The Arguments For and Against the Idea that There Is a Move Toward a More Equal Division of Labour Within the Home

There is a huge debate going on today about gender. Society believes you’re a boy if you like blue, and like to play sports and go hunting; and you’re a girl if you like pink and have long hair and pig tails and play with Barbie dolls. Society has forced us to choose between the two. I believe that both women and men can both have it all. As Dorment says, ‘competing work life balance and home as much as women’. (Dorment 697) I believe in this article Richard Dorment, has argued his opinion very well, I think both men and woman equally need to be involved in housework as well as taking care of the children. In today’s world were judging who were going to be even before were born. Throughout this article Dorment effectively convinces his audience that men and women should be equal by using statistics and emotional stories, Dorment uses personal stories and extensive research to make readers believe in his credibility, and lastly Dorment employs the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos effectively.

All housework does not necessarily need to be left for women to do but if there could be the division of labor, then a lot of burdens will be lifted off their backs.

So how do all these changes in society and family affect the division of household labor?

On the other hand, when both partners share the breadwinner role men are more likely to increase their core housework tasks in companion to men in the ‘new traditional’ and male-breadwinner families. Consequently, many studies found that gender attitudes are still primary indicators of who does housework, thus women still do two-thirds of housework where men do two-thirds of paid work. It is noticed that there have been significant changes for women over the last 6 decades to participate in the labour force, yet there was hardly any change to the division of core household work between men and women.

As this essay has shown so far, there is inequality in who does what in the home but there is also inequality in decision-making; in deciding who gets what and how the family resources are shared out between them. Barrett and McIntosh note that mean usually make the most important decisions, the financial support from men is often unpredictable and they usually gain more from women’s domestic labour than they give back in return. Feminist sociologists Pahl and Vogler suggest that because of men’s higher earnings women have more financial dependence on their husbands and this is why men take more control over major decisions. Edgell agrees with this view and states that women only exert some control on less important decisions such as home décor. Finch argues that wives’ lives are generally structured around the husbands’, such as if the husband had to move for work, the wives would pick up and go with them, whereas it is unlikely that the husband would follow their wife for work.

Women for years have been automatically given the role of the domestic housewife, where their only job is to cook, clean, and take care of the children. Men have usually taken the primary responsibility for economic support and contact with the rest of society, while women have traditionally taken the role of providing love, nurturing, emotional support, and maintenance of the home. However, in today’s society women over the age of sixteen work outside of the home, and there are more single parent households that are headed by women than at any other time in the history of the United States (Thompson 301.)

Whether it is the past or the present, there have always been gender roles in society. In most homes, it is the woman’s responsibility to take care of the house. This includes cleaning, meal preparations, raising and taking care of the children as well as the husband. Compared to the men who take care of the more physical activities, such as yard work. It was known throughout many years that it was a woman’s responsibility to stay in the house while the man would go out and look for work to provide money for his family. Although the intensity of gender roles has changed, it still exists.

Once women began working at the beginning of the twentieth century due to the war, gender roles drastically changed within households. The world was used to women spending time on housework versus men so it was an adjustment for everyone. In all actuality, when husbands take on a greater role in the house, it will result in lower divorce rates in the long run. Studies show that although this change

Foremost, the familial image has undertaken significant changes in regards to the ‘breadwinner’ and ‘homemaker’ roles within the family. In the latter of the 20th century, women’s participation in the labour force had been very little to non-existent, primarily because time allocations had been perceived as gender specific, that is, men were seen as the ‘breadwinner’, while women were viewed as the ‘homemaker’ (Seltzer, Bachrach, Bianchi, Bledsoe, Casper, Chase-Lansdale, Diprete, Hotz, Morgan, Sanders, & Thomas, 2005, pp.20). The ‘breadwinner’ role was to secure financial stability, while the

In light of Willmott and Young’s inaccuracy she conducted her own research on 40 housewives between the ages of 20 and 30, and found some evidence of husbands helping around the home, but no evidence of a symmetry trend, being that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework and only 25% participated in a high level of childcare. Also from her research she found that industrialisation lead to the segregation of family roles around the home. Mary Boulton also suggests that many surveys done exaggerate how much childcare is actually done by husbands. Her argument is that while men may ‘help’ with childcare, it is the wives who take main responsibility for looking after the children, often resulting in them having to restrict their own lives. A patriarchal ideology still sees women’s work to be looking after the children and doing housework.

females are not at home as much to look after children and do all the

Different sociologists have had different views to whether conjugal roles have become equal. Researchers have measured different aspects of equality/inequality in conjugal roles. Some have concentrated on the division of labour in the home: they have examined the allocation of responsibility for domestic work between husband and wife and the amount of time spent by spouses on particular tasks. Others have tried to measure the distribution of power within marriage. Willmott and Young, and Gillian Dunne are amongst those who have argued that conjugal roles are equal.

Conventionally, females played a very insignificant role in the paid work force of a society as many times they were expected to be home taking care of their family. Their roles at home can often include grocery shopping, meeting all the needs of her children and husband. As time moved on, our society became more accepted of sharing housework between the couples, but even so, the traditionally more feminine housework such as cooking, caring for sick children, and shopping for the entire family are mostly done by the females of the house. It is argued in a research journal Work and Occupations (Witkowski & Leicht, 1995) that in an average North American family, females take on roughly three-quarters of the housework. Even though we are in a democratic society, parenting roles in the household are assigned based on gender rather than in a democratic fashion (Winslow-Bowe, 2009). Because of the many responsibilities and obligations that are associated with the female gender, their career paths are eventually affected for the worse. According to Statistics Canada (2001), for every dollar a man earns, a single woman earns 93 cents and a married woman earns 69 cents. These statistics

Therefore, "Divided Labor and Shared Household" no longer be applicable for general population. In a work setting, the concept can be interpreted that individuals in this stage have divided responsibilities so that they all can share and achieve the same goal as a team.

Sociological study on the gendered division of labour within the domestic sphere has perennially been characterised by evidence of a clear inequality concerning the allocation of unpaid chores within the home between men and women (Warren, 2003:734). While men have traditionally been regarded as primary breadwinners, the management of home-maintenance has remained largely women’s responsibility (Breen & Cooke, 2005:47). A number of theories exist to explain this unequal distribution of domestic labour, in particular the economic exchange model (which argues that women perform domestic duties in ‘exchange’ for financial support from their husbands), and the gender display model, which asserts that household labour is divided on the basis of