Gender roles and domestic labour Flashcards
Gender roles, domestic labour and power relationships within the family in contemporary society
Technology affecting domestic labour
- technology making housework easier (eg robot vacuums) - Hertog suggests that 50-60% of housework could be performed by technology
- Schor argues that these developments haven’t saved any labour as they’ve increased standards of cleanliness
Reasons the family is more symmetrical (based on functionalism) - they support the ‘march of progress’ view
- new technology saving time on housework
- improved living standards - people spend more time at home so men also want to take care of it
- commercialisation of housework and the middle class outsourcing housework
- economically active mothers - since 2014 parents can share parental leave how they want (only for the first year) but this doesn’t necessarily affect housework
- decline in extended families - men have to step up for childcare as can’t rely on other relatives
- weakened gender identities - postmodernists suggest there’s been a shift away from ‘biologically determined’ gender roles
Young and Wilmott (functionalists) - march of progress view
- conducted studies of (mostly working class) family life in London 1950s-70s
- believed families were becoming more equal and democratic
- argued that families in the 70s were ‘symmetrical’
- less patriarchal, less male-dominated and more equally balanced
- they concluded that 72% of men do housework
Evidence of more symmetry in the household
- more than 90% of families have both parents working or seeking work
- more women in higher education - 51% female in uni in 2021 (HESA)
- 70% of working age women have jobs
- 36% of couples say the woman is the main carer
- fathers do around twice as much paid work as mothers
Parson’s conjugal roles (functionalist)
- argued that the ideal model of the family was characterised by segregated conjugal roles with a clear division of labour
- women should play the expressive role and men should do the instrumental role
- believed that these roles are biologically predetermined
Evidence that the family is not symmetrical
- 1 in 3 people in 2012 believed a mother should stay home with a child below school age
- 60% of women say they do more than half the housework in their household
- the most common housework for men is repairs, gardening etc which all can be done on weekends but women do laundry, cleaning, cooking etc which must all be done during the working week
- women take on the mental load of organising housework - Daminger found husbands referred to their wives as ‘project manager’
- Oakley found that 70% of women (1970s) were dissatisfied
- UK time use survey suggests mothers do almost twice as much care work and housework
- 15% of men never cook a meal compared to 3% of women (ONS 2001)
- 54% of women in 2022 said they did all the laundry (Yougov)
Oakley (feminist) criticism of Wilmott and Young’s idea of the ‘symmetrical family’
- criticises suggestion that 72% of men help with housework - their study only asked if they help at least once a week so it could just be taking the bins out once
- found that domestic labour allocation was more equal in middle class than working class
Sanz and Sanz - impact of housework on the wage gap
- housework reduces energy and flexibility for work
- women tend to do jobs that are routine and can’t be put off until weekend (eg cooking) but men can delay their jobs (eg repairs)
- therefore housework is more likely to interfere with women’s paid employment
Daminger (2019) - ‘cognitive dimension of household labour’
- men referred to their wives using terms like ‘project manager’ or ‘keeping track of more’
- identified 4 stages of mental work relating to housework - anticipating needs, identifying options, deciding among the options and monitoring results
- women did more in all 4 stages
Boulton - definition of housework
childcare is “essentially all about exercising responsibility for another person who is not fully responsible for themselves and it entails seeing to all aspects of the child’s security and wellbeing, their growth and development at any and all times”
- “all times” so it’s constant labour
Kan et al - male contribution to housework
- it has risen from 90 mins per day in 1960s up to 148 mins per day in 2004
- but - inequality is especially pronounced in families with children under 15
Craig - women doing more housework than men
- found there’s a ‘partnership penalty’ for women as their housework increases when they have a partner (for men it decreases)
- after having kids there’s also a ‘motherhood penalty’ where it increases even more
The average housewife’s labour is worth
at least a salary of £31 000 per year (Legal and General, 2013)
Who benefits from domestic labour
Radical feminists suggest men only benefit as the family is patriarchal and reinforces male power
Marxists feminists suggest it benefits capitalism by creating free labour, teaching capitalism to new generations and supporting worker’s happiness
