Transcript Division of Labor • Physical work and symbolic meanings attached to work done in the household • In U.S., defined as the “private”

Division of Labor
• Physical work and symbolic meanings attached to
work done in the household
• In U.S., defined as the “private” sphere—
traditionally associated with women and unpaid
labor
• Split from the “public” sphere—traditionally
associated with men and paid labor, “real work”
• Separate spheres doctrine developed with the rise
of western capitalism, industrialization,
urbanization and the creation of the middle class
Defining household labor
• What gets measured as labor? Definitions of
household labor not always agreed upon
• Housework—cleaning, cooking, paying bills
• Both inside/outside house?
• Necessity versus leisure (barbecuing—cooking or
recreation)?
• Child care
• Emotion work—emotional care for others
Measuring household labor
• Different sociological methods get different results
• Time budget studies: how much time do people
spend on which tasks?
• Self-report: ask them to keep diaries of activities;
ask them to estimate on an hourly--daily, weekly
basis; ask one member to estimate other member’s
time spent (wife to husband, husband to wife)
• Detached observation: observe them as they spend
time (detached observation)
Gender differences in tasks
• Household labor highly gendered with stereotypes
matching research—women do inside labor, men
do outside labor
• Tasks are sex-segregated
• Women do more housework than men—in 1995
women spent 17.5 hours a week (excluding child
care), men averaged ten hours a week.
• Women do 80% of child care.
• Ethnic differences: African American men do
more household labor than white men except in
traditional men’s labor (outdoor, auto, bills). Less
stigma to women working outside home (historical
necessities).
Generational changes
• Decreasing gender gap in household labor
between women and men—1965 women averaged
more than six times hours spent in housework than
men, 1995 1.8 times hours of men
• Longitudinal research shows women spending
fewer hours doing household labor today than
forty years ago, men doing more child care
• Women who work for pay do fewer hours of
household work than full-time homemakers, and
women part-time workers do less household work
than full-time workers (p. 136?!)
• Women not spending less time in child care—
taking time out of doing housework
Women’s Second Shift
• Arlie Hochschild’s ethnographic study of household labor
she called The Second Shift because women work two
jobs—employed and at home.
• She estimated women spent 15 hours a week more than
men on housework, meant working an extra month of 24
hour days a year than men
• Men do tasks that involved greater personal discretion and
more likely to have fixed beginning and end (changing oil
on car) women do tasks of everyday necessity (cooking);
with children—men do interactive tasks (playing) women
do custodial
• Hochschild found differences between individual and
family gender ideologies and actual practices—developed
“family myths” to account for discrepancies.
• Criticism for overgeneralizing from too small sample,
discounting generational change
Relative resource theory
• The resources that a person brings to family
determines amount of housework time—more
resource (paid work income) less time spent with
converse true.
• Wives do less housework and men do more as the
proportion of family income contributed by the
wife increases (Bianchi, Schwartz and Blumstein).
• When wives are same age as husbands, they do
less housework and husbands do more than when
wives are two or more years younger.
• Criticism—how are these negotiations
accomplished?
Time studies
• Amount of time spent on tasks determined by time
availability affected by children and employment
demands
• Children increase the hours women spend
performing housework more than men’s
housework hours. Men’s participation increases
when wives not available to do it.
• Earlier research shows divorced women with
children doing less housework than married
women suggesting presence of men increases
amount of housework women do.
Family Types
• Blumstein/Schwartz study that looked at four
types of household—heterosexual married,
heterosexual cohabiting, gay male, lesbian, found
married women performed more housework than
cohabiting women.
• No differences found between married and
cohabiting men.
• Gay and lesbian households more egalitarian
although person who brought home more money
had more power.
Interactionist theory
• What meanings do individuals give to actual work
done?
• People do not give the same meanings to
household labor that they give to paid labor.
• Do beliefs produce activities or do activities
produce beliefs?
• Parents in families where housework/childcare
shared view women and men as more similar than
in households with less equity where sexes viewed
as more different.
Household roles
• Household roles and ideologies about them
develop in relation to economic changes. Differ by
society, history, culture
• In Europe and U.S., with Industrial Revolution
men went into industrialized workforce and
became “breadwinner”, women went into unpaid
household labor in middle classes and became
“nurturer; children became more dependents less
workers/miniature adults.
Mother role
• What makes a “good” mother? A “bad” one? Depends on
culture, diversity in ideologies and practices
• Western feminist critique “compulsory motherhood”—
women should have kids and take care of them.
Conservatives critique this critique as “anti-family” or
“anti-mother.”
• Social class differences--McMahon study—working class
women saw motherhood as entrance into adult status;
middle class saw motherhood as an accomplishment after
establishing career as marker of adult status, affected
timing of childbirth
• Afrocentric ideology of motherhood--Importance of Black
Othermothers (fictive kin) and Women-centered networks
of social care extends meaning of mothering beyond
individual family into community mothering (Hill Collins)
Motherhood wage penalty
• Role conflicts between paid work and unpaid family labor
for women. Assumption that mothers not good employees,
not “ideal workers”
• Employed mothers earn less than non-mothers. Estimate
wage penalty of about 7% per child.
• Women lose seniority and work experience as mothers.
Less time at work, less energy for work. Explains only 1/3
of wage penalty. Accounting for similar
experience/seniority, mothers earn 4% less than nonmothers.
• Mothers choose jobs that are “mother-friendly” flexible
schedules, on-site childcare etc.
• Employers discriminate against mothers, believe mothers
less committed to jobs thus treat them differently than nonmothers (don’t promote, keep and justify lower salaries,
etc).
Father role:
• What makes a “good” father? A “bad” one?
• Can we disentangle breadwinner role from father
role? Role conflict or role support for fatherhood
in relation to “ideal worker” myth.
• Kanter: “Married men bring two people to the job,
while married women bring less than one.”
Assumption that married fathers have wives to do
their work for them (pick up the slack and/or
contribute to work outcomes?)
Mens’ marriage benefit
• 1992 study 4000 male college profs: nevermarried men had lowest salaries, followed by men
with employed wives, highest salaries and
achievement levels were men with nonemployed
wives.
• With employed wives men earned $1000 more a
year than never-married men; with non-employed
wives earned $2000 more than never-married.
His/Her marriage
• Sociologist Jessie Bernard in 1972 argued
different relationship to marriage for women and
men—his marriage was not like her marriage.
• “Shock theory of marriage”—marriage more a
shock for women than men because women give
up more independence (lose name), more likely to
accommodate, more likely to get distressed be less
happy. Today—single men less healthy than single
or married women. Whose benefits?
• Power theory of marriage: those with greater
resources tend to have more power in the
relationship and the corollary.
Gay families
• Challenge to “heteronormative conceptions of family”
• Conservatives don’t recognize legitimacy rights of gay
parents. U.S. Defense of Marriage Act only recognizes
marriage between heterosexuals.
• What about where there are two women mothers? One
biological and one fictive, or two non-biological fathers?
• Gay couples share more time together and share more
interests
• More egalitarian because less gender scripted by social
gender norms
• Research shows kids of gay parents no more likely to be
gay than kids of straight parents.
• Problems are discrimination against gays and their kids.
•
Raising Gender-Aschematic
Children
Psychologist Sandra Bem says we should seek to
raise gender-aschematic kids to undermine the
dominant gender ideologies and stereotypes
• Thinks kids should be taught biology of sex in
terms of anatomy and reproduction to undermine
stereotypical cultural correlates of sex as
definitional of gender (p. 154)
• Teach about variability of individuals within
groups as compared with small mean differences
between groups
• Teach cultural relativism and consequences of sex
discrimination
References
• Wharton, Chapter 5
• Philip Blumstein & Pepper Schwartz, American
Couples (1983)
• Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift (1989)
• Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought
(2000)
• Abigail Garner, Families Like Mine: Children of
Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is (2004)