Domestic Division of Labour - Thinkers

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  • Created by: ash8642
  • Created on: 18-05-19 20:07

Elizabeth Bott

  • Feminist
  • Segregated conjugal roles - separate roles: male breadwinner + female carer; leisure activities tend to be separate too
  • Joint conjugal roles - couples share tasks such as housework and childcare; spend leisure time together
  • These roles are socially reinforced
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Wilmott and Young

  • Functionalists
  • Studied working-class extended families
    • Bethnal Green, 1950s and 1970s
  • 1950s
    • Gender roles found to be very distinct
    • Women spent working and leisure time with female kin
  • 1970s
    • Symmetrical family
    • Roles now much more similar between sexes
    • Spend leisure time together too
  • March of Progress view
    • Family life is gradually improving for all members
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Oakley

  • Feminist
  • Rejects 'March of Progress'
    • Men and women remain unequal within the family
  • Symmetry cannot be proved
    • Men seen as 'helping' women
    • Responsibility of housework is still the woman's
  • Housework still primary role of women
    • Despite going to work

Statistics

  • 15% of husbands had high levels of participation in housework
  • 25% had high levels in childcare
    • Only more pleasurable tasks
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Gershuny

  • Women working = more equality at home
  • Wives who work full-time do less housework
  • Those whos parents had more equal relationships were more likely to share housework themselves
    • Socialisation
  • The longer the woman is in paid work, the more likely it is that the man will do housework
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Silver and Schor

  • Burden of housework has decreased for women
  • Housework has become 'commercialised'
    • Money can be spent on goods that help with housework
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Ferri and Smith

  • Women working = less equality at home
  • Dual burden
    • Woman is responsible for paid work and unpaid housework
  • Father only takes responsibility for childcare in 4% of families
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Marsden

  • Women experience a Triple Shift
    • Unpaid housework, paid work, and emotional work
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Arlie Hochschild

  • Emotional labour - form of emotion regulation that involves performing certain emotional behaviours in the workplace
  • Emotion work - these same acts but carried out in a private context
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Edgell

  • Studied professional couples
  • Very important decisions were joint, but men have the final say
    • E.g. moving house
  • Important decisions are joint, but not often the woman alone
    • E.g. where to send the children to school
  • Less important decisions are made by the woman alone
    • E.g. decor
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Barrett and McIntosh

  • Men gain far more from woman's domestic work than they give back in financial support
  • Financial support often unpredictable and has 'strings attached'
  • Men usually make decisions about spending on important items
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Elaine Kempson

  • Resources are not shared equally between partners
  • Woman deny their own needs in low-income families
    • Seldom go out and enjoy themselves
    • Little/no food for their meals as given to the child
  • Women has no entitlement to the share of household resources
  • Feels that any money spent on herself should actually be spent on the children
  • Unequal share may leave women in poverty
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Pahl and Vogler

  • Money management
  • Allowance system - men give women money out of which they must budget to meet family's needs; man retains surplus income
  • Pooling - both partners have access to income and have joint responsibility for expenditure
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