Lecture 9
Gender
1
Recap
 Social construction
 Enlightenment
 Industrial Revolution
Today
 The problem today
 Key concepts: patriarchy, sexual
division of labour, gender
 Questioning gender
 Historical process
 Answering the problem
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Men and Women in the Workplace
Today
 Employment
o 1971 UK: 90% male/56% female
o 2005: 80% to 70%
 Part time: 10% of employed
men to 42% of women
o 2018 full time: 90% to 60%
 Pay
o 1970 women on average earn 63%
of men
o 2005 82%
o 2018 91% (ONS)
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Men and Women in the Workplace
Today
 Horizontal segregation: men and
women doing different types of jobs
o 2005 2/3rds of women in care,
catering, health, clerical, teaching
and functional management
 (Women in Work Commission,
2006)
o Men more spread, but certain
occupations largely male
o Senior management roles (66%)
4
Men and Women in the Workplace
Today
 Vertical segregation: differences in
status and pay
o 2005 83% of company directors and
CEOs (average £55) male; waiter
services (£5.50) 74% female
o 2004 EOC: only 9% senior judges,
10% senior police, 13% national
newspaper editors female
 So there is some form of differentiation
in the market
o Why?
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Key Concepts
 Patriarchy: ‘rule of the father’
o A feminist definition: Power &
authority completely in male hands
o For some feminists the family has
been the source of patriarchy
o Weber: complete authority
exercised by a particular individual
over group, through inheritance
 Note not just between sexes
(e.g. serf and lord)
 Material interests: a system of power &
control of wealth
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Key Concepts
 Problems with feminist definition:
o Makes assumptions the problem is
‘men’ rather than construction of
gender
 Weber argues for process by
which power is passed on
 Also which men? To what
extent?
 Idea of complete power too simple –
o How do we differentiate between
different types of society?
o Or between different ethnicities
context experiences?
 E.g. 20th C black women and
servitude?
o Or different classes?
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Key Concepts
 The Sexual Division of Labour
o The way in which different types of
work are allocated or encouraged
for men and women
o Generally thought to be unpaid/paid
or public/private spheres
 Parsons: ‘Expressive’ and ‘instrumental’
based on biology
 Ann Oakley: SDL culturally produced –
‘expressive’ legitimises oppression
 We also need to think about class–
gender role differences between upper
and lower?
 But better: does not assume power or
role, rather how social practice divides
between sexes
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Gender
 ‘Sex’: physiological differences
 ‘Gender’: roles and norms; psychological
and cultural
o Social construction?
 But is gender shaped by biology?
o More complicated than race – there
is something ‘out there’ – ‘sex’
o Men & testosterone – linked to
aggression
o Women and oestrogen – linked to
cognition (memory) and dispositions
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Questioning ‘Gender’
 Problems: Testosterone studies mixed
 Animal testing? E.g. oestrogen in rats
increases territorial behaviour
 Hormones shaped by social context
o E.g. low-dominance monkeys
increase testosterone when in all
female company
 Archer & Lloyd (2002) ‘Sex and
Gender’:
o Need to understand the
interaction between biological and
social
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Questioning ‘Gender’
 Even if we accept biology, does this
mean we have to accept gender roles?
 Are gender roles still socially
produced?
o Name TV chefs?
 Oakley – over 70% of housewives
discontent
 What about sports?
o Men tend to be more physically
able
o But does this mean women don’t
want to do sports?
o Or cannot be better than men?
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Gender and Sexual Division of Labour
 Murdock (1949) ‘Social Structure’:
study of over 200 societies
o Division based on pragmatics of
‘sex’
o Bodies shape practicality roles
 Ann Oakley (1974) ‘Housewife’
o Murdock ignores data
o 14 societies lumbering is female or
shared task
o 36 female land clearance
o Small number no clear SDL
 So SDL not universal or necessary
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Exercise
 What were the two definitions of
patriarchy?
 And how is Weber’s different?
 What do you think of the concept of
patriarchy?
 What does Murdock argue shapes the
sexual division of labour?
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Explaining the Sexual Division
of Labour
 We’ve already seen feudalism & SDL
o Home: the workplace and unit of
production
o Some SDL, but domestic work largely
by unmarried children
o The woman is central to the
reproduction of the household
o But also patriarchal
 E.g. Church, Kings & Lords, and
head of household
 Laws privilege men: inheritance
to male heir
 Marriage: property and body of
women
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Industrial Revolution & the
Sexual Division of Labour
 Urbanisation & breakdown of old social
order – Durkheim & organic solidarity
o Something new must form
 Separation of home and work
o Private: sex, food, rest, care
o Public: economic & power
 Opportunities for women
o Mills in USA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=XC27KGNA2mE
o UK Cottage industry – traditional
work textiles
 Also positions for upper classes:
Governesses, teachers
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Explaining the Sexual Division
of Labour
 The ‘woman question’ (See FoM
chapter)
 Tension between industrial and
patriarchal
 Public/private divide offers women
independence from family/patriarchy
o Property; although limited
 Old power system requires new norms
o Sensitive & emotional vs. rational
and resilient
 Unable to endure hardships
 Protected by the man
o The woman’s place is in the home
o Queen Vic: ‘Let woman be what God
intended, a helpmate for a man’
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Explaining the Sexual Division
of Labour
 The upper classes
o Increase in wealth, urbanisation &
servants – ‘the gilded cage’
o Jobs poorly paid with little social
status – temporary
 Lower class jobs not allowed for
‘refined’ women
 Marriage in English law – couple
become legally one person
o All property subject to husband
o Failure to marry resulted in
dependence on charity, poverty
 Spinster – stigmatised
category/norm
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Explaining the Sexual Division
of Labour
 Lower class women
 UK Factory Acts 1819 & 1833 – reduces
child labour & women’s hours
o Side-effect: mother takes on role of
carer
 Women seen as threat to men’s work –
(cheaper labour) & middle class
interventions
o Unions exclude women
o Contracts between employers and
male workers to exclude
o 1842 Mines Act bans women
 Women in work: 1851 – 1911: from 1 in
4, to 1 in 10
o Increasingly dependent on men
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Exercise
 What did industrialisation change with
regards to the family?
o What impact did this initially have
on women?
 What impact do you think this had in
shaping ideas gender?
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Exercise
 The separation of home & work or
private and public
 Power interests of upper class
patriarchy
 Competition with lower-paid women
 Women pushed into the
domestic/private sphere
 Late 19th C. to WW2 relatively stable
industrial relations
o Solidifies associations: men ‘bread
winner’- women ‘housewife’
 Although development of clerical roles
and consumerism creates jobs ‘for
women’
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Women’s Resistance
 But 18th C. not all one way
 Catherine Cockburn 1679-1749
novelist, moral philosopher; saw
limitations placed on a woman
 Emilie du Chatelet 1706-1749 Natural
philosopher, translated Newton into
French, published on physics,
laboratory and affair with Voltaire
 Mary Wollstonecraft 1759-1797
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I
XC5H8c_hkw
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Women’s Resistance
 Wollstonecraft & gender
o How women are shaped through
roles and expectations
o How they are seen because of these
 ‘Maria, or the Wrongs of Women’
published after death, destroyed
reputation
 1903 Suffragettes & the vote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb
dskuuocpg
 1918 – women over 30
 1928 – women over 21
 Radical & violent actions and response
 But not simply about vote – about
women in the public sphere
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Women & Work in the 20th C.
 WW2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W
hswqZh2Rc4
 Challenges gender norms – women
experience work, income, independent
 Post-war returns to normal
o Men return (but also labour
shortage)
 Crowley: constructing the ‘mother’ and
nuclear family
o Concern about falling birth-rate
o Ideas of ‘proper’ family
o Welfare and Ministry of Labour
contradiction
o Maternal deprivation theory & guilt
 Society resists – women in work
challenges norms and identities
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Women & Work in the 20th C.
 1960s Sexual Revolution
o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=xc2ZTmh0ZmA
 Weeks ‘Sexuality and its Discontents’
o Attitudes changing pre-1960s
o The Pill & control – separates sex
and reproduction
o Women increasingly acknowledged
as sexual beings
o Radical changes in women’s
appearance and fashions
o Sex outside marriage
o Increasing women in education
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Exercise
 How did Wollstoncraft challenge gender
norms and roles?
 The Suffragettes?
 WW2?
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Women & Work in the 20th C.
 But also new gendered idea of women
as sexual objects
o Capitalism could sell sexual desire
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Women & Work in the 20th C.
 1968 Ford Machinist Strike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4GpsXpA2I
 Why could this happen?
 Influences 1970 Equal Pay Act – equal
pay for similar work
 Increasing improvement for women in
terms of pay, number in work, status
and role
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Women & Work in the 20th C.
 Changing, but specific gender role still
has some influence (British Social
Attitudes Survey 1980s to 2012)
o Gender role support 49% to 13%
support
o Mother should stay at home 64% to
33%
o Domestic labour still tends to be
performed mostly by women
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Women & Work in the 20th C.
 There still seems to be an impact of
gender in work
o 2005 2/3rd women in certain types of
industry e.g. care, cleaning, clerical
 Is this biological?
o 2005 10% of employed men and
42% of employed women in parttime work
 Lower pay, more vulnerable
 But also biology & capitalism –
pregnancy
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Summary
 Particular gender roles and assumptions
are shaped by social practice &
discourse
o E.g. types of work
o That women should do the
housework
 Feminist acts of resistance have
reshaped gender and the sexual division
of labour – again, indicates a social
construction
 But not to exclude biology
o Over 90% of violent acts by men
 But we need to be very careful not to
make assumptions
o This is not 90% of men, a small
number
o What role does social context have
in relation to biology?
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