EXPLANATIONS FOR INEQUALITIES IN DOMESTIC LABOUR AND POWER

This refers to the roles that men and women play in relation to housework, childcare, decision making and financing.

Women traditionally had to do the majority of household labour whilst men were employed and brought the income. The triple shift was referred to for when women were carrying out most domestic work, which means domestic work, emotional support for both children and the husband and also paid work.

The division of labour nowadays, compared to the past, has become more of a shared role and more equal, instead of leaving the woman to bear the unpaid work.

Functionalists, such as Talcott Parsons, believed that in the traditional nuclear family that roles are segregated.

He believed that biological makeup made people suited to their roles within the household. He believed that women are naturally more caring and nuturing, so had the expressive role, where they had to enforce good primary socialisation and meet emotional needs of the family and to be a housewife. Whereas the men had an instrumental role, they would work and be the breadwinner, achieving success and providing money for he family.

Bott (1957) distinguished between two types of conjugal roles within a marriage:

• Segregated roles or an asymmetrical family- the couple have seperate roles as in Parson's view.

• Joint conjugal roles- The couple share tasks such as childcare and spend their leisure time together.

March of progress sociologists Wilmott and Young claim that the family have been through several stages: Pre industrial--Early industrial--Symmetrical nuclear family.

Wilmott and Young carried out research that suggested that the divison of labour had become more equal and that men were helping out alot more than they were in the past.

Feminists reject the march of progress view and argue that little has changed and women still do most of the work.

Ann Oakley (1974) found that only 15% of husbands had a high participation in housework.

And later Boulton (1983) found that fewer than 20% of husbands had a major role in childcare.

Feminists argue that the dominance of certain ideas in respect of family contributes to continued inequality.

Bernardes (1999) suggests that despite widespread social changes, patriarchal culture still associates masculinity and fatherhood with paid work. men, therefore, are recognised as the breadwinner and avoid domestic labour that is aligned with women.

Warin et al (1999) found that, in a study of 95 families in Rochdale, the majority of the sample favoured traditional gender roles. Fathers, mothers and teenage children argued that women are “experts in parenting.”

O’Brien and Shamlit (2003) argue that contrasting ideological beliefs concerning ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ result  in men being discouraged to take part in domestic tasks.

Silver and Schor (1993) argue that roles have become more symmetrical because of two factors:

Housework has become more 'commercialised'- in a society of consumers, there are mant products that make housework easier, the things that housewives previously had to produce are now readily availiable.

The second is because more women are now working and have careers compared to having to stay at home in the past.

Due to these factors, Silver and Schor argue that housework is now not such a burden.

Feminists argue that despite women working, there is little evidence of a 'new man'. They argue that women have simply aquired a 'dual burden' of paid work and housework.

Emotion work- This term describes work whose main feature is the management of one's own and other's emotions.

Hochschild argued that women tend to work in jobs which involve 'emotional' labour.

Therefore, some feminist sociologists argue that women are actually 'triple burdened'.

Hakim argues that women may actually choose to be the partner who takes on more  responsibility in respect of the division of labour. Hakim found that over half the women surveyed choose the ‘marriage career’. In other words: their main priorities are to their marriage and the raising of children.  Hakim suggests that Feminism may be guilty of understanding the degree of power women have  in such an arrangement.

Van Egmond et al (2010) argue that traditional gender stereotyping is typically embedded by age eight, so children have a firm understanding of the tasks associated with each gender.