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