FOTOLIA
The domestic division
of labour debate
See accompanying notes throughout this PowerPoint
The domestic division of labour debate
How do couples divide up household tasks?
 Sociologists have put forward a number of different reasons to help
explain this.
 Social class, age, religion and ethnicity may all be factors.
 Feminists, especially, have tended to focus more strongly on the
importance of gender inequalities.
 However, these characteristics are not mutually exclusive — people
belong in each of these groups at the same time. It may be that
combined effects — e.g. of class and gender — are most significant.
The domestic division of labour debate
‘Traditional’ approaches
 Traditionally, functionalist sociologists have argued that the family
works positively, both for society and for its individual members.
 For Parsons, wives and husbands complemented each other because
their ‘natural’ gender differences were reflected in their different roles in
marriage — the ‘rational’ male breadwinner and the more‘emotional’
and caring domestic role of the female.
 As the extended family declined in its importance, Willmott and Young
argued that husbands and wives were adapting to the more ‘private’
nuclear family, and were slowly beginning to share more household
tasks.
 The ‘symmetrical family’ was beginning to emerge.
The domestic division of labour debate
Marxist views
 From the late 1960s/early 1970s, more radical views began to emerge in the
family and domestic division of labour debate.
 Marxists recalled the work of Marx and Engels, which identified the family
as a site for female exploitation and home-based women as unpaid
labourers for capitalists.
 Althusser saw the family as part of the ideological state apparatus — a unit
for consumption, where false needs (e.g. for new household goods for
women) were created to support capitalism.
The domestic division of labour debate
Feminist views
 There is often an overlap between Marxist and feminist views on labour
tasks in the family, though feminists focus more directly on gender rather
than class inequality.
 Feminists challenged the ‘natural’ sex distinctions identified by
functionalists. Oakley found that most unpaid women ‘homemakers’
actually experienced housework as dull, unfulfilling and monotonous, with
little status or job satisfaction.
 If women do opt for a paid career they often end up in a ‘dual role’— with
responsibility at work, as well as for key tasks at home.
The domestic division of labour debate
Recent challenges — ‘post-feminism’?
 More recently, challenges to the feminist position have come from the
work of sociologist Katherine Hakim. She argues that ‘political
correctness’ has impeded scholarly research on the extent of real sex
differences in abilities, social attitudes, values, life goals and behaviour.
 Hakim contends that there is solid evidence that men and women do
differ, on average, in their work and home orientations — and that many
women prefer unpaid domestic tasks to paid work tasks.
The domestic division of labour debate
A changing world?
 All theorists agree that the world has been changing for both men and
women over the past 50 years — and that these changes have had some
impact on dividing up domestic labour.
 What changes can you think of that would have had an impact on the
domestic division of labour?
 You might consider changes in education, female aspirations, family size
and structure, and the nature of work. You might also identify other
relevant changes.
The domestic division of labour debate
Measuring change over time
 If these changes have indeed led to changes in the domestic division of
labour, how could we measure this over time?
 Sociologist Oriel Sullivan used time-use diary data to compare people’s
domestic work tasks in 1975 and 1997. Subjects were asked to fill in
diaries describing what they did in their daily lives.
 The data covered 690 couples in 1975 and 202 couples in 1997.
 See Figure 1 on the following slide.
The domestic division of labour debate
Figure 1: Minutes per day spent cooking and cleaning by sex,
employment status and socio-economic class of household
Manual/clerical
Men
1975
Professional/technical
1997
1975
1997
All
16
31
21
31
Both f/t
19
29
30
43
Husband f/t, wife p/t
15
28
18
24
Husband f/t, wife NE
12
18
18
37
Other
54
51
22
13
1975
1997
Women
1975
1997
All
213
135
208
130
Both f/t
208
167
218
146
Husband f/t, wife NE
256
182
235
162
Other
218
137
302
158
Key: f/t = in full-time employment; p/t = in part-time employment; NE = not employed.
Source: Sullivan (2000: 445)
The domestic division of labour debate
A more recent study
 A study from the USA in 2010 was less detailed than Sullivan’s — it made
no allowance for male and female paid work responsibilities, for example.
 However, it also showed the different types of domestic work that males
and females tend to do.
 What evidence could you take from the data to argue that the domestic
division of labour is gendered?
 See Figure 2 on the following slide.
The domestic division of labour debate
Figure 2: United States Bureau of Labour
statistics study, 2010
The domestic division of labour debate
European Social Survey (ESS) study, 2013

A recent ESS study, involving researchers from the UK and
countries across Europe, has been monitoring for national
differences in household tasks by sex.

Generally, northern European countries are more equitable than
those in southern Europe.

The UK finished 11th in this international table but even here
70% of housework is still done by women, including two-thirds
by women who also do more than 30 hours paid work each week.

See Figure 3 on the following slide.
The domestic division of labour debate
Figure 3: European Social Survey study, 2013
(some international comparisons)