Gender and Work 1

1
Gender and Work (1)

• Dr Rhoda Wilkie
• SO 1004

2
introduction and reminder

• last week gender and sexuality
• becoming gendered and doing gender?
• categorise people in society
• how does gender influence employment
  opportunities and life chances?
• is work gendered?
• if so, what are the implications?

3
work and home historical overview

• industrialisation public and private spheres
• domestic ideology
• ideal family breadwinner (male) and
  housewife (female) roles
• family wage
• women and work
• is housework real work?

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separation of work and home

• pre-industrial society no separation
• e.g. cottage industry
• industrialisation separation of work and home
• production separated from consumption

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social life public and private spheres

• Public
• paid work, politics, market,
• arena of male activity
• (masculine)
• instrumental objective and impartial

• Private
• domestic life home and family
• womans domain
• (feminine)
• expressive
• emotional and nurturing

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Rosemary Pringle in Abbott et al (2005 231)

• Though home and private life may be
  romanticized, they are generally held to
  represent the feminine world of the personal
  and the emotional, the concrete and the
  particular, of the domestic and the sexual. The
  public world of work sets itself up as the
  opposite of all these things it is rational,
  abstract, ordered, concerned with general
  principles, and of course , masculine For men,
  home and work are both opposite and complementary
  For women home is not a respite from work but
  another workplace. For some women work is
  actually a respite from home!

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implications and justifications?

• economic life reorganised emergence of waged
  labour
• reordering of gender relations, roles and
  expectations
• legal, moral, medical discourses legitimate
  changes?

8
domestic ideology

• initially bourgeoisie emerging middle class in
  Victorian society
• home womans natural sphere
• women and mothers moral guardians
• protective work legislation
• effect women from different classes in different
  ways

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ideal family

• working class embrace cult of domesticity
• non-working wife becomes the ideal
• cereal packet family nuclear family norm
• sexual division of labour breadwinner and
  housewife

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family wage breadwinner role

• mid 19C male working class via trade union
  movement
• family wage
• created breadwinner role
• exclude women from male skilled jobs
  inequality?
• women financially dependant power?

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women and work (1)

• working women threat?
• gendered occupational segregation
• - horizontal mens jobs womens jobs
• - vertical glass ceiling
• confined to lower-status and lower paid jobs
• concentrated in jobs women were naturally
  skilled at

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women and work (2)

• reserve army of labour?
• e.g. during First and Second World Wars
• - return to main domestic role housewife

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domestic labour is it real work?

• if employed in public domain paid
• homework?
• private sphere womens work, unpaid and
  hidden labour
• natural aptitude mothering and domestic tasks

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The sociology of housework (1)Ann Oakley

• bias male work patterns norm?
• 1974 first published study about housework
  classic study
• interviewed 40 women London
• housewifes average working week in 1971 77
  hours!
• separated housework and childcare

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The sociology of housework (2)Ann Oakley

• marriage and the division of labour (reading
  for this week!)
• questioned claims of increasing equality class
  differences beliefs and attitudes
• feminists housework is real work

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housework differs from waged work?

• gendered labour carried out mainly by women
• closely linked with personal intimate ties
• no fixed job description, no agreed hours or
  conditions of work
• boundaries unclear end?

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division of labour

• technical
• divide job into specialised tasks
• - skill and power hierarchy not all tasks
  equally valued
• social
• different jobs done by different social groups
• -primary labour market (full-time good working
  conditions)
• -secondary labour market (part-time poor
  conditions)
• sexual
• horizontal e.g. mens jobs womens jobs
• vertical e.g. glass ceiling

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summary (1)

• historical overview industrialisation
  separation of work and home
• public domain (masculine) and private domain
  (feminine)
• gendered roles breadwinner (male) and
  housewife (female)
• housework real work (Oakley 1974)

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summary (2)

• labour is gendered varies and changes
• division of labour technical, social, sexual
• sexual division of labour - socially constructed
  not based on natural/biological differences
• jobs become identified as mens or womens work
  then it is argued that men and women do these
  jobs because of natural biological differences
• (Oakley in Abbott et al 2005 232)

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tomorrows lecture

• but that was then how relevant is all this now?
• legacy of domestic/familial ideology?
• consider some current statistics related to work
  patterns for men and women
• men do womens work and vice versa
  experiences?
• is womens work ever done? double day/second
  shift
• consider Sylvia Walby s work (offers a feminist
  explanation) she claims there has been a shift
  from private patriarchy to public patriarchy