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?

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

5. social life: public and private spheres
paid work, politics, market,
arena of male activity
(masculine)
instrumental: objective and impartial
Private
domestic life – home and family
woman’s domain
(feminine)
expressive:
emotional and nurturing

6. 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!’

7. 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 – woman’s ‘natural’ sphere
women and mothers – moral guardians
‘protective’ work legislation
effect women from different classes in different ways

9. ‘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’

10. ‘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?

11. women and work (1) working women threat?
gendered occupational segregation:
- horizontal – men’s jobs & women’s jobs
- vertical – ‘glass ceiling’
confined to lower-status and lower paid jobs
concentrated in jobs women were ‘naturally’ skilled at

12. women and work (2) reserve army of labour?
e.g. during First and Second World Wars
- return to main domestic role: housewife

13. domestic labour: is it ‘real’ work?
if employed in public domain – paid
homework?
private sphere: ‘women’s work’, unpaid and ‘hidden labour’
‘natural’ aptitude – mothering and domestic tasks

14. ‘The sociology of housework’ (1) Ann Oakley
bias:– male work patterns – norm?
1974 – first published study about housework – classic study
interviewed 40 women – London
housewife’s average working week in 1971 – 77 hours!
separated housework and childcare

15. ‘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

16. 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?

17. division of labour technical social sexual
– 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. men’s jobs & women’s jobs
vertical – e.g. ‘glass ceiling’

18. 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)

19. 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 men’s or women’s work; then it is argued that men and women do these jobs because of natural biological differences’
(Oakley in Abbott et al 2005: 232)

20. tomorrow’s 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 ‘women’s work’ and vice versa: experiences?
is ‘women’s 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’