Gender Roles

Using material from Item 2B and elsewhere, assess the view that gender roles and relationships have become more equal in modern family life. (24 marks)

Firstly, the item suggests that ‘a number of changes have taken place in gender roles and relationships within families.’ There are a number of sociological perspectives which agree with this statement and also various approaches that criticise the nature of these changes. They argue whether they have created greater equality within modern family life or whether this statement is simply exaggerated. This essay will assess these views and will conclude whether gender roles and relationships have in reality, become more equal in modern family life.

Initially, within the modernity period,
Ferri and Smith suggest that unlike Gershuny, increased employment has had little impact of the domestic labour as fewer than 4% of families had a father responsible for childcare. Therefore, women still remain responsible for the children as well as their employment responsibility; clearly suggesting that modern family life is not as equal as it seems. The dual burden is also supported by Dunscombe and Marsden’s theory of a triple burden in that women are expected to do the double shift of housework and paid work but also the caring of the emotional welfare of the family. This clearly disputes Gershuny’s idea that women are more equal due to employment as the triple burden means that they in fact gain more responsibilities than losing them. This is also supported by the radical feminist idea of ‘gender scripts’ in that there are expected norms in terms of gender roles and so patriarchal relationships are inevitable. Therefore, they suggest that equality without burdens will only be reached through same-sex relationships as this eliminates the ‘gender script’ idea. Thus, this enhances the inequality of the family, and suggests that the view that gender roles and relationships are becoming more equal is in fact incorrect as the
Radical feminists like Millett and Firestone (1970) use domestic violence as a way to show that society is primarily founded on patriarchy and that men oppress and exploit women. They suggest that the inequality of power within the family maintains men’s power and so domestic violence is inevitable. Similarly, Dobash and Dobash suggest that marriage legitimises violence against women as it provides the male with power and the women with dependency, therefore evidently showing no signs of equality. Thus, this disputes the statement of gender roles and relationships becoming more equal with 1 in 4 women being assaulted in their lifetime according to Mirrlees-Black. However, Wilkinson (1996) suggests that social inequality, rather than patriarchy has caused this problem. He suggested that those families with more economic concerns are more likely to have domestic conflict due to increased amount of stress; creating an unstable relationship. This evidently shows how gender roles and relationships cannot be equal as the inequality within the family enables domestic violence. However, radical feminists suggest that Wilkinson does not explain why women are more likely to be victims rather than men. Likewise, radical feminists ignore the fact that men can be victims shown by Mirrlees-Black who found 1 in 7 men have been