Feminist perspective on the role of women in the Family.

In introduction state what essay is about?

In first paragraph define family using Haralambus and George Murdock, define what feminism is
using Mustapha and Haralambus, define what the feminist perspective is.
Here is the body
Despite the advances prompted by the feminist movement during the last quarter of the twentieth
century, most families are based on an unequal division of labor. Around the globe, women still
do the vast majority of domestic labor not only tending the house, but also raising and caring
for children. Feminist scholars have attacked traditional approaches to the family that obscure
this inequality. For example, they have criticized the dominant economic approaches to the
family that regard the head of the household as an altruistic agent of the interests of all the
family's members (See Becker 1981 for such an approach). They have shown that, in poor
countries, when development aid is given to male rather than female heads of household, less of
it goes to care for children (Haddad et al. 1997).
Feminist economists and sociologists have also shown how women's role in parenting constrains
their ability to pursue careers and compete for demanding jobs (Bergmann 1986, Folbre 1994).
Many women therefore remain economically dependent on their male partners, and vulnerable to
poverty in the event of divorce. In one widely cited study, ex-husbands' standard of living was
found to have risen by 42% the year after their divorce, while ex-wives' standard of living was
reduced by 78% (Weitzman 1985). This huge discrepancy in income and wealth results from a
number of factors, including the fact that women who have devoted themselves to raising
children usually have lower job qualifications than their husbands and less work experience.
Women's economic dependency in turn allows them to be subject to physical, sexual or
psychological abuse by their husbands or other male partners (Gordon, 1988; Global Fund for
Women Report, 1992). Women have an asymmetric ability to exit from marriage; and this gives
husbands/male partners considerably more power and bargaining advantage within the marriage
(Sen 1989).
Defenders of the status quo often argue that if women have less opportunity than men, this is
largely due to their own choices. Feminists have countered this claim by showing the ways that
such choices are shaped and constrained by forces that are themselves objectionable and not
freely chosen. Some feminists follow Nancy Chodorow's argument (1978) that the fact that
children's primary nurturers are mothers leads to a sexually differentiated developmental path for
boys and girls. Girls identify with the same-sex nurturing parent, and feel more connected to
others; boys, by identifying with the absent parent, feel themselves to be more individuated.
Chodorow argues that mothering is thereby reproduced across generations by a
largely unconscious mechanism that, in turn, perpetuates the inequality of women at home and at
work.
Chodorow's work is controversial, but it is undeniable that girls and boys grow up facing
different expectations of how they will behave. Children receive strong cultural messages
from parents, teachers, peers and the media about sex-appropriate traits and behaviors. Girls
are supposed to be nurturing, self-sacrificing, non-aggressive and attractive; care is largely
seen as a feminine characteristic. These traits traditionally contribute to women's inequality:
nurturers are not seen as good leaders. There are few women CEOs, generals, or political leaders.
Girls may also become disadvantaged by the anticipation of marriage and child-rearing, insofar
as they are less likely than boys to invest in their human capital.
A second feminist response stresses the ways that women's choices in the family interact with
unjust social structures outside the family, in particular, with the sex segregated division of labor
in the economy, where women still earn only about 75% of what men earn, for comparable work.
Given women's lower wages, it is rational for families who must provide their own childcare to
choose to withdraw women from the workforce. Once women withdraw, they find themselves
falling further behind their male counterparts in skill development and earning power. Child care
is an immensely time consuming activity and those who do it single-handedly are unlikely to be
able to pursue other goods such as education, political office or demanding careers. The
structures of work and family thus form a cycle of vulnerability that conditions the lives and
choices of women (Okin 1989). Even those who do somehow manage to combine work and
family, face serious obstacles including the lack of good quality subsidized day care; jobs with
little flexibility for those who need to care for a sick child; school schedules that seem to be
premised on having a parent at home; and the expectation that they will continue to work a
second shift, (Hochschild 1989) assuming the responsibility for the bulk of household labor.
Statistical analysis shows that motherhood tends to lower a woman's earnings, even if she does
not take any time off from paid work (Folbre 1994). Gender inequality persists in access to
positions in economy and government where white males are about 40% of population but 95%
of senior managers, 90% of newspaper editors, and 80% of congressional legislators (Rhode
1997). And although women have made progress in entering elite positions in the economy and
government, there is evidence that such progress has now stalled (Correll 2004).
Feminists share the view that contemporary families are not only realms of choice but also
realms of constraint. Feminists also agree that the gender hierarchy in our society is unjust,
although they differ on what they take its sources to be. Some feminists emphasize the family as
the linchpin of gender injustice (Okin 1989); while others see the main causes in the structure
of work and opportunity (Bergmann 1986); still others stress sexual domination and violence
(MacKinnon 1989). All of these strands seem important contributors to gender inequality, and it
is doubtful that any one can be fully reduced to the others. It is therefore important to deepen our
understanding of the interplay of these different sources of subordination. There is clearly what
Okin (1989) termed a cycle of vulnerability through which women's unequal position in the
home interacts with women's unequal position in the workplace. For example, because women
tend to earn less than men, if someone has to take time off to raise the kids, it makes economic
sense for it to be the female lower earner. Gender also undoubtedly interacts with other axes of
social disadvantage, such as race and class. Indeed, feminist work on families has increasingly
recognized the diverse experiences of women in families that encompass not only heterosexual
two parent families, but also single women, lesbian and gay families, and families in poverty.
We need to be careful not to lump together distinct social phenomena. Although I will sometimes
refer to the family in this essay, it is crucial to keep in mind the diversity of family forms and
circumstances.
Whether families are the primary cause, or a contributing cause along with other social structures
and culturally generated expectations, feminists point to the ways that families are partof a
system that reproduces women's social and economic inequality. Families cannot be viewed
apart from that system or in isolation from it. Nor can they be assumed to be just: too many of
them are not. The issue, for feminists, is not whether the state can intervene in the family and
reproduction but how, and to what ends.