Equality between couples

• There are several areas of family life where we can measure whether couples are equal or not. We have already looked at Oakley and Boulton's research on who does the housework and who looks after the children. We have also looked at Young and Wilmott's March of progress view where women's roles are now changing due to technology and geographic mobility. Several pieces of research to support or criticise this view which we have looked at in class including who does the housework, and who looks after the children - this is called the domestic division of labour.
• We can also look at how time is spent between the couples in the March of Progress view couples were becoming more symmetrical and spending their leisure time together. However, some research has found that even when a couple spend their leisure time together, it is still the responsibility of the woman to arrange that. Researchers also found that even if the women work alongside the men in paid employment, they still take the responsibility for the housework (dual burden) and for the emotion work.
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  There are two reasons to explain the gender division of labour:

  • the cultural or ideological explanation suggests that it is social norms and values that determine our expectations of who takes which role. For example, women do more housework because society expects them to and that is what they have been socialised into. The ideology that women have a biological predisposition to care for children allocates the role of childcare to the woman.
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  There are two reasons to explain the gender division of labour:

  • the material or economic explanation suggests that women generally earned less than men which meant it was sensible for the women to do more of the housework and the childcare as they spent more time at home, allowing the man to earn the higher wages in the workplace.
• One area where there may be inequality in the couple is in who controls the money. Pahl and Vogler identified two main types of control over family income - the allowance system where the man allocates the woman the money needed for the family costs and keeps the remainder of his wages to himself, and pooling, where both partners have joint responsibility for the expenses of the household but keep the remainder of their salary for themselves.
• Another area where there may be inequality within the family is in the decision-making. if the family were truly symmetrical, decisions would be made jointly and equally. However, Hardill's research in 1997 studied 30 dual-career professional couples and found that some decisions were joint, but if they couldn't agree it was the man who made the decision. She also found that the man's career took priority when deciding to move house.
• While these pieces of research might suggest there is some equality in the couple, who makes the decisions and who controls the money might not be important factors in all families. Monica mean different things to different people and different family types may handle their finances differently. Smart presents a personal life perspective in her research that found the gay men and lesbian women did not have the same issues about who controlled the money as had been previously found in heterosexual couples.
• Weeks suggests that some couples only pool their share of the household bills, which allows for some financial independence with the remainder of their wages. Weeks called this co-independence, and suggest this is more common amongst cohabiting couples rather than married couples.