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Family Topic 3 - Coggle Diagram
Family Topic 3
Gender Roles
Symmetrical Families
- Willmott and Young
- Modern family is symmetrical (shared cores and childcare with both in paid employment)
- Change in domestic division of labour from segregated conjugal roles to integrated conjugal roles
Segregated Conjugal Roles
- Division in men (responsible for money, heavy and technical jobs)
and women (childcare, cooking and cleaning), likely to have different friends and opposite leisure activities
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Integrated Conjugal Roles
- Partners have interchangeable and flexible roles (likely to be in paid employment sharing domestic tasks and childcare), likely to have the same friends and similar leisure activities
Reasons for Integrated Roles
1 - Changing role of women
2 - Privatization of nuclear family
3 - Change in legislation
4 - Individualisation
5 - Less social stigma
'The New Man' - More caring, gentle and sensitive helping make roles equal
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Inequality
Statistics
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2008 - Social Attitudes Society = 80% women with partners said they 'always or usually do the laundry'
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Harkeness = professional wives are sill expected to take major responsibility for children and housework
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Full time workers - still treated as housewives - Willmott and Young - These are most likely to display symmetry
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In Power and Authority
Edgell
- Decisions made by men (house moving, finance, cars)
- Women make (interior decorating, food and domestic appliances, children clothes)
- Suggests men are in charge of significant decisions, women might not be trusted and are portrayed as inferior
Phal
- Found, growing individualisation in couple finances - each partner = some independence in financial matters (bank account)
- Decision to keep money separate show equality
- Causes inequality because men tend to earn more than women (children are paid for through women meaning her wage drops - cost is her responsibility)
Consequences of inequality in the family
- Women's careers suffer as childcare and housework is primarily their responsibility
- Surveys suggest many working women have limited jobs they can do
- family commitments allow little opportunity for progression of career (low security)
- 3/4 part time workers are women - 42% of women are in paid employment
-Age of children effects woman's career - there's no similar impact on men
- 90% of fathers with children are employed regardless of age of youngest child
Inequalities of Employment
- Women who have children are seen as 'unreliable' to some employers because of assumption that they're going to become pregnant again/ school absences and closures
- High qualified women leave work to have children / take career break to spend time with family (faces hidden discrimination)
- Gatrell found = woman returning to work after time off are 'jelly heads' - leaves employers no choice but to downgrade position if they want to stay in that profession (if asked for more flexible hours)
- Downgrading = illegal but women don't fight in fear of being 'awkward' and end up facing career disadvantages
- It is women who give up work to look after children and elderly (they suffer career restrictions)
Domestic Labour
DL vs Employment
- Monotonous
- Fragmented
- Isolated
- No qualification needed
- 24/7
- Unpaid and unrewarding
- 'Primary role'
- No status
- Based on emotion not contract
- No pension
- No holiday
- No sick pay
Nature and Value of DLOffice of Natural Statistics - 1997
- Time spent on DL valued at the same as paid jobs in employment - £7 billion a year (2002)
Legal and Generals -2013
- 'value of parent' survey
Women spend 71 hours average on DL = £31,627 a year (£8.56 an hour)
- Mothers spend a third more time on DL than fathers
Who benefits from DL
Radical Feminists
- Men are main benefiters (women do it)
- Inequality of DL - Problems of Patriarchy - family is a patriarchal unit reinforcing male power
Marxist Feminists
- Capitalism is main benefiter (reproduction of labour power)
- Unpaid DL - reproduces labour force at no cost (free production of rearing children and supporting male workers)
- Family = Social Factory = human labour power - DL contributes to physical and mental wellbeing
Measuring DL
- Oakley argues Young and Willmott evidence for jointness is unconvincing
- 72% of married men 'help partners in the home one way or another, other than washing up at least once a week'
- Could be anything - something small (hardly convincing evidence of symmetry
- Fewer than 3/4 husbands in Y and W even did this much
- Crude indicators used if there's integrated roles (shared friends) - Jointness
- Sharing friends of male partner involves the woman's friends being 'cut off' - dependency of men means there's a greater inequality
- Boulton = many surveys exaggerate how much childcare they do (men may help with childcare but it remains females main responsibility
- Research of Conjugal roles are questionable in the population
- Botts - small sample group of 20, Oakley = 40 couples, Boulton = 50 couples (Mainly in London)
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