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The domestic division of labour debate
See accompanying notes throughout this PowerPoint
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The domestic division of labour debate
How do couples divide up household tasks?
Sociologists have put forward a number of different reasons to help explain this.
Social class, age, religion and ethnicity may all be factors.
Feminists, especially, have tended to focus more strongly on the importance of gender inequalities.
However, these characteristics are not mutually exclusive — people belong in each of these groups at the same time. It may be that combined effects — e.g. of class and gender — are most significant.
The domestic division of labour debate
‘Traditional’ approaches
Traditionally, functionalist sociologists have argued that the family works positively, both for society and for its individual members.
For Parsons, wives and husbands complemented each other because their ‘natural’ gender differences were reflected in their different roles in marriage — the ‘rational’ male breadwinner and the more‘emotional’ and caring domestic role of the female.
As the extended family declined in its importance, Willmott and Young argued that husbands and wives were adapting to the more ‘private’ nuclear family, and were slowly beginning to share more household tasks.
The ‘symmetrical family’ was beginning to emerge.
The domestic division of labour debate
Marxist views
From the late 1960s/early 1970s, more radical views began to emerge in the family and domestic division of labour debate.
Marxists recalled the work of Marx and Engels, which identified the family as a site for female exploitation and home-based women as unpaid labourers for capitalists.
Althusser saw the family as part of the ideological state apparatus — a unit for consumption, where false needs (e.g. for new household goods for women) were created to support capitalism.
The domestic division of labour debate
Feminist views
There is often an overlap between Marxist and feminist views on labour tasks
in the family, though feminists focus more directly on gender rather than
class inequality.
Feminists challenged the ‘natural’ sex distinctions identified by functionalists.
Oakley found that most unpaid women ‘homemakers’ actually experienced
housework as dull, unfulfilling and monotonous, with little status or job
satisfaction.
If women do opt for a paid career they often end up in a ‘dual role’— with
responsibility at work, as well as for key tasks at home.
The domestic division of labour debate
Recent challenges — ‘post-feminism’?
More recently, challenges to the feminist position have come from the
work of sociologist Katherine Hakim. She argues that ‘political
correctness’ has impeded scholarly research on the extent of real sex
differences in abilities, social attitudes, values, life goals and behaviour.
Hakim contends that there is solid evidence that men and women do differ,
on average, in their work and home orientations — and that many women
prefer unpaid domestic tasks to paid work tasks.
The domestic division of labour debate
A changing world?
All theorists agree that the world has been changing for both men and
women over the past 50 years — and that these changes have had some
impact on dividing up domestic labour.
What changes can you think of that would have had an impact on the
domestic division of labour?
You might consider changes in education, female aspirations, family size
and structure, and the nature of work. You might also identify other
relevant changes.
The domestic division of labour debate
Measuring change over time
If these changes have indeed led to changes in the domestic division of
labour, how could we measure this over time?
Sociologist Oriel Sullivan used time-use diary data to compare people’s
domestic work tasks in 1975 and 1997. Subjects were asked to fill in
diaries describing what they did in their daily lives.
The data covered 690 couples in 1975 and 202 couples in 1997.
See Figure 1 on the following slide.
The domestic division of labour debateFigure 1: Minutes per day spent cooking and cleaning by sex, employment status and socio-economic class of household
Manual/clerical Professional/technical
Men 1975 1997 1975 1997
All 16 31 21 31
Both f/t 19 29 30 43
Husband f/t, wife p/t 15 28 18 24
Husband f/t, wife NE 12 18 18 37
Other 54 51 22 13
Women 1975 1997 1975 1997
All 213 135 208 130
Both f/t 208 167 218 146
Husband f/t, wife NE 256 182 235 162
Other 218 137 302 158
Key: f/t = in full-time employment; p/t = in part-time employment; NE = not employed.
Source: Sullivan (2000: 445)
The domestic division of labour debate
A more recent study
A study from the USA in 2010 was less detailed than Sullivan’s — it made
no allowance for male and female paid work responsibilities, for example.
However, it also showed the different types of domestic work that males
and females tend to do.
What evidence could you take from the data to argue that the domestic
division of labour is gendered?
See Figure 2 on the following slide.
The domestic division of labour debate
Figure 2: United States Bureau of Labour statistics study, 2010
The domestic division of labour debate
European Social Survey (ESS) study, 2013
A recent ESS study, involving researchers from the UK and
countries across Europe, has been monitoring for national
differences in household tasks by sex.
Generally, northern European countries are more equitable than
those in southern Europe.
The UK finished 11th in this international table but even here
70% of housework is still done by women, including two-thirds
by women who also do more than 30 hours paid work each week.
See Figure 3 on the following slide.
The domestic division of labour debate
Figure 3: European Social Survey study, 2013(some international comparisons)