GENDER ROLES

What is Parsons (1955) theory of gender roles?

Domestic Division of Labour - traditional nuclear family roles are distinct, the husband takes on the instrumental role and the wife takes on the expressive role.

What is the instrumental role?

The husband must be successful at work so he can provide for his family and be the sole breadwinner.

What is the expressive role?

It is the wife’s natural duty to fulfil the nurturing role and socialise the children, she meets the families emotional needs.

What is Bott (1957) view on gender roles?

There can be segregated and joint conjugal roles.

What are conjugal roles?

The roles played by male and female partners in a marriage or cohabiting relationship.

What are segregated conjugal roles?

A clear division between the roles fulfilled by men and women, e.g. separate leisure activities.

What are joint conjugal roles?

Fewer divisions between the male and female roles.

What is Young and Willmott (1973) views on gender roles?

The family is becoming more symmetrical as there are more joint conjugal roles - the roles of husband/wife are becoming more similar.

Both partners are likely to be in paid employment and have stronger bonds due to more equal relationships.

How was there a shift from the early industrial family to the symmetrical family?

Women being able to work - higher cost of living requires more income.

More human rights - improved status of women.

Geographical mobility/smaller families.

Improved living standards.

What sociologist evaluates the symmetrical family?

Oakley (1974) - says that the family being symmetrical is an exaggeration and husbands don’t help as much as they say they do.

15% of husbands participated in housework.

25% of husbands participated in childcare.

Husbands ‘take interest’ in childcare and ‘take them off their hands’ on Sunday’s so the mother can work on lunch.

What did Boulton (1983) find?

Fewer than 20% of husbands had a major role in childcare.

What did Warde and Hetherington (1993) find?

Sex-typing of domestic tasks: wives 30x more likely to do washing, husbands 4x more likely to wash the car, etc. Men only carry out ‘female tasks’ if women are absent.

What did the British Social Attitudes Survey (1994) find?

Women do the majority of housework, even with full-time jobs.

What did the National Office of Statistics (1997) find?

Women do 2x more housework than men.

What did the Institute of Public Policy Research (2005) find?

40% thought women should stay home to care for children

What did the Food Standards Agency Survey (2007) find?

77% of women do all or most of the food shopping.

What is the ‘new man’?

Someone who rejects sexist attitudes/the traditional male role, especially in the context of domestic responsibilities and childcare, and who is caring, sensitive and non-aggressive.

What was Sullivan (2000) view on the impact of paid work?

Found that from data collected over several years, more men are doing domestic work.

What did the British Social Attitudes Survey (2013) find to do with the imapct of paid work?

There has been a fall in the number of people who believe in stereotypical gender roles in the home: in 1984, 45% of men and 41% of women agreed with stereotyped gender roles whereas in 2012 it dropped to 13% and 12%.

What is the feminist view on the impact of paid work?

Women now carry the a dual burden - having to do both paid work and the majority of housework/childcare.

What is Duncombe and Marsden (1995) view on the impact of paid work?

There is the triple shift - women are under extreme pressure to meet all the needs of the household: paid employment, housework/childcare and emotional support.

How does the lack of symmetrical division of domestic labour have a negative impact on women’s paid work?

Women seen as ‘unreliable’ to employers (taking time off for pregnancy, etc) so employers are reluctant to invest in training them.

May miss out on promotions as they take leave to have children.

Face ‘hidden discrimination’ after returning to work after having children.

What did Ferri and Smith (1996) find in regard to taking responsibility for children?

Fathers took responsibility for childcare in fewer than 4% of families.

What did Dex and Ward (2007) find in regard to taking responsibility for children?

Fathers highly involved in bringing up their 3 year olds, 78% played with them, only 1% of fathers took the main responsibility.

What did Braun. Vincent and Ball (2011) find in regard to taking responsibility for children?

In 3 out of 70 families the father was the main carer, most were ‘background fathers’ who held the ideology that the father should be the breadwinner and the mother should be the primary carer.

Why is quality time becoming harder to achieve?

Working mothers have to juggle the demands of their career as well as coordinating their own personal leisure time with family.

What is Southerton (2011) view on taking responsibility for quality time?

Managing quality time often falls on the mother as there is less regard for the other aspects of womens’ lives that they have to deal with.

What is Crompton and Lyonette (2008) views on the domestic division of labour?

There are cultural and material explanations for the domestic division of labour.

What are cultural explanations for the domestic division of labour?

Unequal division of labour is caused by patriarchal norms and values that shape gender roles in our culture.

What are material/economic explanations for the domestic division of labour?

Women earn less than men so it is economically rational for women to do more of the housework and childcare while men earn the money.

This is due to the gender pay gap - women earn less than men in 7 out of 8 households.

What are Barrett and McIntosh (1991) views on resources in the household?

Men gain more from women’s domestic work than they give in financial support - this support is often unpredictable and comes with ‘strings’ attached. Men usually make decisions about big expenditures.

What are Kempson (1994) views on resources in the household?

In low income families, women deny their needs, she holds no entitlement to a share of the household resources and rarely spends on herself.

What are Pohl and Vogler (1993) views on money management?

Couples adopt either an allowance system or a pooling system.

What is the allowance system?

Men give wives an allowance out of which they budget to meet the needs of the family. The man keeps any excess.

What is the pooling system?

Both partners have access to income and joint responsibilities for expenditures.

Pooling isn’t necessarily equal as one person may control the money but keeping money separate isn’t necessarily equal either as they may want indendence.

What is the Personal Life Perspective of money?

Money has no fixed meaning, couples define it in different ways so effects relationships differently.

What did Smart (2007) find about the division of money?

Some homosexuals attached no importance to who controlled the money and were happy to leave it to a partner.

They had more freedom as there was no ‘gendered, heterosexual baggage of cultural meanings around money’.

What were Pohl and Vogler (2008) views on decision making in the household?

Even with pooling, men make the majority of important financial decisions as they often are more qualified and having the higher income.