". Roles and power relationships between couples
- Created by: pheeebs
- Created on: 16-04-15 15:30
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- 2. Roles and Power relationships between couples
- Domestic division of labour
- Definition - Gender roles that men and women play in relation to housework, childcare and paid work
- Functionalism (Parsons 1955) - segregated conjugal roles in traditional nuclear families
- Instrumental role - men go out to work and act as the financial breadwinner
- Expressive role - Women act as homemakers and careers
- Evaluation - Outdated view (men taking greater share in domestic tasks) & division of labour is not natural (socially created & largely benefits men
- Reasons - Biological differences, women suit a mothering role and men a providing role.
- Early empirical study- Young and Willmott (1973)
- March of progress view
- Family becoming more equal over time. Moving towards a symmetrical family. (similar roles)
- 'Privatised' - home centred, child centred, small and increasingly affluent
- Family becoming more equal over time. Moving towards a symmetrical family. (similar roles)
- Reasons - New technology, greater affluence, changes in position of women
- March of progress view
- Early feminist views
- Oakley (1974)
- Recent empirical evidence
- Sullivan (2000)
- Reasons for new symmetry - Increase in the number of women working, shifting social attitudes, commercialisation of housework
- Recent feminist views - Family remains patriarchal. Dual Burden and Triple shift
- Reasons for current gender equality. Gender scripts & Patriarchy
- Evaluation - Ignores important variations in the division of labour in terms of: Social class - better paid and educated women do less housework and childcare. Sexuality - lesbians more symmetrical
- Resources and decision making
- Barrett and McIntosh (1991)
- Financial support men provide is worth less than the domestic work women perform
- Financial support men provide is often unpredictable and 'strings' attached
- Other feminist research shows: Women deny themselves food and their own needs in order to put their family first. & Women who separate from husbands and rely on benefits are often better off.
- Decision making - Evidence shows more households are pooling financial resources rather than operating an allowance system controlled by men.
- Edgell (1980) - very important decisions, important decisions & less important decisions
- Reasons for inequality - men earn more, patriarchy and enforced through threat of domestic violence
- Barrett and McIntosh (1991)
- Domestic violence
- Definition - physical, sexual and psychological abuse between those in a family type relationship.
- Mirrlees-Black (1999)
- 6.6m domestic assaults each year, half involving physical injury
- Most victims are women attacked by men
- 1 in 4 women are assaulted by partners
- Most victims are working class, live in rented housing and are poor
- Violence also common against children and elders
- Problems with statistics - underestimate the size of the problem
- Reasons
- Wilkinson (1996) - product of stress that goes with social inequality
- Evaluation - Doesn't explain why women are at a greater risk than men
- Marxist-feminists (Ansley 1993) - an outlet of men's frustration with the explotation and alienation they experience through the workplace
- Evaluation - Economically deterministic - too readily simplifies domestic violence to the economy
- Wilkinson (1996) - product of stress that goes with social inequality
- Domestic division of labour
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