Gender inequality and the gendered division of labour

Abstract

T he division of labour between men and women makes a major contribution to the material and social inequalities associated with gender. It has a dual aspect in that, first, most women still retain the primary responsibility for caring and domestic work (which is usually unpaid), and second, women (in aggregate) do not gain the same level of reward from participation in paid employment as do men (in aggregate). Up to the middle of the twentieth century, the ‘male breadwinner’ model of employment and family articulation was underpinned by extensive gender segregation in both the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres of work. Men in full-time employment received a ‘family wage’ and related benefits; women gained benefits, often indirectly, as wives and mothers. Since the 1950s and 1960s, however, technological change has brought with it the transformation of production systems, as well as developments in areas such as communications and financial intermediation that have contributed to the ‘globalisation’ of markets and cultures. Thus the world of paid work is in the process of being transformed. In parallel, the ‘feudal’ (Beck 1992) allocation of market work to men and domesticity to women has begun to break down as more women (particularly married women) have entered and remained in employment. Thus the ‘male breadwinner’ model began to unravel. Efficient and widely available contraception led to widespread family limitation, and an increasing number of women found themselves ‘available’ for employment by their late thirties and early forties.

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