

Describe & briefly explain the critiques of the research on the Industrious Revolution

Answer 21

There are two major arguments against the demand led thesis:
(1) No “Consumer Revolution” =⇒ Muldrew (2011), Allen and Weisdorf (2011)
- Hours worked increased but not in response to increasing consumerism
- Real wages actually fell and the supply response was due to sticky consumption patterns or poverty threshold
* Women and children were needed to maintain standard of living (SoL)
* Implies there was an (Hayami style) “Industrious Revolution” but no corresponding “Consumer Revolution”
(2) No “Industrious Revolution” =⇒ Clark and Van Der Werf (1998)
* No significant increase in the hours worked either in 17C or 18C
* Hours were already high in the middle ages
* Women were already active in the labour market as early as the 14C → a response to the black death
* Implies that there was no “Industrious Revolution” of any kind
around IR

Question 22

Describe & explain the argument that there was no “consumer revolution”

Answer 22

Muldrew (2011) looks at three aspects of the argument:
(1) What workers ate and whether they could work harder
* Dietary requirements for day labourers
* agricultural production estimates
(2) What workers owned
* Probate inventories of 1,000 labourers from 1550-1750
(3) Why households’ labour supply changed
* Population food demands compared with labour needed in agriculture to produce this food

Muldrow argued that for (1), workers COULD’VE worked harder, there wasn’t really an increase in what WORKERS owned (2), and for (3), labour supply only increased INITIALLY

• Muldrew suggests that the “Industrious Revolution” was due to
  necessity and not consumerism → why?
  Wages required to maintain a household prove necessity
• The addition of women and children as day labourers in agriculture
  and spinning since household unit could just barely survive in 17C
  =⇒ “Industrious Revolution” was born of hardship and led to
  consumerism eventually due to sticky preferences → women stayed in labour markets

Allen and Weisdorf (2011) also reject the “Consumer Revolution” but not a Hayami style “Industrious Revolution” → why?
What do they do?
* They assume a fixed bare bones basket level of consumption
* They use wage and price data over time to determine estimated working hours required to satisfy this basket
* This can be compared to estimates of the actual working year in the existing literature
* They can then determine how plausible it was to have any extra consumption → were the days worked minimal or “all
that god sent”?
* They consider the situation for agricultural workers → did agricultural demand spark the IR? What do they find?
- They found that rural farm workers working days per year had increased after 1750 as a response to standard of living decline; no evidence of a commercial revolustion for agricultural workers

Horell (1996) and Horrell, Humphries & Sneath have also argued against a “consumer revolution” → why?
(1) Household budget studies show a large portion of income spent on necessities in 18C and 19C
* Food = 3/4 income in 18C, 2/3 income in 19C
* Necessities = 6/7 income in the 18C and 19C
(2) Some new goods purchased but few manufactured goods and few by labourers
* New foodstuffs and services did not lead to the IR
* Non-necessity expenditure by labouring households only 6% of the total of the real increase in NI from 1801-1851
(3) Probates do not agree with Old Bailey records
* Little change in goods stolen in early 18C
* Some changes in 1770s and 1820s but corresponds with relative price changes in those periods so not due to industriousness
- By 18C, only rich men probated in the 18C, making them really bias (Clark, 2010)

Question 23

Describe & explain the argument that there was no “industious revolution at all”

Answer 23

Clark and Van der Werf use limiting assumptions with fairly limited data → if productivity is constant then wages and output can give
hours worked
They argue that:
* Evidence on food consumed relative to daily wages supports the argument that hours required were high in the middle ages
* Evidence on wheat threshed and number of workers shows no increase in work → assume no efficiency gains
* Contemporary accounts support argument that days worked were already high before 17C
* Women and children made up too small a share of income in 19C to statistically explain “Industrious Revolution”
* Data shows that before the 17C there was more food consumed per day in each
household on average → must have worked more
* Data doesn’t show enough of a wheat threshold increase to imply an increase in hours
* Data shows that difference in “inferred days worked per year”, calculated as annual wage divided by day wage, between 1600-1649 and 1560-1599 is very similar with 266 and 257 respectively (Clark and Der Werf, 1998). So if people didn’t work any longer hours from 17C to 18C, then that cannot be the trigger for the IR
* If NO married woman or child worked in markets before 1700, total earnings would decrease by only 8% -> upper boundary of data shows little change

Question 24

Conclude the IR topic

Answer 24

• IR was a major break in history
  → However, we should view it largely as a shift to modern industry
• No consensus on why Britain had the IR
  → Supply side and demand side both matter
  → Domestic and foreign factors matter
• IR launched a period of British leadership lasting until
  Edwardian times
  → IR sustained British Empire whilst others collapsed

Question 25

Describe & explain the Marxist perspective on the family

Include its criticisms

Answer 25

• Engels believed the nuclear family emerged with capitalism and private property
• Contemporary Marxists argue the family performs ideological functions – the family acts as a unit of consumption and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy
• One way in which this happens is that there is a hierarchy in most families which teaches children to accept there will always be someone in “authority” who they must obey, which then mirrors the hierarchy of boss-worker in paid employment in later life.
• It is also the institution through which the wealthy pass down their private property to their children, thus reproducing class inequality
• Before Capitalism, traditional, tribal societies were classless and they practised a form of ‘primitive communism’ in which there was no private property. In such societies, property was collectively owned, and the family structure reflected this – there were no families as such, but tribal groups existed in a kind of ‘promiscuous horde’ in which there were no restrictions on sexual relationships
• Criticisms:
  1. Gender inequality clearly preceded Capitalism….. The vast majority of tribes in Africa and Asia are patriarchal, with women being barred from owning property, having no political power, and having to do most of the child care and hard physical labour.
  2. It’s too deterministic – it assumes people passively accept socialisation and family life, and that the future is pre-determined. There are plenty of families who reject the consumerist lifestyle and many families bring their children up to be independent thinkers.
  3. The Marxist perspective ignores family diversity in capitalist society, the nuclear family is no longer the main type of family. In fact, family breakdown may be better for Capitalism – as divorce is expensive and more money has to be spent on maintaining family relationships and later on forming new families.
  4. Feminists argue that the Marxist focus on social class inequalities downplays the role of patriarchy, which is the real source of female oppression. Feminists would point out that sex inequalities exist within all families, irrespective of social class background
  5. Marxism ignores the benefits of nuclear family e.g. both parents support the children. The New Right point out that this is the most functional type of environment in which to raise children, and the nuclear family is found in most societies around the world, suggesting it is something people choose.

Question 26

Describe & explain what all types of Feminists agree on in their perspective on the family

Answer 26

Almost all feminists agree that gender is socially constructed. This means that gender roles are learnt rather than determined by biology, and the family is the primary institution which socialises individuals into these gender roles

The proof for gender being constructed (rather than biologically determined) is found in the sometimes radically different behaviour we see between women from different societies: i.e. different societies construct being a “women” in different ways (and the same can be said for differences between men in different societies as well).

They have argued the nuclear family has traditionally performed two key functions which oppressed women:
1. Socialising girls to accept subservient roles within the family, whilst socialising boys to believe they were superior – this happens through children witnessing then recreating the parental relationship.
2. Socialising women into accepting the “housewife” role as normal, which limited women to the domestic sphere and made them financially dependent on men.

Essentially, feminists viewed the function of the family as a breeding ground where patriarchal values were learned by individuals, which in turn created a patriarchal society.

Question 27

State the 3 distinct branches of Feminism

Answer 27

• Liberal Feminists
• Marxist Feminists
• Radical Feminists

Question 28

Describe & explain the Marxist Feminist perspective on the family

Include its criticisms

Answer 28

Marxist feminists argue the main cause of women’s oppression in the family is not men, but capitalism. They argue that women’s oppression performs several functions for Capitalism.

1. Women reproduce the labour force – women do most of the childcare within the nuclear family, part of which involves socialising them to accept the authority of their parents, which gets them used to the idea of being obedient to hierarchical authority more generally, which is what their future capitalist employers need. They are thus socialising the next generation of workers, and they do this for free because their domestic labour is unpaid.
2. Women absorb anger – Think back to Parson’s warm bath theory in which women help men destress after a hard day at work and thus help keep industrial capitalism going. Introduced by Fran Ansley in 1972, the Marxist-Feminist interpretation of this is that women are just absorbing the anger of the proletariat, preventing this anger from being directed towards the Bourgeois, and thus preventing revolution and the downfall of capitalism. Ansley argues women’s male partners are inevitably frustrated by the exploitation they experience at work and women are the victims of this, including domestic violence.
3. Women are a ‘reserve army of cheap labour’ – the fact that women’s ‘normal’ role in the nuclear family restrictions them from working, but they are nonetheless there in the background, in reserve. This prevents men from striking to demand higher wages because the Bourgeois could potentially take on female employees at lower wages if male employees start to play up.

For Marxist Feminists, the solutions to gender inequality are economic: we need to tackle capitalism to tackle patriarchy.

Two specific solutions include campaigning for better pay and conditions in jobs where mainly women work, such as cleaning and caring jobs.

Another solution is paying women for housework and childcare, thus putting an economic value on what is still largely women’s domestic work.

One criticism is that women’s oppression was clearly in evidence before capitalism – if anything, women are probably more oppressed in pre-capitalist, tribal societies compared to within capitalist societies.
If you look at the United Nation’s Gender Equality Index (2) there appears to be a correlation between capitalist development and women’s liberation – suggesting that capitalism has the opposite effect from that suggested by Marxist Feminists. This correlation isn’t perfect, but you can clearly see wealthy European countries such as Finland at the top and poorer sub-saharan African countries near the bottom.
The idea that women act as a reserve army of labour is less and less relevant every year: the employment rate for men in the UK in December 2022 was 79% for men and 72% of women, only a 7% gap. However if we look at part time employment rates there is still more potential for women to do more work as women are more likely to employed than men: 38% of women worked part-time, compared to only 18% of men (1)

Question 29

Describe & explain the Radical Feminist perspective on the family

Answer 29

Radical feminists argue that all relationships between men and women are based on patriarchy, essentially men are the cause of women’s exploitation and oppression. For radical feminists, the nuclear family is where this system of oppression starts, it is the foundation on which patriarchy is based and thus should be abolished.

Against Liberal Feminism, they argue that paid work has not been ‘liberating’. Women’s lives within the family have not simply become better because they now have improved job opportunities and pay which is more equal to men’s.

Instead women have acquired the ‘dual burden’ of paid work and unpaid housework and the family remains patriarchal: men benefit from women’s paid earnings and their domestic labour. Some Radical Feminists go further arguing that women suffer from the ‘triple shift’ where they have to do paid work, domestic work and ‘emotion work’ – being expected to take on the emotional burden of caring for children.

Radical Feminists also argue that, for many women, there is a ‘dark side of family life’ – According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales domestic violence accounts for a sixth of all violent crime and nearly 1 in 5 adults will experience domestic violence at some point in their lives, with women being more than twice as likely to experience it than men.

Kate Millet, a key figure of radical feminism, believes “Patriarchy’s chief institution is the family. It is both a mirror of and a connection with the larger society; a patriarchal unit within a patriarchal whole. Mediating between the individual and the social structure, the family effects control and conformity where political and other authorities are insufficient. As the fundamental instrument and the foundation unit of patriarchal society the family and its roles are prototypical. Serving as an agent of the larger society, the family not only encourages its own members to adjust and conform, but acts as a unit in the government of the patriarchal state which rules its citizens through its family heads.

The chief contribution of the family in patriarchy is the socialisation of the young (largely through the example and admonition of their parents) into patriarchal ideology’s prescribed attitudes toward the categories of role, temperament, and status. Although slight differences of definition depend here upon the parents’ grasp of cultural values, the general effect of uniformity is achieved, to be further reinforced through peers, schools, media, and other learning sources, formal and informal. While we may niggle over the balance of authority between the personalities of various households, one must remember that the entire culture supports masculine authority in all areas of life and – outside of the home – permits the female none at all.

Radical Feminists advocate for the abolition of the traditional, patriarchal nuclear family and the establishment of alternative family structures and sexual relations.

The various alternatives suggested by Radical Feminists include separatism – women only communes, and matrifocal households. Some extreme radical feminists also practise political lesbianism and political celibacy as they view heterosexual female relationships with men as “sleeping with the enemy.”

Radical feminists also argue for more support for female victims of domestic violence to help women out of abusive relationships.

Evaluations of Radical Feminism
- There is still evidence of the dual burden and triple shift on women. Women do twice as much childcare than men and spend 64% more time doing domestic chores.
- The ME TOO campaign and the Harvey Weinstein scandal both show that harassment and sexual abuse of women remain common.
- Ignores the progress that women have made in many areas e.g. work, controlling fertility, divorce.
- Too unrealistic – due to heterosexual attraction separatism is unlikely.
- Ignores domestic/emotional abuse suffered by men who often don’t report it.

Question 29

Describe & explain the Liberal Feminist perspective on the family

Answer 29

Liberal Feminists do not emphasise the role of the family in perpetuating gender inequality in society as much as Marxist or Radical Feminists.
According to liberal Feminists gender inequalities are primarily caused by inequalities in the public sphere rather than inequalities in the home. Prior to 1972 the main problem was the lack of equal pay in work between men and women, and today,++ problems include:
- stereotypical subject domains in education steering women into lower paid jobs such as health and social care.
- unequal maternity and paternity pay encouraging the woman to take more time of work than the man following the birth of a new child.
- lack of free child care preventing women from returning to work earlier.

Solutions to Inequality

Liberal Feminists tend to focus on achieving greater equality of opportunity in the public sphere: focussing on achieving equal access to education, equal pay, ending gender differences in subject and career choice won primarily through legal changes.

Two social policies liberal feminists would support include the 2015 shared parental leave act in which the mother and father can share the mother’s maternity leave between them and the forthcoming 2024 act which proivdes free childcare for children down to 9 months of age

A key figure of this belief, Jenny Somerville, believes the increased choice for women and the rise of the dual-earner household (both partners in work) has helped create greater equality within relationships. Somerville argues that ‘some modern men are voluntarily committed to sharing in those routine necessities of family survival, or they can be persuaded, cajoled, guilt-tripped or bullied’. Despite this, however, ‘women are angry, resentful and above all disappointed in men.’ Many men do not take on their full share of responsibilities and often these men can be ‘shown the door’.

Somerville raises the possibility that women might do without male partners, especially as so many prove inadequate, and instead get their sense of fulfilment from their children. Unlike Germain Greer, however, Somerville does not believe that living in a household without an adult male is the answer – the high figures for remarriage suggest that heterosexual attraction and the need for intimacy and companionship mean that heterosexual families will not disappear.

However, it remains the case that the inability of men to ‘pull their weight’ in relationships means that high rates of relationship breakdowns will continue to be the norm which will lead to more complex familial relationships as women end one relationship and attempt to rebuild the next with a new (typically male) partner.

What Feminists thus need to do is to focus on policies which will encourage greater equality within relationships and to help women cope with the practicalities of daily life. One set of policies which Somerville thinks particularly important are those aimed at helping working parents. The working hours and culture associated with many jobs are incompatible with family life. Many jobs are based on the idea of a male breadwinner who relies on a non-working wife to take care of the children.

Somerville argues that in order to achieve true equality within relationships we need increased flexibility in paid employment.

Evaluation of the Liberal Feminist Perspective on the Family

• Sommerville recognises that significant progress has been made in both public and private life for women.
• It is more appealing to a wider range of women than radical ideas.
• It is more practical – the system is more likely to accept small policy changes, while it would resist revolutionary change.
• Difference Feminists argue that Liberal Feminism is an ethnocentric view – it reflects the experiences of mainly white, middle class women.
• Her work is based on a secondary analysis of previous works and is thus not backed up by empirical evidence.
• Radical Feminists such as Delphy, Leonard and Greer argue that she fails to deal with the Patriarchal structures and culture in contemporary family life.
• Despite policy changes which have made work more equal, slight gender inequalities remain in the UK!