Topic 3- Gender roles& criticisms

• Young and Willmott- Modern family is what they called a "symmetrical family"= Less patriarchal, Equally balanced partnership of equals, both partners involved in paid employment, change in domestic division of labour from segregated conjugal roles to intergrated conjugal roles
• What causes these apparent changes?

- Improving living standards- More home-centred, building the relationship

-Decline in close-knit family- Less pressure from kin, easier to adopt new roles

-Improved status and rights of women- Women have become assertive, household tasks are shared

-Commercalization of housework-Silver- C has taken away the drudgery and time- Consuming aspects of housework. Consumer goods and services to  help with reducing burden of housework

-Weaker gender identities- Postmodernists- More choice in their roles

- Increase in no. of women in paid employement- Gershuny- Wives moved into PE- less housework men did more. BUT Kan et al. - Men just doing masculine defined tasks

• Criticisms: Are relationships equal?

- Not much evidence to show that family is "symmetrical"

- Women still perform majority of domestic tasks

-Knudsen- Women perform two-thirds of all domestic work in the world= Traditional segregated roles still remain