understanding gendered inequality: reconceptualizing housework

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Pergamon Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 411-420, 1997 Copyright © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/97 $17.00 + .00 PII S0277-5395(97)00024-1 UNDERSTANDING GENDERED INEQUALITY: RECONCEPTUALIZING HOUSEWORK Jo VANEVERY Department of Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK Synopsis - - The article begins from the assumption that the study of housework is usually undertaken to gain an insight into gendered inequalities and the changes that might be occurring in gender relations. It is argued that existing conceptualizations of housework are of limited use for that purpose. Four conceptual problems are outlined - - empirical definition; categorization; assumed communality; and ability - - and illustrated with examples from published research. These four problems are argued to be symptomatic of two higher order problems - - the conceptualization of inequality and of gender. Following a discussion of the limitations of existing housework research, some proposals for improving research on housework are made. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Since the publication of Ann Oakley's path- breaking study in 1974, housework has become a legitimate topic of study in sociology. There are now numerous studies that examine the di- vision of domestic labour and its impact on participation in the labour market, particularly for women. With labour market restructuring in the 1980s, attention has increasingly been fo- cused on the household and the allocation of all types of work -- domestic, formal employment and informal employment (L. Morris, 1990). Underlying much of this work is a sense that an understanding of the division of labour is im- portant to the understanding of inequalities in society; inequalities of class, race and gender (though the focus is often on gender). In this paper I argue that, despite all of this research, the concepts used in research on housework are inadequate for the task of under- standing the links between divisions of labour and inequalities. I will begin by outlining four problems that I encountered in my attempt to understand the organization of housework in anti-sexist living arrangements: (a) empirical definition, (b) categorization, (c) assumed com- munality, and (d) ability as all or nothing. This will lead to a discussion of two higher order issues: (a) conceptualizing equality and inequal- ity and (b) conceptualizing gender. I will return to the four initial issues before attempting to draw out some of the implications of my cri- tique for future research. The problems identified in this paper often arise for very local pragmatic reasons. I recog- nise that they may be very difficult to resolve in practice, but I raise them here in order to point out the serious conceptual and theoretical prob- lems that arise out of these pragmatic decisions. In doing so, I hope to encourage a discussion of research practices that might begin to address these issues. PROBLEMS IN THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF HOUSEWORK Empirical definitions Most studies use an empirical definition of housework, providing a list of tasks and asking who does them. It is assumed that it is possible to list the tasks that make up "housework" and increasingly complicated lists have been devel- oped. Notably, less tangible aspects of house- work like "emotion work" and "sex work" have been included. For those using diaries to collect data on housework, the lists are usually generated at the (post) coding stage and may thus more accurately reflect the variety of work that gets done in various households. However, 411

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Page 1: Understanding gendered inequality: Reconceptualizing housework

Pergamon

Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 411-420, 1997 Copyright © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved

0277-5395/97 $17.00 + .00

PII S0277-5395(97)00024-1

UNDERSTANDING GENDERED INEQUALITY: RECONCEPTUALIZING HOUSEWORK

Jo VANEVERY Department of Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

Synopsis - - The article begins from the assumption that the study of housework is usually undertaken to gain an insight into gendered inequalities and the changes that might be occurring in gender relations. It is argued that existing conceptualizations of housework are of limited use for that purpose. Four conceptual problems are outlined - - empirical definition; categorization; assumed communality; and ability - - and illustrated with examples from published research. These four problems are argued to be symptomatic of two higher order problems - - the conceptualization of inequality and of gender. Following a discussion of the limitations of existing housework research, some proposals for improving research on housework are made. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

Since the publication of Ann Oakley ' s path- breaking study in 1974, housework has become a legitimate topic of study in sociology. There are now numerous studies that examine the di- vision of domestic labour and its impact on participation in the labour market, particularly for women. With labour market restructuring in the 1980s, attention has increasingly been fo- cused on the household and the allocation of all types of work - - domestic, formal employment and informal employment (L. Morris, 1990). Underlying much of this work is a sense that an understanding of the division of labour is im- portant to the understanding of inequalities in society; inequalities of class, race and gender (though the focus is often on gender).

In this paper I argue that, despite all of this research, the concepts used in research on housework are inadequate for the task of under- standing the links between divisions of labour and inequalities. I will begin by outlining four problems that I encountered in my attempt to understand the organization of housework in anti-sexist living arrangements: (a) empirical definition, (b) categorization, (c) assumed com- munality, and (d) ability as all or nothing. This will lead to a discussion of two higher order issues: (a) conceptualizing equality and inequal- ity and (b) conceptualizing gender. I will return to the four initial issues before attempting to

draw out some of the implications of my cri- tique for future research.

The problems identified in this paper often arise for very local pragmatic reasons. I recog- nise that they may be very difficult to resolve in practice, but I raise them here in order to point out the serious conceptual and theoretical prob- lems that arise out of these pragmatic decisions. In doing so, I hope to encourage a discussion of research practices that might begin to address these issues.

PROBLEMS IN THE C O N C E P T U A L I Z A T I O N OF

HOUSEWORK

Empirical definitions

Most studies use an empirical definition of housework, providing a list of tasks and asking who does them. It is assumed that it is possible to list the tasks that make up "housework" and increasingly complicated lists have been devel- oped. Notably, less tangible aspects of house- work like "emotion work" and "sex work" have been included. For those using diaries to collect data on housework, the lists are usually generated at the (post) coding stage and may thus more accurately reflect the variety of work that gets done in various households. However,

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diaries are a considerable burden on respon- dents and are not widely used. In addition the definition of particular tasks as work (rather than leisure) is often the responsibility of the researcher. One exception is Sarah Berk's (1985) study in which respondents were asked whether they considered particular tasks work, leisure, both, or neither. Recent studies in Brit- ain, notably the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative, do not request this information.1

Empirical definitions of housework assume that particular tasks are housework regardless of the conditions in which they are done. Or, more precisely, that certain tasks are always done in conditions that make them "housework," while others are never (or only exceptionally) done in such conditions. Thus, the lists of tasks used in individual research projects are usually limited to "essential" or "key" tasks. For example, in their study of newlywed couples, Penny Mans- field and Jean Collard report:

Whatever the accommodation arrangements of the newly-wed couples, whether settled in their first home, boarding in the home of parents or camping in temporary accommo- dation, some basic domestic routine is a ne- cessity. We therefore considered those tasks which have to be performed by someone in order to service a person or maintain his or her belongings and environment. (Mansfield & Collard, 1988, p. 119)

The main underlying assumption that grounds these definitions is communality (discussed fur- ther below).

Empirical definitions of housework also as- sume that tasks have one predominant meaning: they are either work or leisure. The problem with this sort of either/or formulation is partic- ularly evident in the attempt to categorize some child-care tasks - - is taking the children to the playground work or leisure? It also relies im- plicitly on an understanding of work as unpleas- ant and leisure as enjoyable. While the status of tasks done for a wage is rarely questioned re- gardless of enjoyment, the status of housework and child-care tasks is often questioned on pre- cisely this basis.

In addition to the general problems of defin- ing housework in this way, there is considerable variation in the comprehensiveness of the lists used in various research projects. There are numerous (usually good) reasons for this, but it

leads to problems of comparison and explana- tion. In particular, the assumption that certain tasks are indicative of the overall division of labour is problematic. Our knowledge of the variation of men's participation in housework by type of task indicates that it is difficult to generalize about the division of housework as a whole from information about specific tasks.

Categorization

Some studies of the division of labour cate- gorize housework in some way. Common crite- ria are frequency, time/labour commitment, and some sort of gender-typing. I will use an extract from Mansfield and Collard's (1988) study of newlywed couples to illustrate the potential problems of frequency-based categories. It should be noted that they asked about a limited list of tasks in each category based on other criteria. As part of their study, Mansfield and Collard examined the process of "Setting Up Home" (1988, pp. 110-137) including an anal- ysis of who does what domestic work. They use an empirical definition, which is categorized:

Tasks were examined in three categories: daily, weekly and episodic. The daily tasks were: cooking the main meal of the day and washing up after that meal. Weekly tasks including tidying and cleaning the rooms lived in, and washing the clothes worn by the couple. The simple maintenance and repair of household equipment used by the couple, decorating and car maintenance were re- garded as episodic tasks. Each partner was asked who had performed each task (daily, weekly or episodic) the last time it was done, and whether this was typical. (Mansfield & Collard, 1988, p. 119, original emphasis)

Presumably these research decisions were made in order to ensure comparability in the analysis. The interviews ranged over several topics and thus a restricted list of tasks allowed important information to be gained in a short time. However, the research decisions also mask important aspects of "Setting Up Home" and establishing a domestic routine, as evi- denced by this quote from one of the husbands in Mansfield and Collard's study in response to the question "Do you think you should do more?"

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Well, she is - - I shan't say she is a fanatic but she likes to keep the place clean. Al- though I like it clean, if I were on my own I would probably clean it when I felt like it but not every day. - - Mr Butcher. (Mansfield & Collard, 1988, p. 129, original emphasis)

Although the researchers consider cleaning to be a weekly task, this man states his nonpartici- pation in it as resulting from an implicit dis- agreement between him and his wife about whether it should be a daily task. The signifi- cance of these sorts of disagreements is thus invisible and unanalyzed.

Gender-typing of tasks is often implicit in the choice of limited lists. An attempt is usually made to have lists that include tasks men are likely to perform, even if they are infrequent. The episodic tasks of Mansfield and Collard's study are one example. Other researchers have categorized tasks using a gender-typing criteria much more explicitly. For example, Gregson and Lowe (1993), following Wheelock (1990), categorize tasks as gender-segregated and gender-neutral. Other researchers would split gender segregated tasks into masculine and feminine (e.g., Goodnow & Bowes, 1994) or differentiate between degrees of gender- segregation (e.g., Pahl, 1984, p. 275). In all of these uses of gender-typing, the categories are empirically generated, usually from reviews of existing literature.

While these categories provide us with use- ful information about what sorts of tasks male and female members of households are likely to do, they are much less useful for understanding the process of change (a stated aim of much research in this field). Change is conceptualized in terms of a move away from gender- segregation toward gender-neutrality or alterna- tively as doing tasks that are gender-typed dif- ferently to the person doing them (e.g., men doing feminine tasks). Because they rely on empirical definitions of housework and re- searcher generated characteristics for categori- zation, the way that tasks come to be divided in particular ways is obscured.

Assumed Communality

As I have already pointed out, empirical def- initions of housework rest on the assumption that certain tasks are always done in conditions

that make them "housework" - - conditions of communality. Notions of communality are em- bedded in the definition of household. If there were no communal activities there would be no household (see Harris, 1984). However, in housework research the extent of communality is often assumed rather than explained. Thus, in the literature on housework very little is said about adults getting washed and dressed in the morning or feeding themselves. This seems a trivial example, but washing, dressing, and feeding other people is housework. Considering such examples highlights the importance of the conditions in which tasks are done (e.g., for oneself or for others) to the definition of house- work (and the assumptions about abilities em- bedded in the routine definitions - - see below). This has important consequences for what we know about how housework is divided amongst members of a household and the relationship between this division of labour and (in)equality.

The problem of assumed communality was particularly striking in the analysis of my data on anti-sexist living arrangements; more so when compared to the findings of other studies. It was clearest in the case of laundry. Laundry (including ironing) has been found in most stud- ies to be a task that is overwhelmingly done exclusively by women (e.g., Gregson & Lowe, 1993, p. 483). However, in the anti-sexist living arrangements that I studied, ironing was often mentioned as something that either was not done or was done only for oneself. The decision to not do (someone else's) ironing was linked by my respondents to the issue of (in)equality, so often the concern of housework researchers. Thinking through the implications of this for understanding the results of other studies, I rea- lised that there was no way of knowing whether this sort of change was happening on a larger scale. Once the list of tasks that define house- work is operationalized into a research design the possibility of certain tasks being not- housework is precluded. Thus, if ironing gets done, it is assumed to be the household ironing. If both the husband and the wife (and most studies are of married couples) iron, it is as- sumed to be a household task that is shared. I picture one pile of ironing. This issue becomes important when we are trying to understand inequality in a way that allows us to understand change toward equality. Built into the concep- tualization and operationalization of housework is an assumption that certain tasks are necessar-

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ily communal and the options for dividing them are either that one person does it all or that both divide the communal work. I found that some people have decided to have two piles of ironing and each person is responsible for their own pile or the decision to abolish it. In other words, it becomes like those other individual tasks that are never included in studies of housework.

In the case of ironing, assumed communality may mask moves toward equality. However, the assumption of communality can work in a dif- ferent way possibly masking inequality. I refer here to the loose usage of "sharing" or "doing it together," which is taken to imply "gender- neutrality." Consider shopping, which is found to be a task very likely to be shared (e.g., Gregson & Lowe, 1993, p. 483). It is possible that shopping is reported as done together when the woman decides what needs to be bought (perhaps writing a list); her husband drives her to the supermarket and goes in with her; he pushes the trolley while she chooses the appro- priate items, perhaps consulting him about what he might like to eat or whether he prefers a particular brand; he may also suggest items; at the checkout he pays and carries their purchases out to the car, then drives them home where she unpacks and puts away the food. Done "togeth- er" in this way, shopping may remain unequal and/or gender-segregated. Unfortunately, we have no data on which to decide whether there have been moves toward equality in shopping or not.

Ability

The example used above of washing, dress- ing, and feeding adults, also highlights the fact that notions of ability are embedded in the dis- tinction between tasks assumed to be individual and tasks assumed to be communal. Individual members of households are conceptualized as either able to do certain kinds of tasks or need- ing them done for them. This is most obvious in the case of children who appear in the vast majority of studies only as work to be done (child care of various sorts) and only rarely as individuals who do various forms of work (see Manke, Seery, Crouter, & McHale, 1994). This despite the fact that many of us did housework as children and require our own children to do housework. While the work that children do in households may be limited by their abilities or a

sense that "childhood" is a time for leisure and learning, we know very little about the details of what is done, nor do we have any empirical evidence to support this claim. Recent studies of children's participation in housework begin by noting the dearth of sociological literature (e.g., Manke et al., 1994; Morrow, 1992). A glance at their bibliographies reveals that references on children's participation in housework are pri- marily from developmental psychology.

On closer examination, the underlying con- ceptual difficulty appears to be one of the in- ability to conceptualize individuals as people both needing and giving care. Thus, children with a disabled parent are seen to do house- work, but it is assumed this results from their exceptional circumstances (e.g., Cohen, 1995). As Nasa Begum points out, "Stereotypes of passivity and childlike dependency are created for members of the 'disabled'" (Begum, 1992, p. 71). These stereotypes form part of the social circumstances in which disability is constructed and disabled people are socially excluded. As both Nasa Begum (1992) and Jenny Morris (1993) emphasise, one area from which they are excluded is feminist research. The notion that ability may change over time and that it may vary (e.g., with illness) is not considered. Chil- dren of different ages need different kinds and amounts of work done for them (e.g., nappy changing is only needed for a couple of years) and have different abilities to contribute to the work done. Yet children are routinely homoge- nized into a group of individuals who need care in research on housework (see Morrow, 1992).

When researching adults, ability is only con- sidered in the sense of knowledge of processes - - knowing how to work the washing machine or fix a car, for example. The actual physical inability to perform certain tasks (either com- munal or individual) is rarely considered. When it is, adults with disabilities are homogenized into a group of people needing care. Women with disabilities are discouraged from having children; it is assumed that marriages will break down with the onset of disability in women; and the fact that, amongst the elderly, there are significant numbers of caters who also need care is marginalised in the debate about "com- munity care" (J. Morris, 1991, p. 166). Both Virginia Morrow (1992) in her review of chil- dren in feminist research on housework and Jenny Morris (1991) in her review of the fem- inist research on caring note that children/

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people with disabilities are considered a "bur- den" and their positive contributions to their households and families are ignored.

H I G H E R - O R D E R P R O B L E M S

Because I was doing research on anti-sexist living arrangements, some of which were het- erosexual couples with children and some which were not, the conceptual problems in the literature became clear. It appeared to me to arise from the fact that the vast majority of research in this field is conducted with samples of heterosexual couples with dependent chil- dren [often specifying one preschool-aged child as Ann Oakley (1974, p. 36) did]. Many of the concepts, operationalizations, and categories have been developed in the analysis of the di- vision of labour in this particular type of house- hold, yet the particularity of the households studied is rarely problematized. In studying ex- plicitly anti-sexist households, in which change was an important part of the household dynam- ics, these particularities needed to be examined.

I am beginning to see the four problems outlined above as symptomatic of deeper con- ceptual problems in sociology, particularly in the analysis of inequalities. My interest is in gendered inequalities and most of the research on housework explicitly addresses gender ine- quality. In fact, the recent interest in households arises from a belief that labour market restruc- turing, particularly women's increasing labour market participation rates, might have some ef- fect on the division of labour at the level of the household (see L. Morris, 1990, pp. 1-21). However, this research seems to be limited by inadequate conceptualizations of both gender and (in)equality.

Conceptualizing (in)equality

In most housework research inequality is measured against an ideal of equality using the division of labour as an index. Implicitly, a notion of an ideal egalitarian household is the yardstick against which continuing inequalities in the division of labour are measured. The situation is comparable to that which Yanag- isako and Collier examined in relation to the notion of "egalitarian societies" in anthropol- ogy.

• . . many Marxist and feminist scholars use the concept of "egalitarian society" to de- note societies in which people are indeed "equal" in the sense that they do not exhibit the class and gender inequalities characteris- tic of ancient societies and modem capital- ism. These scholars define egalitarian societ- ies less in terms of features they possess than in terms of features they lack. (Yanagisako & Collier, 1987, pp. 35-36)

In housework research an "egalitarian house- hold" is similarly defined as one that lacks a gender division of labour• For example, in Greg- son and Lowe's (1993) study, it is the "fully shared" form of the division of labour (in which three of the five gender-segregated tasks are shared in addition to the gender-neutral tasks) that indicates a renegotiation of the domestic division of labour.

Yanagisako and Collier (1987) show how this approach leads to numerous problems of conceptualization, namely a distinction between nature and culture; between domestic and pub- lic; and between production and reproduction. These three dichotomies have been central to the sociological study of housework. The do- mestic/public distinction and the production/ reproduction distinction are both the basis of the definition of housework as a distinct kind of work and form the basis of empirical definitions of housework. The differences between them are largely a matter of theoretical tradition and, as Yanagisako and Collier point out, they per- form the same kind of conceptual work.

The nature/culture distinction is also crucial to the differentiation of housework from other work, as noted by Olivia Harris:

It is generally assumed, and indeed widely the case, that the way people live together is structured around the immediately physical needs of the human organism - - food, sleep, cleanliness, clothing• Since these needs de- rive directly from physiology, it has been easy to separate off the servicing of the hu- man organism in this way as a distinct kind of labour. Indeed the identification of this type of activity with the household as an organisational space is in a way circular, since the word domestic derives directly from the Latin word for house (domus). In- sofar as people who inhabit a single physical space do not collaborate in these functions,

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they are thought to constitute at least par- tially separate households. (Harris, 1984, p. 148)

In addition, the sociology of domestic work was developed in the context of Marxist and func- tionalist explanations of work (meaning, before Oakley, productive or occupational work) and family in which the sexual division of labour is conceptualized as "natural" (and "domestic") and contrasted with a "cultural" division of labour in the "public" sphere. Talcott Parsons stated this clearly:

In our opinion the fundamental explanation of the allocation of the roles between the biological sexes lies in the fact that the bear- ing and early nursing of children establish a strong presumptive primacy of the relation of mother to the small child and this in turn establishes a presumption that the man, who is exempted from these biological functions, should specialize in the alternative instru- mental direction. (Parsons & Bales, 1955, p. 23)

Marx and Engels also refer to "the natural di- vision of labour existing in the family" (Marx & Engels, 1970, p. 44) as the basis of the division labour in societies with various modes of pro- duction (1970, p. 52).

The study of housework is often explicitly linked to a concern with understanding and ex- plaining gender inequality often with a view to ending it. I turn now to a critique of the way gender is conceptualized in research on house- work before bringing these two strands together to propose ways that feminist research on housework might avoid the problems I have outlined.

Conceptualizing gender

As Terrell Carver (Bristol University) re- marked at a conference recently (referring to political studies) gender is often used "loosely as sex and lazily as women," a remark that is, unfortunately, true of many areas of research and theory. In research on housework it is the "loose" conceptualization of gender that ap- pears to be the biggest problem. Stacey and Thorne (1985) have described three ways that

gender is conceptualized inadequately in soci- ology. One of these is the use of gender as a variable.

For those working in more quantitative re- search traditions where problems are concep- tualized in terms of variables, gender, under- stood as the division between women and men, has been relatively easy to include. Whether one is a man or a woman, after all, is highly visible; as it is socially constructed, the division encompasses the entire popula- tion and sorts neatly into a dichotomy . . . . Much of this literature, however, is unreflec- tive about the nature of gender as a social category. Gender is assumed to be a property of individuals and is conceptualized in terms of sex difference, rather than as a principle of social organization. Reducing social life to a series of measurable variables diminishes the sense of the whole that is crucial to theoret- ical understanding of social, including gen- der, relationships. (Stacey & Thorne, 1985, pp. 307-308)

Quantitative methods are commonly used in research on housework.

I will return to the article by Gregson and Lowe (1993) to illustrate the way this works. In their analysis, a distinction is made between gender-segregated and gender-neutral tasks. This implies that gender is a social category that is separate from individuals. However, the cat- egories are derived empirically based on the sex of the person reported to perform particular tasks. Thus tasks "performed exclusively by women" in a majority of households are con- sidered to be "segregated"; those that are "shared by both partners" in a majority of households are "neutral" (Gregson & Lowe, 1993, p. 483). Gender in this schema is sex - - a binary category conceptualized as a fixed characteristic of individuals. Women are un- problematically women; men, unproblemati- cally men. The minority of men who do laundry, for example, are not differently gendered to the majority of men who do not.

I do not mean to imply that Gregson and Lowe and other researchers using similar schema do not know the difference between sex and gender, nor that gender does not get used in different ways in their analyses. However, the complexity of the gendering of tasks as "wom- en's work" and "men's work" and of people as

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[proper] "women" and "men" and the mutual influence of these two processes is lost when categories are constructed in this way. It seems plausible to me that men could do "women's work" without endangering its status as "wom- en's work." (The notions of "helping" and "re- sponsibility" seem to be important here.) Sim- ilarly, two people could do a task together while still maintaining gender difference/inequality. If we consider the shopping example used earlier, it is clear that a couple may shop together with- out shopping being a gender-neutral activity. It is also plausible that a task could be "feminine" despite the fact that men frequently perform it (e.g., washing up if understood as "helping"). Or that a task could be sex-segregated yet done by both men and women - - gendered differ- ently in different circumstances within the same household (e.g., the difference between cooking and barbecuing).

The conceptual difficulty overlaps with the problems outlined above of empirical definition of housework and the categorization of house- work tasks. Co-relating housework as a list of tasks with gender as a variable obscures the processes by which gender may or may not be important to the performance of the task(s). In other words, we do not really know whether or not shopping (for example) is gender-neutral or gender-segregated, only that both men and women participate in it.

Conceptualizing gender as sex (or as deriv- ing from sex) also contributes to the problems identified by Sarah Oerton (1997, this issue) in relation to understanding the division of house- work in lesbian and gay households. As she points out, researchers tend to resort to "ratio- nal choice" type explanations based on practi- calities, labour market status, etc. Some of this research is explicitly countering the assumption that lesbian and gay couples simply mirror het- erosexual couples with one partner taking on a masculine ("butch") role and the other a fem- inine role. The inadequacies of this latter ap- proach are clear, but by simply rejecting the stereotype and resorting to explanations based on factors other than gender, the inadequacy of the conceptualization of gender that underlies the stereotype remains unexamined.

Understanding gender inequality

The "loose" conceptualization of gender is related to the "naturalizing" of power relation-

ships (Yanagisako & Delaney, 1995). Despite numerous critiques of the naturalness of this division, nature still appears (often implicitly) in explanations of continuing gender inequali- ties. In much of the research on the relationship between domestic work and labour market par- ticipation, it is women's labour market partici- pation that is being researched and lack of [af- fordable] alternative child care that is often identified as the main obstacle to it. The impli- cations of the empirical finding that men rarely do laundry, for example, are not pursued. In other words, the possibility that women's re- sponsibility for domestic work results from be- ing wives rather than mothers is part of a natu- ralizing of the power relations of marriage.

Although the process is often obscured by the fact that samples are composed of (married) couples with children, the implicit naturalizing of gender inequality through motherhood can happen in studies of childless couples. Mans- field and Collard's explanation of the division of labour in newlywed couples provides an ex- ample.

The examination of "who keeps house" took place at a time when the majority of hus- bands and wives were both working full-time outside the home, so that in this respect, there was equality between husband and wife. However, this symmetry in working roles was not mirrored in the home. Inequal- ity between spouses in the home was only rarely recognised by the couples and few attempts were made to redress the balance of domestic responsibility. It seems that the first phase of marriage for these newly-weds was overshadowed by the event which would bring it to a close - - the birth of the first child. The main impact of childbearing is usually perceived to be the loss of the wife's full-time employment and, in anticipation of this, these newly-wed spouses regard the first phase of married life as temporary. Thus both the current domestic role of the brides and their working role are already influenced by their future perceptions of themselves as mothers. (Mansfield & Collard, 1988, p. 135)

While it is plausible that the individuals studied perceive the division of labour to result from the "natural" role of (future) mother (though, inter- estingly, Mansfield and Collard provide no ev- idence of this), it is surely our role as research-

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ers to examine how and when "nature" comes into play• Instead, it appears we are simply reproducing (and thus re-enforcing) the "natu- ralizing" of this particular form of inequality•

The other problem with the dichotomous conceptualization of gender is that it obscures the complexity of gender as a social category and the way it interacts with other social cate- gories such as class, race, culture (including regional cultures), age, and ability. Of course, many of these social categories are also natu- ralized. In particular, I have pointed out that ability (and its relation to age) is inadequately conceptualized in research on housework• A concern with gender (as a dichotomous cate- gory) has meant that there is a tendency to reduce households to couples• Other individuals (children, the ill, the disabled, the elderly) be- come "dependents," more work to be done. As Jenny Morris states:

• . . it is seldom recognized that most rela- tionships involving a disabled person receiv- ing economic and/or personal support from a non-disabled person are reciprocal relation- ships in which the disabled person is giving as well as taking. (J. Morris, 1991, p. 141)

Where one member of the couple is ill or dis- abled, researchers' attention turns to the "extra" work the other partner must perform or the "substitution" of, for example, children's la- bour for the labour of the disabled parent.

It also becomes difficult to understand why women with disabilities may place particular importance on caring for their homes and fam- ilies (e.g., Keith, 1994, p. 1; Begum, 1992, p. 74). Or why Black women were so resistant to feminist critiques of women's position in the family (e.g., Carby, 1992). As Black and dis- abled feminists have pointed out (Morris, 1993), part of their oppression is in being de- nied access to these "normal" activities and being criticized (and even punished) for their inability to perform them properly. An attempt to understand this complexity leads to a recog- nition that gender is not a dichotomous category but rather that there are a variety of masculini- ties and femininities albeit they are all con- structed as complementary dyads, and they are not all equally valued.

C O R R E C T I N G T H E P R O B L E M S

Yanagisako and Collier propose that a more fruitful approach would be to "begin with the premise that social systems are, by definition, systems of inequality" (Yanagisako & Collier, 1987, p. 39), a proposal that seems appropriate to the sociological study of housework•

• . . the premise that all societies are systems of inequality forces us to specify what we mean by inequality in each particular case. Instead of asking how "natural" differences acquire cultural meanings and social conse- quences, a presumption of inequality forces us to ask why some attributes and character- istics of people are culturally recognized and differentially evaluated when others are not. (Yanagisako & Collier, 1987, p. 40)

To apply this to the analysis of housework, it means that instead of assuming gender exists as a property of persons and then sorting our data according to this property to see what it tells us, we might look at how gender comes to be important in dividing up the work considered necessary for the maintenance of a household (or indeed in differentiating some kinds of work from others). Part of that analysis will involve determining what work is considered necessary to maintain a household, and how notions of communality and individuality come to be im- portant in the process of dividing up that work.

Sarah Berk (1985) confronts this problem in the conclusion to her book The Gender Factory. In order to understand the inadequacies of the model she was testing, she began to see that conceptualizing housework as producing only household goods and services was inadequate. She proposes that housework also produces gender - - men and women as dominators and subordinates• However, we must consider this proposal in relation to the contemporary notion that marriage is a partnership. Individuals often talk about their division of labour as "fair•" As researchers, we must be careful not to interpret this hastily as "equal" and examine instead the way that inequality becomes "fair•"

I confronted this problem in trying to make sense of the division of labour in anti-sexist living arrangements (VanEvery, 1995, esp. Ch. 3). It became particularly evident when I tried to describe my research to others• The assumption was often made that I was studying non-sexist

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living arrangements and I was often asked whether my respondents really had an equal division of labour. I was not interested in this question and focused instead on the way the division of housework contributed to the project of anti-sexism. Interestingly, this was under- stood by many of my respondents as a process rather than an end state. Another recent study that takes a promising direction is Goodnow and Bowes' (1994) study of Australian couples. While they still categorize tasks as "women's work" and "men's work," they avoid the prob- lems of conceptualizing inequality and equality by examining change.

The request for couples who did things "dif- ferently," rather than for couples who "shared," was deliberate. "Sharing" is a word that Backett's (1982) study has shown to have many meanings. We also wanted to know what people regarded as change, as different, without imposing our definition. (Goodnow & Bowes, 1994, p. 36)

The focus of their analysis is on how couples come to "do things differently" and they exam- ine issues including styles and patterns; the na- ture of talk, negotiation, and tension points; goals, including practicality and fairness; ability and enjoyment; and external influences includ- ing childhood and the women's movement.

It is interesting that both my research, and that of Goodnow and Bowes, are of couples consciously trying to change the division of labour. My research also included non-couple households. The fact that these households are different (either in structure or ideology) means that the mundane processes which are house- work are perhaps more likely to be articulated or are at least more visible to the researcher. However, most of the research on divisions of labour only examines one type of household, although some researchers have chosen house- holds that they think are particularly likely to exhibit change (according to a particular theo- ry). For example, Jane Wheelock (1990) and Lydia Morris (1985, 1989) have both studied the division of labour in households where a man has been made redundant and Gregson and Lowe (1993) studied dual-career couples.

Given that gender is constructed as a dichot- omy in our society and the two parts of this dichotomy are considered to be complementary, studying heterosexual couple households may

add to the invisibility of the problems I have highlighted. Gender is usually mapped on to sex. Gender is understood as natural. A first step to overcoming some of the conceptual problems may be to start researching different types of households - - including lesbian and gay cou- ples, non-couple households, and households without children. Certainly, all members of the households we are studying ought to be consid- ered when we try to describe and explain the division of labour.

In addition, even if researchers decide to use lists of tasks to collect data on housework, the range of information collected about them ought to include whether tasks are done at all, whether they are done for individuals by them- selves, or whether they are done collectively by either one individual or a group (shared or al- ternating). Similarly we should develop meth- ods of addressing the changing abilities of members of households with age, illness, etc. examining how these are incorporated into the division of labour.

The study of housework as work is now well established. Changes in the labour market and in the relationship between households and la- bour markets raise interesting questions about gender relations and particularly gendered divi- sions of labour. While the research to date has made important contributions to our under- standing of gender relations, the limitations of the concepts used are beginning to be reached. I hope that the suggestions I have made in this article will provide the impetus for reconceptu- alizing housework, gender, and inequality thus moving the research agenda forward in new and exciting directions.

ENDNOTES

1. The Social Change and Economic Life Initiative is a large British study headed by Duncan Gallie. Informa- tion was collected on a range of topics, including paid and domestic labour. The survey included a time-use diary, about which I gleaned information from discus- sions with Richard Layte, who was analysing this data.

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