Ann Oakley looked into the change being due to housework and childcare. Oakley looked at 40 married women who had one child or more under the age of five, who were British or Irish born and aged between 20 and 30 years. Half of the samples were working class and half were middle class, both groups came from London areas. Oakley found greater equality in terms of the allocations of domestic tasks between spouses in the middle class than the working class. She also found that in both cases few men had a high level of participation in housework and childcare. She found that 15% of men had high level of participation in housework and 30% participated in childcare. This view has small samples, which makes the research not representative of the population as a wh0le. However the study is backed up by a bigger sample study done by British Social Attitudes Survey. In conclusion, as time goes on, domestic tasks are becoming more gender shared.
Another sociologist who looks into the involvement of gender roles in the home is Mary Boulton; she specifically looks into women and childcare. Boulton argues that other studies exaggerate the extent of men’s involvement in childcare. Boulton denies the questions about ‘who does what’ give a picture of conjugal roles. Although men might help with particular tasks, it is essentially the wives who retain primary responsibility for children. From Boulton's own study of 50 young married mothers in London who didn’t have full time jobs, only 18% of husbands gave extensive help with childcare, 36% gave moderate help and 46% gave minimal help. Husbands therefore gave help with childcare in less than 20% of the families studied. This study doesn’t have any meaning; it doesn’t give a clear picture. It also doesn’t state what childcare roles were assessed. However on a plus side it can compare trends.
A third sociologist Jonathon Gershuny has examined how social changes have affected the burden of work for British husbands and wives, a possible change affecting this area is the growing number of women taking paid employment outside the home. Sociologists such as Oakley have argued that women have increasingly taken on a dual burden. This is when women work and do the everyday chores such as childcare and household chores. As Gershuny points out, this could lead to increased inequality between husband and wives, as a rising number of women suffer from dual burden. Gershuny examined 1974 and 1975 data from the BBC audience research department, along with 1997 data from economic and social research council project to compare how the share of work had changed. Gershuny found that in 1997 women continued to do in excess of 60% of domestic work, even when both partners were working full time. However results showed gradual shifts towards husbands doing higher percentages of domestic work. This study uses reliable data which makes the study more reliable and useable to back up the theories. However it uses research from two different sources which means this could be unreliable. In conclusion I found that men were gradually doing more domestic work according to the data found and researched.
Stephen Edgell looked in decision making as a change affecting domestic division of labour and power. Edgell interviewed couples about who made the decisions they thought were most important. Edgell found that women dominate areas of interior design, domestic spending and children’s clothes, all areas that are considered unimportant. Men dominated areas such as moving house, finance and the family car which are all considered important areas. He also found that the husband decided the overall allocation of money, this involved large sums of money, the wives seemed to deal with minor money issues. Advantages of this study are that it’s a wide study, which means its research came from a wide range of social groups. However a disadvantage is that the study is out of date, society has changed and women are making larger decisions. He has also only studied one class of families which makes the study restricted.
Although this is a smaller reason compared to the others it is sill important that same sex relationships should be taken into consideration when evaluation domestic labour and power of genders. In the majority of same sex relationships it has been proven that in 81% of households neither partner did more than 60% of the housework, it therefore showed that the one doing less housework spend more time in paid employment.
Most of the evidence stated here suggests women are still a long way from achieving equality within marriage in contemporary Britain today. They are still primarily responsible for domestic tasks and they have less power than their within marriage. Husbands of wives with full time jobs seem to be taking over some of the burden of housework, although the change is slow and some inequality remains.
