Studied by 0 people
Looks like no one added any tags here yet for you.
What do Barrett and Mclntoch note?
Men gain far more from women’s domestic work than they give back in financial support.
The financial support that husbands give to their wives is often unpredictable and comes with ‘strings‘ attached.
Men usually make the decisions about spending on important items.
What does research show?
That family members do not share resources such as money and food equally. Kempson found that among low income families, women denied their own needs, seldom going out, and eating smaller portions of food or skipping meals altogether in order to make ends meet.
In many households, what does a woman have no entitlement to?
A share of household resources in her own right. As a result, she is likely to see anything she spends on herself as the money that ought to be spent on essentials for the children. Even in households with apparently adequate incomes, resources may be shared unequally, leaving women in poverty.
What do feminists Pahl and Vogler identify?
Two mains types of control over family income?
What are the two main types of family income as identified by Pahl and Vogler?
The allowance system.
Pooling.
What is the allowance system?
Where men give their wives an allowance out of which they have to budget to meet the family’s needs, with the man retaining any surplus income for himself.
What is pooling?
Where both partners have access to income and joint responsibility for expenditure. Pooling is on the increase and is now the most common money management system.
What is often assumed about pooling?
That it indicates more equality in decision-making and control over resources, and it is more common among couples where both partners work full-time.
What happens when the pooled income is controlled by the husband?
it tends to give men more power in major financial decisions (although not as much as in an allowance system).
What did Pahl and Vogler find out about pooling?
That even where there was pooling, the men usually made the major financial decisions.
What did Hardill’s study of 30 dual-career professional couples find?
That the important decisions were usually taken either by the man alone or jointly, and that his career normally took priority when deciding whether to move house for a new job. This supports Finch’s observation that women’s lives tend to be structured around their husband’s careers.
What did Edgell’s study of professional couples find?
Very important decisions such as those involving finance, a change of job or moving house were either taken by the husband alone or taken jointly but with the husband having the final say.
Important decisions, such as those about children’s education or where to go on holiday, were usually taken jointly, and seldom by the wife alone.
Less important decisions, such as the choice of home decor, children’s clothes or food purchases, were usually made by the wife.
What does Edgell argue?
That the reason men are likely to take the decisions is that they earn more. Women usually earn less than their husbands and, being dependent on them economically, have less say in decision-making.
What did Laurie and Gershuny find?
That by 1995, 70% of couples said they had an equal say in decisions. Significantly, though, they found that women who were high earning, well qualified professionals were more likely to have an equal say.
What do Gershuny and Laurie’s findings provide support for?
The economic or material explanation of gender equality earlier described as Crompton and Lyonette.
What do feminists argue about inequalities in decision-making?
That it is not simply the result of inequalities in earnings. They argue that in patriarchal society, the cultural definition of men as decision makers is deeply ingrained in both men and women and instilled through gender role socialisation. Until this definition is challenged, decision-making is likely to remain unequal. This view reflects the cultural explanation.
As Pahl notes, what does pooling money not necessarily mean?
That there is equality. We also need to know who controls the pool money and whether each partner contributes equally (despite any differences in their incomes).
Does each partner keeping their money separately mean there is equality?
No, Vogler et al. found that cohabiting couples were less likely to pool their money - perhaps from a desire to maintain their independence. Yet, evidence suggests that cohabiting couples are more likely than married couples to share domestic tasks equally.
What does Nyman note?
That money has no automatic, fixed or natural meaning and different couples can define it in different ways. These meanings can reflect the nature of the relationship.
What does the personal life perspective focus on?
The meanings couples give to who controls the money. From this perspective, the meanings that money may have cannot be taken for granted.
What is there evidence that same-sex couples do?
They often give a different meaning to the control of money in the relationship.
What did Smart find?
That some gay mean and lesbians attached no importance to who controlled the money and were perfectly happy to leave this to their partners. They did not see the control of money as meaning either equality or inequality in the relationship.
What did Weeks et al. find?
That the typical pattern was pooling some money for household spending, together with separate accounts for personal spending. This money management system thus reflects a value of ‘co-independence‘ where there is sharing, but where each partner retains control over some money and maintains a sense of independence. This is the pattern among cohabiting couples found by Vogler et al.
What else did Smart find?
That there is greater freedom for same-sex couples to do what suits them best as a couple. She suggests that this may be because they do not enter relationships with the same ‘historical, gendered, heterosexual baggage of cultural meanings around money‘ that see money as a source of power.
What do supporters of the personal life perspective argue?
That it is essential to always start from the personal meanings of the actors involved in the situation. This echoes weeks’ and Smart’s point about the division of labour in same-sex couples.
