About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about social change and its impact on the domestic division of labour, focusing in particular on: (i) a key aspect of this change – women’s greater involvement in formal employment – and whether this has altered gender inequalities in domestic labour; (ii) evidence from time use studies which suggests that, to the contrary, women still undertake significantly more unpaid work than men; (iii) Arlie Hochschild’s consequent argument that women now perform a “second shift”, whereby they are expected both to match men in paid work and perform more domestic labour; (iv) some more recent studies which support these findings.

About the lecturer

Dr Vicki Harman is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey. Her research interests include family life, motherhood and gender. She is co-editor of Feeding Children Inside and Outside the Home (2019) and Mothering, Mixed Families and Racialised Boundaries (2015), and author of The Sexual Politics of Ballroom Dancing (2018).