Has the Division of Unpaid Work Between Men and Women Changed

Since the Increased Participation of Women in the Workforce?

Triina Kiilaspea 0770653

March 31st, 2015
SOAN*2040 Globalization: Work and Organizations

Individuals in Western societies generally tend to take pride in believing that

freedom and equality are values that are an integral part of our society, but when we
take a closer look into marriages and other romantic relationships this may fall far from
being the ideal in regards to the negotiation and balancing of unpaid work. The
increased educational and employment opportunities for women has enabled increasing
numbers of Western women to construct independent identities and lifestyles beyond
traditional motherhood and marriage. (Fox 2014:270). As contemporary womans
identities expand to incorporate the expectations and activities that have traditionally
been associated with masculinity, there has not been an equivalent shift of male identity,
let alone practice into the traditional domains of women. (Fox 2014:270).
Households all share common necessities. We all experience the need to eat, to
have our clothes and dwellings cleaned, and all-in-all to maintain a common household
that is livable. (Bianchi 2000:192). Much of these necessities can be outsourced to
non-household members such as restaurants, laundromats, and house cleaners but the
reality is that most families do not have the resources to have these duties performed
outside of the home. (Bianchi 2000:192). These families complete household duties
based on cooperation, negotiation, and sometimes conflict which rely on consensus
between family members and sometimes potential disagreements and resentment.
(Bianchi 2000:192). The question is how are household and domestic duties now
negotiated between women and men since the increasing participation of women
outside of the home and in the labour market? First I will be examining a little part of the
history surrounding the association between married women and unpaid domestic work.
Secondly I will be looking at current trends of how husbands and wives negotiate unpaid
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household labour. Lastly I will be looking at factors which can influence a couples
decision-making process when negotiating household duties.
Domestic work is supposed to be a gender neutral term, but it can be rather
misleading since the word domestic has been almost completely feminized and is
synonymous with the role of a woman and wife. (Edgell, 2006: 156). The association
between unpaid domestic work and married women dates from the mid-to-late
nineteenth century and it was not until almost a century later that research began on
domestic duties being regarded as work. (Edgell 2006:157). The first study on
housework as an occupation was conducted by Lopota (1972) in the United States
and based on data collected in the 1950s and 1960s from a sample of 568 Chicago
housewives aged 19-84. (Edgell 2006:157). This study was followed in the UK by
Oakley (1974) who studies housework as work and interviewed 40 full-time
housewives all of whom were mothers aged 20-30. (Edgell 2006:157). Both Oakley
(1974) and Lopota (1972) took note of the associated low social status of being a
housewife and believe it was mainly due to a lack of payment, that entry is earned
through either marriage or cohabitation, and that the preparation and recruitment into
work is informal and that is typically ascribed by gender rather than achieved by
testing and training. (Edgell 2006:157). In the early twentieth century the tensions
between the two forms of labour were mediated by the nuclear family, the predominant
family structure of the time. (Fox 2014:343) The prevalent norms held that the husbands
bore the title of breadwinner whose responsibility was to earn an income to support
the family while wives held the position of housewives whose responsibility was
running the family home and caring for its members. (Fox 2014:343).
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Despite women having come a long way since the 50s and 60s, with the increase
in dual-earner families, the increased economic necessity of womens paid employment
and trends toward greater attitudinal gender egalitarianism, a significant gender gap in
housework persists. (Cornwall and Legerski 2010:448). Housework remains primarily
womens work despite significant change in womens employment patterns and in mens
attitudes. (Brines1994:652). Although research shows womens economic contributions
and a liberal gender ideology do in fact foster a more equitable division of labor.
(Cornwall and Legerski 2010:449). This gender gap in the household has been
gradually declining since the 1960s due to a decrease in the amount of hours women
spend doing housework and also a rise in domestic service consumption. (Cornwall
and Legerski 2010:449). While an egalitarian gender ideology is associated with these
reductions in womens housework, mens egalitarian ideology does not significantly
increase the amount of time they spend doing unpaid work. (Cornwall and Legerski
2010:449). We have in fact seen a small rise in the time men dedicate to child care
since the 1960s, especially in the United States, but women over the same time period
have more than doubled the time they spend on childcare and continue to complete
twice as much childcare as their husbands. (Fillo et al. 2015:300). Being a woman still
remains the single best predictor of household and childcare tasks. (Fillo et al.
2015:300). As we can see there have been signs of improved equality but women are
still bearing the brunt of unpaid domestic labour.
How exactly do these families negotiate unpaid domestic labour? There are
many different factors pertaining to why a family might exhibit more traditional values
and therefore still have the husband as the head of the household and the wife as the
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homemaker or why a family might express more egalitarian values. One such factor is
class. Research on working-class family life reveals that the negotiation of employment
responsibilities and domestic labour is distinctively different in working-class families,
where it is common to find strong traditional gender ideologies, constrained employment
and education opportunities, and lower wages. (Cornwall and Legerski 2010:450).
However, although working-class husbands may be more accepting of conventional
gender ideologies, they also tend to be more egalitarian in their child care and domestic
labour practices than upper and middle-class husbands. (Cornwall and Legerski
2010:450). Working-class fathers will undo gender by altering their schedules so that
they are able to be involved in both being active in the labour force and also performing
domestic duties at home. (Cornwall and Legerski 2010:450). As well having a constraint
on financial resources forces many couples to alter their work schedules so that father
are more able to participate in their childrens lives. (Cornwall and Legerski, 2010: 450).
We have explored some history relating to how traditional gender norms and
specifically how the housewife came to be and the impact that had on negotiating
unpaid work between couples. In the mid-19 th century, women were beginning to be
reduced to only working from the home and being involved in the private sphere. As the
20th century approached, men continued to oppress women and remained the heads of
the household because their work was seen as economically productive as opposed to
the unpaid and low status work of women. This in turn insured that women would bear
the brunt of most of the household duties to keep them subservient and docile. So how
is unpaid work now negotiated between women and men since the increasing
participation of women outside of the home and in the work force? Despite the increase
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in dual-earner families and an increase of women in the labour market, there is still a
prevalent gender gap between how much unpaid work men and women do, with women
bearing the brunt of it. Even with a remaining prevalent gender gap, there is evidence
that it has been gradually declining with men even taking up performing more childcare,
even though still not nearly as much as women. Some factors that seem to contribute to
potentially determining how couples will split their household work are class and culture.
Working-class families, especially men were found to hold more traditional gender
values although usually raising children at home meant the father and mother both had
to make their schedules more flexible and split childcare time. It is still a difficult world
for women to live in, but this is the point in history where women have had the most
rights and have come the farthest in reaching true equality. Couples need to find more
ways to undo gender and come to a compromise in which both parties win and unpaid
work becomes balanced.

References
Bianchi, Suzanne.
2000 Is Anyone Doing the Housework? Trends in the Gender Division of Household
Labor. Social Forces. 79(1):191-228.
Brines, Julie.
1994 Economic Dependency, Gender, and the Division of Labour at Home. American
Journal of Sociology. 100(3):652-88.
Cornwall Marie, and Elizabeth Legerski.
2010 Working-Class Job Loss, Gender, and the Negotiation of Household
Labor. Gender & Society. 24(4):447-74.
Edgell, Stephen.
2006 The Sociology of Work: Continuity and Change in Paid and Unpaid Work.
London: Sage Publications.
Fillo Jennifer, Jamie L. Kohn, Steven W. Rholes, and Jeffry A. Simpson.
2015 Dads Doing Diapers: Individual and Relational Outcomes Associated with the
Division of Childcare Across the Transition to Parenthood. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology. 108(2):298-316.
Fox, Bonnie.
2014 Family Patterns, Gender Relations. Don Mills: Oxford University Press.