Analysis: Halving The Double Day

In, “Halving the Double Day” by Dorothy Sue Cobble, she realizes that women get the bitter end of having a poor socio-economic status. Women are more burdened than men with balancing activities. Cobble states, “But none feel the pressure more than those juggling full-time employment with what can seem like a second shift at home” (Cobble, 1). Cobble believes that women, especially in lower income households face more stress and have less time to do things they want in life because they are burdened with finding and working in jobs as well as balancing house hold duties. Unlike men, who’s primary role in the household is to go out and work, women now who are in lower income families have to take on both roles assisting in income and doing house work. Furthermore, Cobble emphasizes that only those who are rich can benefit from the vast benefits that outsiders see in living in America. Cobble states, “Similarly the highly touted family-friendly workplace-the coveted market nook with flexible work schedules, job sharing, child care assistance, and comprehensive health and welfare coverage-is not yet a reality for the majority of salaried workers, let alone hourly workers”

Stephanie Coontz started off her article about the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s international best seller, “The Feminine Mystique”, which was written about the women’s movement of the 1960s. What Coontz is trying to explain is that gender equality is not stalled, but “It has hit a wall”. Her title is the opposite of what she is trying to write about in the article. At first she talked about women’s rights back when the book was written. Instead of blaming the beliefs of gender roles from individuals, she points the finger at the economy and the work-family policies as the major problems to gender equality. She explains the gender equality stalled during 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s. She brought into text the usual statics, “the percentage of Americans preferring the male breadwinner/female homemaker family model actually rose to 40 percent from 34 percent. Between 1997 and 2007, the number of full-time working mothers who said they would prefer to work part time increased to 60 percent from 48 percent. In 1997, a quarter of stay-at-home mothers said full-time work would be ideal. By 2007, only 16 percent of stay-at-home mothers wanted to work full time.”(Coontz) She also talked about how 70 percent of men and women want an egalitarian relationship and how the demand of work has intensified.

Family is one of the oldest institutions in human history with a universal and basic role in all societies, and studying the structure of family in different cultures will help us further understand its functions and effects on society. During the 20th century, the common family type in America was the “nuclear family”, two married heterosexual people living with their children (Coontz, 2006). Due to many influential changes, the concept of family has been redefined and it now includes a variety of living arrangements. Feminism has been one of the successful social movements, and has promoted alternative types of the American family. The movement has different priorities in each society, and in the United States one of the issues is the “gender pay gap”. Gender pay gap is defined as the average difference between men’s and women’s aggregate hourly earnings (European Commission, 2014). According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in 2014 the median weekly earnings for workers with at least a bachelor’s degree was $336 lower in women than men, and for workers with advanced degrees was $445 lower in women than men (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015). This average difference of $17,000 to $24,000 a year is one of the contributors to the “gender pay gap” issue. The importance of financial security is a well-known fact that women in America began embracing it after World War II; many women decided to postpone marriage in order to focus on their education and career

Income disparities have been an issue within the American society before and during the arrival of the industrial revolution. During the industrial revolution era white, middle-class women were viewed as dainty, unproductive, submissive and domesticated individuals whom worth was based upon her virtuous character. Therefore, because society perceived women as a “cult of true womanhood” they believe women certainly could not be paid employees as noted by Gordon, Buhle, and schrom (as cited in Samuels, Jiménez, Herrera & Ferber, 2009, p. 337). The reason women were referred to as the “cult of true womanhood” was because of its strict and somewhat pious standards. This abstract way of thinking toward women’s restrictive position within society

Today, many men and women earned income independently of each other under the dual household income model. This contrasts the breadwinner model which was prevalent in the Fordist era. In this model, men and women had specific roles in the household, defining the roles as gendered. Men were to be the “breadwinner” and earn income for the household while the women performed domestic duties. Some women earn extra income through part-time or precarious work but the main source of income for the household was from the man.

As time progressed, limitations on what types of occupations women could fulfill reflected this as many of them held positions that were similar to household duties. Such duties included child care, nursing, and teaching. With many advancing roles, the rate at which women were paid remained predominantly low, as reported “After the Equal Pay Act was signed into law, full-time women workers still earned less than 70 cents for every dollar earned by men,” (Kessler 3) this caused many women to rely on marriage as form of support as they attempted to avoid poverty. Even as education became a society norm, many universities denied admittance to women, and those who were fortunate to earn a degree were faced with the impossible task of finding a job. Questioning a women’s capability is a consequence that is rooted from years of oppression. While many positions have raised the income for them, the rate at which women are paid has historically remained a fraction of a man’s wage.

In Toni Morrison 's Sula, the society of Hannah and Sula is divided over each character 's sexual choices. Even though they both engage in the same activities, they are each judged for these actions differently. Society has no qualms with the sexual choices of Hannah. Her character sleeps with many men throughout the novel, and all the while, society never objects. This is because she was once married. After her husband died she longed for the touch and embrace of another man – a man who might fill the empty hole in her heart, a man who might cure this affliction. Sula, on the other hand, is despised for the choices she makes. According to society, Sula is using men solely for her own selfish pleasure. Unlike Hannah, society feels

One of the largest obstacles presented to Working Class families is affordable childcare. Mothers of working class families began “going to work” in large numbers in the early 1970s. Today almost every family needs two working adults, which leaves the question, who will care for the children? The average childcare bill is $1,500 to $2,000 a month (Rubin 1994). In the budget created for the Stratification Assignment the safest and most affordable childcare found was $1,280 a month for a nine month old and eight year old. This was the family’s largest monthly expenditure. In her book, Rubin interviews a woman who said, “We couldn’t pay our bills if we had to pay somebody to take care of the kids”. For many families this means they have to consider an alternative solution, different

When speaking about women in work, it is important to talk about the typical jobs women take on that are sometimes low in status. First off, women are more likely to be employed in unpaid care work and housework. They take these jobs because of the time availability, relative resource perspectives, and the symbolic representation of their gender. When women take on paid jobs, it ends up being balanced with unpaid work because of maternity leaves. All these normality’s for women are often criticized because there is a double-shift which means women

Arile Russell Hochschild in one of her works “The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home” attends to the issue of the gender role within household after increased female labor force participation rate and the unchanged attitude of men towards household contribution through the second shift in a stalled revolution. She addresses the issue of gender ideology where the male acts as the only financial contributor to the family and hence identifies himself as the head of the household. On the other hand the female

Secondly, precarious work affects the living state of women financially as single mothers and how they were seen dependent primarily on their husbands wages and occupational choices. Now as single mothers they are unable to escape the debilitating effects of impoverishment which is shown through Ann Duffy and Nancy Mandell's article. This article articulates that a women's income drops by 20 to 40 percent as single mother because they do not have a male as a breadwinner for the family (Duffy and Mandell, 253). Females are more likely to experience this situation because if they do go into the work workforce they are payed less than men. Single mothers tend to be stigmatized when they receive social assistance in taking care of their children due to the Victorian ideals of society that women should follow their role of domestic work.

6. In his article, “Home Economics: The Link Between Work-Life Balance and Income Equality,” Ross MacDonald discusses how life of the working father has changed because of feminism.

For example, they need to work very hard to afford their basic need because working with low-way jobs they don’t afford for their basic needs. Therefore, some of them desire to work long hours to earn enough to pay for the rent. Consequently, they don’t have time for themselves because they need to spend their spare time to take care of their children after work because not all of them have the support from their families. In 2015, Hashim, Azmawati, and Endut (2015) reported that “these single bread winners are more likely to have jobs with poor pay and yet they are responsible for more people including themselves and their children” (p. 2). The women’s roles do not only take care of themselves, but they also have responsibilities to look after their children as well as their families. Hashim, Azmawati, and Endut (2015) concluded, “a single mother who is responsible for the health and well-being of herself, children and other family members are likely to be overwhelmed and experienced a higher level of stress compared to women with lesser roles and responsibilities” (p.2). Nowadays, women have chances to go outside to work, but they still need to spend much their time to do the housework because they have nobody to share the household tasks, so they have to do everything by themselves. In 2017, Berryhill and Durtschi reported, “The tension of meeting the demands of work at the expense of meeting the demands of

The working woman, immoral, unfeminine and objects of petty, negligentful mothers (Jones, 2006). Women not treated as equal, treated as if they were a joke, not serious workers like their male counterpart. Family responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, and making babies may be in the distant future but the mark it leaves carries into the next generation. Equal rights, driving, voting, education and holding jobs are some of the steps forward the twentieth century bring, but not without the heartache of the past. A journey of women, the history of her past, and the hopes of her future.

The gender division of occupational titles reinforces the traditional gender norms that currently subsist, especially on how women are positioned in today’s society as domestic housewives. The perception of women as domestic housewives of partaking in majority of the household responsibilities compared to men result in their lack of participation in the labour market. The reinforcement of the established gender norms due to occupational segregation encourages women to succeed less thus embedding an idea that they cannot earn an income of their own. This issue can significantly affect single parent women in particular, as they are required to cope with the double burden of limited employment conditions and household duties. Eliminating the gender