Conjugal roles/domestic division of labour

Domestic division of labour

How domestic work is divided between family members

Conjugal roles

The roles of a man and woman in the home

Parsons - DOL

• Gender roles are beneficial

• Division of labour is beneficial - everyone knows their roles, all the jobs get done accordingly

• Instrumental and expressive roles

Young & Wilmott - March of progress (DOL)

• Rise of symmetrical nuclear family the result of major social changes over the past century:

• Changes in women's position e.g. going to work

• Geographical mobility (more couples living away from communities grown up in)

• New technology and labour saving devices (Silver & Schor - commercialised housework)

• Higher standards of living

Oakley - Feminist DOL

• 40 interviews, women still become mothers/housewives, experience a period of full time housework, return to work when youngest child is at school

Duncombe & Marsden - Feminist DOL

• Women are responsible for the emotional support within the family, providing reassurance, security, support etc.

• This leads to a triple shift

Bott - Conjugal

• Couple have separate roles

• Male breadwinner

• Female homemaker/carer

• Leisure activities also tend to be separate

• Couples do share tasks such as housework and childcare, spending their time together

Gershuny - DOL

• Women working full-time leads to a more equal division of labour in the home

• Women who worked did less domestic work than other women

Gershuny - Cultural explanation

• Couples whose parents had a more equal relationship more likely to share housework equally themselves

• Parental role models important

• Social values gradually adapting to the fact women now work full-time, establishing a new norm that men should do more domestic work

Edgell - Resources and decision-making

• Very important decisions .g. change job, move house, made either by husband, or jointly with husband final say

• Important decisions e.g. children’s education, holidays, usually taken jointly, rarely by wife alone

• Less important decisions e.g. home decor, children’s clothes, food, usually made by wife

• Men are likely to make the decisions because they earn more

• Women economically depend on men, so have less say in decision-making

Ramos - Material explanation

When a woman is the full-time breadwinner in a family and the man is unemployed, he does as much domestic work as she does

Duncombe & Marsden - Feminist view (Triple shift)

• Women have a triple shift: paid work, domestic work, emotion work

• Emotion work: women are responsible for managing the emotions and feelings of family members, e.g. handling arguments between siblings, while simultaneously controlling own emotions

Kan - Cultural explanation

• Younger men do more domestic work

• Most men claimed to do more housework than their father

• Most women claimed to do less housework than their mother

• Suggests a generational shift in behaviour is occuring

British Attitudes Survey

• Less than 10% of under 35s agreed with traditional division of labour

• 30% of over 65s agreed with a traditional division of labour

• Indicates long-term change in norms, values and attitudes, reflecting changes in gender role socialisation of younger age groups in favour of more equal relationships

Dunne - Cultural explanation

Lesbian couples had more symmetricla relationships because of absence of traditional heterosexual ‘gender scripts’ - norms that set out the different gender roles men and women are expected to play

Kan - Material explanation

• For every £10,000 a year a woman earns, she does 2 hours less housework per week

Barrett & McIntosh

• Men gain far more from women’s domestic work than they give back in financial support

• Financial support that husbands give to their wives is often unpredictable and comes with ‘strings’ attached

• Men usually make decisions about spending on important items

Kempson

Among low income families, women are denied their own needs e.g. rarely going out, eating smaller food portions, skip meals to make ends meet

Pahl & Vogler - 2 types of control

1) Allowance system - Men give their wives an allowance out of which they have to budget to meet the family’s needs, man retains any surplus income for himself

2) Pooling - Both partners have access to joint income and joint responsibility for expenditure e.g. joint bank account

• Even when pooling use, men usually make major finance decisions

Reeves

• By 2043, if we are successful, terms such as ‘stay-at-home dad's will have lost their novelty/be normalised

• E.g. gender gap closing, rise in pay for women, rise in divorce etc.

Gershuny - Impact of paid work

• Wives who work full time, do less domestic work

• Burden of domestic work is decreasing - Silver & Schor say this is due to housework being commercialised i.e. ready meals. As women work, they can afford it