gender roles

• Division of Labour


  How household and childcare tasks are shared between the adult partners in a household
• Traditional division of labour


  • Males as breadwinner
  • Females responsible for housework, cleaning and looking after children
• Segregated conjugal roles


  Separate and distinct roles for husbands and wives
• Joint conjugal roles


  Shared tasks such as childcare and housework
• Despite significant change in family life, women who now also work full-time jobs still continue to spend more time on domestic and childcare tasks
• More lone and single-parent households
• Some men would like to take a greater share, but are constrained by long working hours
• Some men are 'househusbands' taking on the domestic role whilst the wife is the 'breadwinner'
• Advanced equipment and the introduction of ready-prep meals have helped reduce the time spent on domestic tasks
• Expressive role


  Primary socialisation and meeting families emotional needs
• Parson argues the division of labour is based on biological differences and is beneficial to men and women, to their children and to wider society
• Criticisms of Parson's view


  • Young and Willmott (1962) argue men are taking a greater share in domestic tasks and more wives are becoming wage earners
  • Feminist sociologists reject the view that the division of labour is 'natural' and argue it only benefits men
• Symmetrical family


  One in which the roles of husbands and wives, although not identical, are now much similar
• Young and Willmott see the rise of the symmetrical family as a result of major social change in the last century
• Feminist sociologists argue little has changed, men and women remain unequal within the family and women still do most of the housework
• Oakley critiques Young and Willmott's view that the family is now symmetrical, finding their views are over exaggerated
• Oakley found some evidence of husbands helping in the home but no evidence of a trend towards symmetry
• Later research supported Oakley's findings, showing sex-typing of domestic tasks remained strong and men would only carry out routine 'female' tasks when their partners were not around to do them
• Women do 40% more on average than men at home (2016)
• Men average 16 hours of unpaid work per week, women average 26 hours
• Men do more in transport - driving families around
• Women aged 26-35 do the most unpaid work - 36 hours per week
• Women on maternity leave average 60 hours of unpaid work per week
• Full time students do 12 hours of unpaid work per week on average
• Men gain far more from women's domestic work than they give back financial support
• The financial support that husbands give to their wives is often unpredictable and comes with 'strings' attached
• Men usually make the decisions about spending on important items
• Research shows that family members do not share resources such as money and food equally, with women denying their own needs to make ends meet
• Allowance system


  Men give their wives an allowance out of which they have to budget to meet the family's needs, with the man retaining any surplus income for himself
• Pooling


  Both partners have access to income and joint responsibility for expenditure, e.g. a joint bank account
• Pooling is on the increase and is now the most common money management system
• Even where there is pooling, the men usually make the major financial decisions
• Very important decisions, such as those involving finance, a change of job or moving house, were either taken by the husband alone or taken jointly but with the husband having the final say
• Important decisions, such as those about children's education or where to go on holiday, were usually taken jointly, and seldom by the wife alone
• Less important decisions, such as the choice of home decor, children's clothes or food purchases, were usually made by the wife
• The reason men are likely to take the decisions is that they earn more, and women being dependent on them economically have less say in decision making
• By 1995, 70% of couples said they had an equal say in decisions, with women who were high earning, well qualified professionals more likely to have an equal say