Throughout history men are seen as the “strong/tough ones”; the belief is that they should be paid more than women in order to support their families (Loney, 2005). Women often take time off from work to raise their children, which can interfere with their career path. Also, married women with children are more likely to leave their jobs, rather than women who are single and/or without
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
This limited the employees’ influence on policies and organization process. This became a problem with the reward and promotion process. Promotions are awarded to employees with exceptional performance evaluation. There was an implied rule that the employee must be willing to move across stores, districts, or regions as required. This put women at a disadvantage because they would not be able to pick up and move as easily as men.
This is negative and a very sweeping statement about women because not all women want to have children; also it could suggest that women are less likely to be employed in comparison to men because they will spend a lot of time away from work. Furthermore, many women can balance having children and equally working for an income, so it is not correct that women’s lives are purely based around their children. This expresses inequality because it is assumed women are less likely to work and perhaps less favoured by employees. However, the study also suggests good thing about the change in equality between women and men. An example of this is that it says ‘mothers unions are less common’ and that women ‘are more likely to have joint conjugal roles with their husbands.’ These are both extremely positive and suggest that women are now equal to men because they have equal responsibility with their husbands in the home, this is looked at closer in the study; ‘Middle Class Couples’ by Steven Edgell where he studies decision making between men and women in the home.
This results in the man having more power over the woman as he is the individual working and bringing an income, enabling him to make the decisions whereas the woman would have no power for this to happen. In relation to having an income, feminists see the workplace as another place in which inequalities occur. ‘The Glass Ceiling’ is a phrase commonly used by feminists. It is related to women and their careers and how they are able to see promotion but are not going to be considered as they are women. This is highlighted in the report ‘Sex and authority in the workplace: the causes of sexual inequality’, Wendy C. Wolf
There are two forms of inequity, underpayment inequity which exists when someone’s outcome-input is less than that of someone else (George & Jones, 2011). Overpayment inequity exists when someone’s outcome-input is more than that of another person (George & Jones, 2011). This could be seen in the form of financial compensation for thus output compared to that of another doing the same work but getting different pay. We see this in the inequity of pay between men and women. As stated by Sportelli “the gender gap separates women from their male peers in the workplace, salary, and self-esteem (Sportelli, 2014).
Although the two articles discuss different topics -- purposes' of work and work/life balance -- the articles are similar in that they show a change in people's attitude towards work. In addition, they both use personal experiences to support the idea that we should promote working and live according to our personal beliefs over any other reason. First, Dumaine and Sample and Caproni all show their changing attitudes toward work, with the former exploring changes in the meaning of work and the latter exploring changes in people's attitudes towards work/life balance. In Dumaine and Sample's article, not only do people gain money and desirable products after work, but they also realize work's meaning that provides fulfillment such as obtaining communication, coordination and teamwork skills. Therefore people do change to not work for money but find work's meanings that may improve themselves.
However, radical feminists disagree. They believe that women still face much oppression in the family. They show that one in five women suffer domestic violence in the family, many suffer sexual violence or at least have their sexual desires taken less seriously than mens; they also note that few empirical studies show men as equal to women in domestic labour (Oakley, Dunscombe and marsden) nor do men appear to be allowing women an equal say in decision making (Edgell) or in financial control (Pahl). Functionalists and the new Right take issue with radical feminists’ suggestion that women need to live without men as the New Right believe that only a man can act as a satisfactory role model for male children and give the children the discipline they need to be well socialised. They disregard the feminists demand for equality in conjugal roles as they believe that a division of labour where woman focus upon the home is instinctive, natural and functional.
Gender also creates important social divisions amongst societies and further divide the social classes creating even more divisions in society. Gender refers to the socially constructed roles and relations of men and women. 'Gender norms' allocate specific rights and responsibilities to men and women, for example, women might be expected to take on caring or domestic duties and remain in the home, while men may be expected to work outside the home, and provide financially for his family. This therefore creates ‘gender relations’ and in return creating unequal power between men and women. Within society women remain in roles and relationships that often make them subordinate to men, because they are paid less than men for the same work, or because they are not permitted to take on higher status work.
The final cause is lack of communication. The first significant cause of divorce is that women completely change in roles. In the past men had to earn money to afford the expense of family, whereas women only do house work and women have no money thus they depend on their husbands. Nevertheless, these situations entirely change nowadays. The equality between men and women in roles today is different; women can work outside to earn money, while men share the household tasks.