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Gender and Domestic Labour in Classical Sociology
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Gender and the Domestic Division of Labour
In this course, Dr Vicki Harman (University of Surrey) explores gender and the domestic division of labour. In the first lecture, we think about classical sociology, particularly functionalism, in which domestic labour was both undervalued and thought to be the responsibility of women. In the second lecture, we look at a key text in making domestic labour an area of sociological interest – Ann Oakley’s The Sociology of Housework. In the third lecture, we ask whether women’s greater participation in paid work has created greater equality. Next, we look at the gendered division of emotional labour and the pressure on women to act as caregivers. In the fifth and final lecture, we survey of a range of aspects of gender inequality in domestic labour highlighted by feminist scholars.
Gender and Domestic Labour in Classical Sociology
In this lecture, we think about gender and domestic labour in classical sociological theory, particularly functionalism, focusing in particular on: (i) the relative neglect within early sociology of work within the household as an important aspect of society; (ii) Talcott Parsons’ theory of the nuclear family as a “functional fit” for modern industrial society; (iii) the assumption within this theory that women were naturally best placed to perform the “expressive” role within the family and men the “instrumental”; (iv) the emergence of feminist critiques of this approach to the domestic division of labour.
Hello, I'm Vicky Harmon. I'm a reader in sociology at the University of Surrey,
00:00:06and today I'm going to be talking about gender and the household Division of Labour,
00:00:10going to start off by talking about
00:00:16gender and the division of labour within classical sociological theory.
00:00:18And the first thing to say is this is an area of relative neglect.
00:00:24When classical sociologists were talking about work
00:00:28and labour, they were mainly talking about paid work in the public sphere.
00:00:33They didn't pay sufficient attention to all the work that
00:00:38goes on in the home to keep the households running.
00:00:42They did, however,
00:00:46make some assumptions about natural or inevitable roles within the home.
00:00:47And functional ism gives us a killer picture of these.
00:00:53The work of Parsons tells us that we can expect men
00:00:58and women to take on different roles within the family.
00:01:03Within the function list view of the family, the nuclear family of mom,
00:01:08Dad and Dependent Children was seen as the
00:01:12ideal fit for a modern industrial society.
00:01:15One of the reasons for that was because it was geographically mobile.
00:01:20It didn't have extended family,
00:01:24tying it down
00:01:26and preventing it from moving. If a new job needed to be found, for example.
00:01:28But the mobile nuclear family also meant that there was
00:01:34less extended family around to help with domestic labour,
00:01:38such as looking after Children, cleaning, cooking and so on.
00:01:42So here, in the modern nuclear family
00:01:47fit for industrial society,
00:01:51we see men and women taking on different roles to each other,
00:01:53roles that are segregated by gender.
00:01:58And sociologists like Parsons tell us that this is
00:02:02an ideal division of labour within industrial society.
00:02:05Because the man can take the instrumental role.
00:02:10He can work outside of the home for pay,
00:02:14and the woman can take the expressive role
00:02:17that means that she's caring for the family members in the domestic sphere.
00:02:21Making sure everyone is fed is the house is clean.
00:02:25The food is on the table when the male worker comes home from work and the
00:02:31Children are well looked after and are socialised
00:02:36into the norms and values of society.
00:02:39Within this idea of the family,
00:02:43there's also the idea of a kind of caring role within the instrumental role,
00:02:45and that is in relation to a warm bath theory
00:02:51that when the male worker returns from home he
00:02:56might have experienced strains and stresses in the domestic,
00:03:00in the paid work sphere
00:03:04and in the domestic sphere he can be looked after in a way that actually
00:03:06achieves a status quo,
00:03:11achieves him going back into that paid
00:03:14work environment with less stresses and strains.
00:03:17So we see that the family had a number
00:03:23of important roles and emotional regulation was one.
00:03:26We see this work being done by women in the home,
00:03:29and we see a sense that this is natural and inevitable in
00:03:32terms of the division of labour and the role in society.
00:03:36And all of this works to keep things stable
00:03:41and to keep society functioning with the family,
00:03:44interacting with other institutions, such as the world of paid work.
00:03:48In time, feminists critiqued this model of the family
00:03:55and argued that there had been a neglect of domestic work
00:03:59and that we needed to rethink whether these roles were necessarily natural
00:04:03and inevitable.
00:04:08It also suggests that a particular vision of the family, a middle class family,
00:04:10if you like, modelled on white American and British families were universal to all,
00:04:17and with increasing family diversity that became less and less the case.
00:04:24So overall we can say that family life in relation
00:04:30to the domestic sphere was relatively neglected within classical sociology.
00:04:34But we do see clear understandings of distinct roles
00:04:40for men and women within function list sociological theory,
00:04:43particularly the work of Parsons with the understanding
00:04:47that the woman is responsible for domestic labour.
00:04:50
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Harman, V. (2022, February 10). Gender and the Domestic Division of Labour - Gender and Domestic Labour in Classical Sociology [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/gender-and-the-domestic-division-of-labour/feminism-and-domestic-labour
MLA style
Harman, V. "Gender and the Domestic Division of Labour – Gender and Domestic Labour in Classical Sociology." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 10 Feb 2022, https://massolit.io/courses/gender-and-the-domestic-division-of-labour/feminism-and-domestic-labour