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The twentieth century has been marked by many breakthroughs in the theories of psychology, philosophy, and inter-human relations. In my point of view the theorizing of gender has gone through the biggest evolution of all other. In a relatively short period of time, less than one hundred years, women, who originally had very limited rights, became equitable to men in their abilities to freely express their thoughts and feelings. The era of emancipation has begun. Out of these changes in our society many womens movements have aroused. One of the most famous of them is feminism.
We will examine several books, which deal with the theories of gender differences, and the approaches that are undertaken when categorizing male and female gender relations. One of the most quoted and referenced to books is Ann Oakley's The Sociology of Housework. In this book written in 1974 the author questions the issue of housework, and whether it is solely the responsibility of a woman and must be treated as unconditional chore, or it is the same type of work as any other, and must be treated with the same level of respect. Oakley points out that: Housework does not consist of a set range of tasks. Housework has historically been defined as 'women's work' - others may assist her or help out, but it remains 'her work'. Housework has become fused with the identities of wife and mother and is seen as low status and socially devalued work.
Ann Oakley rejected sociology's failure to recognize that the domestic or private sphere is also an important site in which social relations are produced and contested. The domestic realm is constructed as the site of leisure, hence activities that take place in the home, including housework are often seen as form of leisure. Oakley's examination of unpaid work in the home indicates that there are multiple and conflicting meanings given to housework. Housework is by and large women's work it is tedious, repetitive work that is relatively unskilled and un stimulating. More to it, later on in her work, the author opens our eyes to the fact that the household work is separated between masculine and feminine chores.
What is interesting is that females are doing more unskilled work, which would, in case if the work was to be paid for, be paid for much less than the work that is performed by males. Consider this, traditionally women have assumed responsibility for indoor tasks like cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, grocery shopping and child care, while men have been assigned outdoor tasks, like gardening and house-maintenance, and sometimes car maintenance as well. If to think about it, what kind of work would you personally pay for more? As a consequence of these associations tasks like cleaning are feminist tasks, while tasks like fixing the door handle are masculinised tasks.
These gendered distinctions are not neutral. Masculinised tasks and activities are defined as of more value that feminist tasks. Doing household task can be used therefore to affirm and contest understandings about ourselves as gendered individuals - to affirm gender difference or to contest gendered norms. The date of the books first issue approximately coincides with the beginning of the new thinking of people. The sociologists have conducted an interesting research, here what they found out. American men are doing about 16 hours of housework a week, up from 12 hours in 1965, according to a study by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR), Ann Arbor.
The weekly housework hours of American women have declined sharply since 1965. Yet, they are still doing much more housework than men -- about 27 hours a week. The findings are part of a study of time-use trends in the U. S.
and other industrialized nations. Researchers analyzed data from time-diaries, considered the most-accurate way to assess how people spend their time, supplementing the analysis with data from questionnaires asking men and women to recall how much time they spent on housework in an average week, including cooking, cleaning, and doing other chores around the house.
Free research essays on topics related to: housework, gendered, tasks, cleaning, ann
Research essay sample on Feminist Tasks Masculinised Tasks Housework
