Sociology and the Future of Work by Paul Ransome

Author:Paul Ransome [Ransome, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780429795046
Google: pzeDDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-01-04T04:50:33+00:00

Gender Ideologies of Work

Common to both the feminist perspectives discussed so far is the recognition that both the public and private divisions of labour draw upon and are legitimated by a powerful set of assumptions and expectations about which kinds of activities and responsibilities ‘should’ or ‘ought’ to be done by men and women both inside and outside the household. Because these assumptions and expectations are not random or isolated from each other, but form a definite and identifiable system of ideas, they amount to what has been called a ‘gender ideology of work’.

In the public realm, this ideology takes the form at the common-sense level of a set of stereotypes about what work is and about who should be doing it. In the private realm, it takes the form of assumptions about what constitutes ‘the household’ and the distribution of ‘roles’ and responsibilities within it. The penetration of this ideology is such that both men and women recognize it, and, whether implicitly or explicitly, tend to construct their own sense of work around it. To the extent that these ideologies and stereotypes penetrate into people’s core understanding of who and what they are, we can begin to see that at a deeper level there is a complex relationship between these ideologies and fundamental ideas about femininity and masculinity. We will look more specifically at these connections in the following chapter. From a feminist perspective, the gender ideology of work and its stereotypes constitute a second part of the mechanism through which men attempt to justify and legitimate the attribution of greater social status and higher economic value to ‘their’ activities, and lower status and value to the activities of women.

Beechey has summarized ‘a number of assumptions’ which constitute what can be labelled the ‘dominant ideology’ of work which operates in the public sphere:

That people work for a wage or salary, that work takes place outside the home, and that people either work full-time or are unemployed. It is generally assumed that people work in manufacturing jobs in manufacturing industries, and are working-class. It is also assumed (at least implicitly) that workers are men. Women... tend either to be ignored or treated as deviants from the masculine norm. (Beechey 1987, p. 190)

On this basis, particular attitudes and expectations towards work have been ascribed to women by people in general, and also by male researchers. Dex has listed a number of those which were commonplace until quite recently:

Women find it hard to reject the notion that their prime role is in the home ‘servicing’ male breadwinners. Women work only for pin money. Women do not mind and even prefer boring work. Women have an instrumental orientation to work: young women are only interested in work as a means to find a husband; older women work to finance home improvements. Women only work for money and are not involved in work personally. Women do not like to show initiative in their work and they are less interested in challenging jobs or promotion than men.

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