Discuss the ways in which women's domestic role has influenced their career choices as well as their position as unpaid carers

Assignment 1 – Wendy Jones H9

Beginning in the home, a woman’s role is socially constructed from an early age.
A woman’s role models are traditionally her parents and many women naturally follow in their mothers footsteps. However, this can often work in reverse and women of whose mothers stayed at home in a domestic care role then go on to carve careers for themselves.
Although these days women do have careers they are still socially seen as the homemaker regardless of this. A woman’s domestic role is often run alongside other work and a great number of women choose careers which are care based.
The sexual division of labour is at the heart of gender inequality, which is underpinned by the patriarchal family structure where the man is the highest authority and sole provider and there is a rigid division of tasks and responsibilities, all of which have been regulated by social norms that have become constructed and ingrained over time.
Florence Nightingale was a great influence in creating the nursing/caring role. She acknowledged that a great number of women naturally progressed into care roles and so she introduced the role of a nurse yet it was not a recognised profession at this point
Medical stations in the Crimean war were poorly staffed with awful medical and sanitary conditions. This was reported by the media in Britain. Florence Nightingale, one of 38 voluntary nurses travelled to Turkey to help relieve the situation.
Nightingale worked towards improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and activity for the patients of the hospitals. Death rates were reduced dramatically with the introduction of such measures. Nightingale kept meticulous records of the number of deaths, and the causes of deaths, so that on her return to Great Britain she could justify the need for improving conditions in hospitals.
Criticisms of Florence Nightingale have been that she created a female occupation, excluding males based around her view that women were naturally caring and naturally gifted at looking after people. This only emphasised ‘female virtues’ especially in the media as they made this her main point even though there was much more to her than just this point. As a result of what she did the beliefs of the male professionals were further supported. Those beliefs being that women are beneath males in the workforce and the nursing role was stereotyped as a role which only women performed bringing with it the stereotype which we still hold today. Even now, with many more men taking on the role of the nurse we seem to find this unusual and sometimes quite a surprise.
During this time the education system excluded women from the ability to gain scientific knowledge and the medical profession denied access to women who actually had managed to gain education.
After Florence Nightingale, Ethel Bedford Fenwick (who is she) said that by 1901, although we had moved on from the workhouses there was still no professional progress in relation to nursing. She demanded uniform curriculum and training for nurses in Britain and campaigned for a nationally recognised training system to create an actual nursing ‘profession’
This era was such named ‘the era of the ministering angel’
She worked to elevate nursing from the time of Florence Nightingale.
During much of the 20th Century there was little progress with the imbalance of male to female care professions, even with the introduction of the NHS women still made up the majority of the workforce in the NHS with the male professions making up the majority of top rank jobs, such as surgeons and consultants, much higher paid, recognised and respected professions.

Domestic service of all kinds was the single largest employer of women (40 per cent of female occupations stated in the census of 1851 in provincial cities and 50 per cent in London). The textile and clothing sectors came a close second (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/womens_work_01.shtml)

A greater number of women than men choose job roles in the care industry. Ann Oakley refers to this as being the influence of gender socialisation and the women’s domestic role in the home throughout history. This fact adds to the divide between men and women in the health and social care sector with statistics showing that in 2010 for an example, women made up 74% of the workforce in the NHS and men only 26%.
Even the most educated women earn less than men, women generally receive a lower return on their education and workplace discrimination against women is reflected in pay irrespective of educational level.
In 2009 the BMA report was released, highlighting the inequality in male and female salaries within the health care industry. An average gap of £15,245 between men and women in the same professions. "Our results show that men and women with identical experience and expertise are paid differently – which suggests evidence of discrimination" (BMA 2009)
It seems women are discriminated against due to her weakness in her ability to move. Having a family to support and the lack of want to uproot them gives her limited ability to manoeuvre, whereas men seem to gain increases in salary through threatening to leave and actually having the ability to do so.

The duties which women carry out at home looking after family members, disabled, elderly or friends are vastly viewed upon as unpaid and actually save the taxpayer an extra £87billion by providing free care that would otherwise be funded by the NHS. The number of unpaid carers in England and Wales has reached 5.8 million - a rise of 600,000 since 2001, with the majority of them being female (Office for National Statistics). The rise in those providing over 50 hours a week of unpaid care means that across England and Wales there are now 1.4 million people providing round-the-clock care - an increase of 270,000 people since 2001 (ww.bbc.co.uk).

The Office for National Statistics, which pulled together data on unpaid care in England and Wales from the 2011 census reported that more children are now picking up the caring roles the state has abandoned," and says that 180,000 children work as unpaid carers. This has risen from 11.5% in 2001 to 11.9% in 2011 in women, and from 8.8% to 9% in men. There tend to be more female carers than male, with the highest burden of care falling on the 50-64 age group for both sexes. (http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/05May/Pages/numbers-unpaid-carers-young-carers-increase.aspx)

Just over half (58%) of the 5.41 million people providing some level of unpaid care in England are female and 42% are male. This higher proportion of female carers is consistent across all regions. Female carers are representative of 11.9% of the total female population of England and Wales, and male carers are representative of 9% of the male population. Ten years ago these figures were 11.5% and 8.8%. (http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/05May/Pages/numbers-unpaid-carers-young-carers-increase.aspx)

It seems throughout history women often naturally fall into roles in the health and social care industry. There remains a huge male female divide of which women are still seen to be earning up to 1/5 less than men performing the same role with equal academic merit. Longevity of life is now something which will see a sharp increase in. The number of people requiring care later in life will keep rising and so will the number of poorly paid or unpaid carers in turn. Women are still directed towards job functions which mirror their stereotype of caring, nurturing and gentle, whereas men are seen to be the stronger sex who are channelled into powerful roles within the healthcare system.
Women now comprise over half the entrants to medical school. In 1996 50.6% of applicants were female as opposed to 49.5% being male, this pattern being repeated year in year out and again in 2003