To What Extent Are Men And Women Equal In The Home Essay

There have been many sociological studies which suggest a number of things about how equal men and women are in the home.
One study carried out by Rosser and Harris was a study of family life in Swansea. The results state a range of things about women, both good and bad. For example, it assumes that women have frequent pregnancies so has a longer period of time away from work and that life is purely based on children. 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. He found out that women take the more domestic decisions such as domestic spending, interior decorating and children’s clothing. It could be seen that these decisions are less important than those taken by the men who mainly take the finance decisions. So, Steven Edgell’s study reinforces what Rosser and Harris discovered- women are ‘more likely to have joint conjugal roles’ because women are now