Family : Radical Feminists : Delphy and Leonard

• Delphy and Leonard

  Delphy and Leonard suggest that men use their power over women to exploit them and gain an advantage. They suggest that men to make the decisions and control the finances more than women and women still do the largest share of the house work. in their book, they looked at the role of women in families, and particularly at housework, and their idea that women were exploited by their husbands.
• Delphy and Leonard

  Some Marxist and Marxist feminist sociology looked at how women‘s work benefited capitalism. The bosses had their workers clothed and fed, and looked after for free, but Delphy and Leonard argued that the people who most benefited from women’s work, were not the ruling class, but men. Housework benefited the patriarchy, patriarchy means a male dominated society. They saw the main role of the family as maintaining patriarchy, keeping men in charge.
• Delphy and Leonard

  Delphy and Leonard looked at the family as an economic system: who did the work, and who benefited from it? It was clear to them that it was women who were exploited in the system. They did the bulk of the domestic labour, regardless of whether they also went out and did paid work outside the home too. Time at home for men was leisure time where as time at home for women was also worktime.
• Delphy and Leonard

  This contrasts strongly with Wilmott and Young’s idea of a symmetrical family. There is also a contrast with Marxist feminists such as Ansley, who saw the unequal division of labour in the family, as benefiting the ruling class and capitalism. They also concluded the men to make the big decisions about the family.
• Delphy and Leonard

  Their research does build on earlier research such as that of Oakley, who concluded that working women had a dual burden of paid work and unpaid domestic labour. Later Duncombe and Marsden developed the idea of a triple shift where emotional work is added to domestic work and paid work.