Anne Oakley argues that we still live in a patriarchal (male dominated) society, and therefore women occupy a subordinate and dependant role within the family and wider society. Overall it could therefore be argued that rather than partners becoming more equal, women now have to carry a ‘dual burden’, whereby she is responsible for two jobs of unpaid or paid labour. Factors such as patriarchy and conforming to a gender script will lead to these divisions. It could be argued that the money management within a family has an effect on the
Functionalist Murdock suggested as children we are socialised into societies shared norms and values and he believed that males provide the economic roles and females provided the expressive role. Therefore it is natural for women to play the expressive role in the household looking after the family’s emotional needs. However, radical feminist Ann Oakley argues that the role of the housewife is a social construction and isn’t linked to the female role. The housewife role makes sure that women stay inferior to men making it difficult for them have careers. Women carry out the triple burden in the household; the domestic labour, emotional labour, and paid labour.
New right thinkers however; believe that these laws undermine the traditional male dominance in families, but many believe these new policies for women and children strengthen the family rather than weaken it. Sociologists such as new right thinkers argue that the Labour party has constructed a ‘nanny state’ which over-intervenes in personal living arrangements. The Labour party have constructed many laws beneficial for women in families as they have realised most families now rely of two
Gender stereotyping refers to the ways societies standardise their ideas about the roles and attributes of male and female . In many western cultures females were regarded as the second or inferior sex. Males were considered dominant and more important. Women were often expected to look after males. Anthony Browne in his picture book "Piggybook" questions the fairness of such attitudes and by telling and illustrating the story of the Piggott family suggests a fairer, Happier way to behave.
The common perception of marriage is that it was originally weighted heavily in favour of the male member of the couple, and that this has shifted slowly to a more even-handed arrangement in recent years. This essay will examine the question of how accurate this belief really is. Historically, marriage was highly unequal. While the husband took the role of breadwinner and went out to earn the necessary money to support the family, his wife was expected to stay at home and look after the more mundane tasks that make up the day-to-day running of a household. As the former role was commonly seen as more valuable than the latter, this often meant that the husband held most of the power, such as deciding where they would live, how resources were distributed, etc.
Stereotypically, men are the masters and women are housewives. This is discrimination to the other sex because they basically see them as slaves, but with better treatment. Unlimited power is unacceptable for women because the men take advantage of this power and use it in many ways. For example, wars, ruling, and even in the household to their wives. Education is needed weather you’re a male or female because gender doesn’t play the role in the education life.
The author also uses irony to add a bit of humor, and also emphasize judgment on men’s idea of the gender roles. “ I want a wife who will work and send me to school”. Hyperbole: The author creates an unrealistic image of the typical wife and exaggerates to make a point. “I want a wife who will go along when our family takes a vacation …rest and change of scene”. This is an exaggeration because even on her free time, the wife is portrayed as a slave to the husband.
He took it that the family reduced in size in industrialised societies because functions moved elsewhere, due to the need for geographic mobility and because status came through merit not through family identification. | When it became smaller, the family had to organise itself in a specialised manner to work. Parsons assumed the man would work following an instrumental logic of income generation. This meant he relied on the expressive abilities of the wife who also organised the home and children. In this particularly patriarchal view, Parsons' analysis was called the warm bath theory as a kind of ironic commentary on the man's ability to have his stresses washed away thanks to his wife in an over-positive view of a loving household.
The Domestic Division of Labour refers to the roles that men and women play in relation to housework, childcare and paid work. Parsons (1995) argues that in a traditional nuclear family the roles of husband and wife are segregated, in his view the husband plays an instrumental role geared towards achieving success at work so he can provide financially, being the breadwinner. The woman has an expressive role geared towards primary socialisation of children and meeting the emotional needs. Parsons said that these roles made things ‘nice and functional’ for society. He also argued division of labour is based on biological differences between men and women, as women are naturally suited towards nurturing role and men to a powerful role.
Men are socialised into exploitative relationships in relation to work and they carry this socialisation over into the home and their relationship to women. b. Patriarchy is an ideology (a set of related beliefs about the world - in this instance, male - female relationships) that stems from male attempts to justify the economic exploitation of women. c. The "family system" characteristic of modern societies benefits capitalism (and, by extension, the men who tend to dominate positions of power and influence) because women: - can be forced / socialised into unpaid domestic labour. - can be forced / socialised into responsibility for child-rearing. This benefits the Capitalist because they do not have to pay women to perform this role (the "reproduction of labour power" in society).