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One of the main institutions in society is found within the household and is popularly known as “The Family”. It is here, in the family, where the commencement of society takes place. It is amongst this unit that the origin of women’s oppression began with the constant power struggle between man and woman. With the “nuclear family” slowly being thrown out the window and the new “dual-earner” family creeping in to takes it’s place, it’s no wonder that women’s positions have changed radically over the past one hundred years. The key work here to this being position, because although women’s position has changed, their workload has not.
With this radical change many issues can be addressed, particularly, to the women’s role and how it has remained fairly constant over the years. A closer examination will look at the development of gender inequality within the family as a result of the ever-changing issue. A second issue that needs to be inspected is that the family roles have changed in regards to family make-up as women have moved into the work force. This growing capital effort to increase standards of living by pushing every family member into the paid labour force has taken a toll on the family unit. The final issue that will be investigated in this report is how the traditional sex roles have remained constant, even with women’s ever-changing family position over the years.
For decades, commencing back to the time when patriarchy was the “norm” and women were their husband’s property, men have oppressed women. This ideology of patriarchy existed way before it was ever examined by sociologists and it was accepted as a natural or biological way of living. It wasn’t until the 1960's when feminist groups began to explore patriarchy and at the same time began to exploit it, that patriarchy was established. Feminists at that time, and even still today, believe that patriarchy operates to achieve and maintain gender inequality and is the essential key to women’s present subordination. Not only does patriarchy exist in the pubic domain of the paid labour force, but also in the private domain of the household, or better yet, the family.
With patriarchy by its side, gender inequality has developed into one of the biggest controversies amongst sociologists, feminist groups, and women. In modern day society women are working their way into the labour force, and “expanding their roles to include working outside the home as well as being wives and mothers” (Kaufman, 1999, 440). As women are moving into the paid labour force, they “continue to work longer hours than do their husbands on household tasks, and there is little evidence that men’s proportionate share of the family work has changed much during the past decade or so” (Blair, 1991, 91). Although women are moving into the paid labour force at a fairly fast pace, according to Kaufman, “men’s involvement in domestic roles has increased but at a slower pace than women’s entrance into the labour market” (Kaufman, 1999, 440). Women’s entrance into the labour market evolved rather rapidly from approximately less than 30% in the 1960's to currently more than 45% of women are in the paid labour force” (Levin, class note, Women’s Studies).
There are many reasons for the increase of women’s labour force participation. The main fact being that the North American standard of living has increased drastically in the past decades, and that double-incomes are needed in order to survive. Along with the increase in standard of living, divorce rates are increasing leaving women with children to support on their own, and therefore, women must find outside work. There are also fewer children to raise, therefore, women have more time to work and raise their children. Also, there is a great change in societal attitudes that push women into the work force. Finally, with pay equity policies having been established, it is much easier for women to find work that will pay enough to support her and her family.
Historical factors have weighed heavily on women's current status. In the nineteenth century, attitudes toward women were very different to the present attitudes placed upon them now. In the nineteenth century, there was a great need for women to work. Working class women had jobs in clothing factories, or worked as seamstress. Their work was more domestic-related. Middle class women were not expected to work. There were some jobs, but they were very limited. Middle class women were more expected to teach, to support themselves, until they found a husband. During this time there was a lower value place on a women’s work than that of a man’s. Therefore, women were paid less to do the same work as men were. This lower value on women’s work accounted for androcentric biases, which put men at a higher standing in their work. Men were often paid more for dangerous, dirty, and physical work such as mining. On the contrary, women who worked, per say as nurses whom also did heavy lifting and dirty work, were undervalued and underpaid. These biases brought into play occupational segregation, which implied that men and women tend to do different jobs because of their gender. According to Luhaorg and Zivian, “women have remained concentrated in predominately female occupations, i.e., clerical, sales, and service occupations,...while men enjoy a much more heterogeneous occupational structure; no major occupational category being dominant” (Luhaorg, 1995, 608).
Luckily for women, in the 1980's, federal law declared solutions to their two major problems involving the work force. Pay equity was established to solve the problem of the wage gap, which enforced that people who work the exact same jobs were to earn the exact same pay. The second solution that was established by the government was employment equity, which helped with occupational segregation and gave employers a set of strategies to follow in order to provide women the same opportunities in the labour market as men.
With these regulations set into place, women moved into the work force during the 1980's at full force, and have continued to do so. Not only did this put pressure on the paid labour force, but it also put pressure on the family unit. In order to carry out its daily functions as a family, the modern family depends heavily on all the institutions of a society for support. Where as in the past, the family was an independent unit that depended on nothing and no one.
With this in mind, the family and the “fact that the majority of families have both spouses working outside the home means that dual-earners and dual-career families” are becoming the norm in American society” (Mintz, 1996, 805). Indeed there are many positive outcomes to having both spouses in the paid labour force, but at the same time there are many “stresses for these families” (Mintz, 1996, 805). According to Mintz, “these stresses usually revolve around balancing the demand of the paid labour and the demand of the family labour” (Mintz, 1996, 805).
Throughout the years, the family unit has changed drastically. With “dual earner” families being the most popular types of families. Three types of “dual earner” family ideologies were identified by Lye. Those three are the Traditional, Modern, and Egalitarian. As the trend of double income family household increases, “the breakdown of the traditional system” (Lye, 1993, 157) due to women entering the paid labour force has had profound transformation with respect to family life and gender roles.
The Traditional family as identified by Mintz and Mahalik is described briefly as “marriage based on a form on benevolent male dominance couple with clearly specialized roles that are assigned on the basis of gender” (Mintz and Mahalik, 1996, 806). To further explain this, the traditional family is a women who identifies with her activities at home and the man bases his identification on his paid work. Generally, the wife is to have less power than her husband does in relation to all aspects of their marriage.
The second type of family, the Egalitarian Family, is described by Mintz and Mahalik as a “rejection of both of these ideas” (Mintz & Mahalik, 1996, 806) referring to the traditional family. Further explained, the Egalitarian Family is the husband and wife identifying with the same sphere, home and work, or identifying with the same balance between the two spheres of home and work. In this family relationship, the power amongst both the man and the woman is to be distributed evenly, and the same value is to be held upon both husband and wife’s paid and unpaid work.
The third type of family is the Modern Family. Mintz and Mahalik describe this type of family as “representing a middle position within the marriage” (Mintz & Mahalik, 1996, 806). The modern family, also known as the transitional family, is further explained by a wife who is to identify with activities both related to paid and unpaid labour, where as the husband is to relate his identification to strictly his paid work.
With the explanation of these three types of families, it is easy to say that along with the types of families changing, the roles of the family have also changed. Taking a closer look at women’s roles, and comparing them to men’s roles, Lye said that “changing family and gender role attitudes are indicative of a weakening of traditional normative constraints that used to offer the well-defined adult roles of husband-father-breadwinner and wife-mother-homemaker so that diverse range of adult roles are now acceptable and coexist. Referring to the different types of families above, Lye clearly explains that it is also possible to have many different types of family roles and expectations working together in the same familial. Lye also believes that “the effects of men’s and women’s attitudes vary according to their spouse’s attitudes and to be greater where husbands and wives disagree” (Lye 1993, 160). Therefore, men and women’s roles strongly depend on the expectations and attitudes that they have set in regards to family roles or gender roles. “Having different views concerning family life reduces marital satisfaction of the balancing” (Lye, 1993, 183). It is locating an equilibrium that couples find difficult to do in regards to family life and gender roles.
Even today as women are entering the workforce, Kaufman found that “wives do four-fifths of the cooking, laundry, and shopping as well as two-thirds of the child care, cleaning, and dishwashing” (Kaufman, 1999, 440). For example, Blair & Lichter found that “wives perform 96% of the cooking, 92% of the dishwashing, 90% of the vacuuming, 94% of the bed making, and 94% of the diapering of children” (Blair, 1991, 93). At the other end of the scale, Blair and Lichter found that “husbands performed 86% of household repairs, 80% of the disciplining of children, 75% of the lawn mowing, and 77% of the snow shovelling” (Blair, 1991, 93).
These percentages seem rather irrelevant due to the fact that division of household labour is much more than who does what. Blair and Lichter discuss three prominent theories of the division of household labour. They are time availability, power theory, and gender role.
The theory of time availability relates to the fact that if a spouse is working full-time outside the home, it is more difficult for he or she to perform the daily household tasks. Blair and Lichter described this theory as “the partner with the most available time presumably will assume the greatest share of household duties.” Although this theory seems irrelevant in the explanation of why men do less work in the household, it does not explain why women are still doing the same amount even when she works the same hours as her husband.
The power theory is a gender segregated theory that suggests that because women are of lower status to their husband, in regards to paid labour force earnings, the men’s paid labour force job is more prestigious than his wife’s. Blair and Lichter raise an issue when they say that “family power, which is typically measured by the personal resource of each spouse may also affect the allocation of domestic tasks by reinforcing traditional assignments of tasks by gender” (Blair, 1991, 94). Although this theory does make sense, family power is not always divided by who makes more money.
The third theory identified by Blair and Lichter is the gender role ideology, and the fact that by nature women are socialised to perform related to tasks to their femininity, as well as men are raised to perform related tasked to their masculinity. This theory is more related to “traditional sex roles” of the expressive wife and the instrumental husband. Blair and Lichter report that “females are more likely to be assigned to traditional female orientated tasks, such as cleaning, washing, and cooking” (Blair, 1991, 94). Whereas men are more likely to perform male dominated tasks such as snow shovelling, taking out the garbage, car repairs, lawn mowing, and household repairs.
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Cloning Benefits What if while walking down the street you encountered someone who looked exactly like you? Would you stare in amazement or would your heart be filled with fear? At first some people may look upon the idea of cloning with disgust and question themselves if humans should play God while others would be interested and study the many possibilities that cloning offers. This illustrates the path that cloning has taken over the latter part of the twentieth century. At first, when cloning was brought up in conversations, people tended to fearfully think of an army of identical persons marching across the earth in hopes of ruling humans. This and many other absurd notions of clones stem from science fiction movies and books where clones are distorted into horrid, monstrous beasts. In Ira Levin's science fiction book, The Boys of Brazil, baby Hitlers are cloned in order to take over Hitler's dream of his race dominating the world (Harris 361). This distortion was, and still is, a common misconception of the goals of cloning. In reality, cloning, along with its counterpart gene therapy, is not intended for the production of a fully developed individual. Instead, cloning and gene therapy are about the medical advancement of the world's population through the control of diseases and replacement of missing hormones and organs. Although there are arguments against them, the possibilities of cloning and gene therapy are important for the production of organs and hormones and as a means to control diseases, but both must also be strictly regulated in order to outlaw the production of fully-developed human clones. Until 1997 the chance of mammalian cloning seemed just about as unlikely as finding a cure for AIDS. However, 1997 marked the beginning of the wonderful technology known as mammalian cloning. In that year scientists in Scotland cloned, for the first time, a sheep (The Future 46). Since then people think that biologists are cloning both human and other mammal's embryos only to see how far they can push the scientific envelope, but in fact there are many legitimate reasons for investigating cloning. Embryologists believe that research into cloning could help improve the life of future generations. Cancer research is possibly the most important reason for embryo cloning they argue. Oncologists believe that embryonic study will advance understanding of the rapid cell growth of cancer. Cancer cells develop at approximately the same phenomenal speed as embryonic cells do. By studying the embryonic cell growth, scientists may be able to determine how to stop rapid cell division, and also stop cancer growth in turn (Hyde 15). Another important area of embryo cloning research is embryonic stem cell development. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that can develop into almost any type of cell in the body. These cells are not attacked by a person's immune system, because of their fast development and undifferentiated status (Wilmut 4). Many doctors believe that these stem cells could be used in treatments for brain and nervous system damage. Perhaps a more questionable use of cloned embryos is for spare parts and hormones. Production of transgenic farm animals to make organs to transplant in humans with organ failure has been heavily researched. Companies like Alexion Pharmaceutical have been working on the development of pigs to grow hearts and kidneys that won't be rejected in transplants (Reibstein 58). For example, the cells used to generate tissues for transplantation could include skin and blood cells for treatments of burn and other injuries, bone marrow transplants for leukemia patients, and neurological tissues for degenerative neurological diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's (Winston 913). Obviously human embryo cloning is a great source for human advancement, and it is the technology that will finally make it possible to apply genetic engineering to humans. Genetic engineering involves splicing and recombining Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA) to create or fix a gene on a chromosome. Many treatment drugs have been made through a procedure known as gene splicing. Gene splicing is a method in which whole genes or parts of genes are put into bacteria where they are reproduced when the bacteria divide. In 1982, two advancements in gene splicing were made; Interferon, a drug used to treat cancer, and Humulin, a synthetic form of insulin used to treat diabetes, were produced through gene splicing (Hyde 44). According to Hyde's book, Cloning and the New Genetics, before gene splicing was used it took twenty steer and eighty hog pancreases to produce a year's supply of insulin for one person. This may not sound like much, but when you consider the fact that approximately sixty million people have diabetes worldwide that is a lot of animals whose lives have been saved (61). Another treatment greatly affected by genetic engineering is Human Growth Hormone (HGH). Without HGH, children's growth is decreased so much they tend to look dwarfed. Instead of extracting the pituitary glands from fifty cadavers per one child, genetic engineering now allows scientists to use the common bacteria E. Coli to produce HGH (62). . Both gene therapy and cloning are extremely important for the advancement of humans. According to D. J. Weatherall's book, The New Genetics and Clinical Practice: Finally, and perhaps most important[ly] in the long [run], these new analytical techniques will broaden the scope of the genetic analysis of human disease to encompass the cell and molecular biology of a variety of the major killers of western societies, in particular vascular disease, diabetes, cancer, rheumatic disease, and major psychiatric disorders. (2) Without these new technologies many people would die, and in order to continue with these technologies, we need to restrict only the parts that are harmful or unethical to society. Regulation and restriction must be established in order to outlaw the implantation of a cloned embryo into a woman's womb. Because human embryo research is just in its infancy, there has been a rush to decide what guidelines are going to be instituted for governing cloning experiments. However, we must not make rash decisions to ban cloning because [w]hat's at stake here are lifesaving technologies, the only hope for thousands afflicted with Parkinson's disease, diabetes, cancer, and other deadly and disabling diseases (Carey 2). To assist the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in determining which cloning experiments to fund, a medical panel was set up to form a preliminary set of guidelines. Steven Muller, the head of the panel, set out with the help of several prominent biologists including, Brigid Hogan and embryology specialist Mark Hughes, to put together a set of guidelines that would satisfy the concerns of both the scientific and religious communities. The religious community vigorously opposes all human cloning procedures for fear that humans are attempting to play God and destroy the family. The scientific community sympathizes with the religious communities concerns, but does not want to lose the enormous amount of information that may be gained by human embryo cloning. Muller's panel announced a set of guidelines that they hope would be acceptable to both communities. They recommended research be permitted on embryos allowing them to develop up to and including the fourteenth day. Researchers would also be allowed to produce new embryos for what the NIH considers compelling research. Researchers would also be permitted to remove some of the embryonic cells from embryos that are destined for in vitro fertilization at a later time (Marshall 1024). The panel did not come to a decision in several other areas including research funding. The panel suggested that research might be permitted after the fourteenth day of development depending upon the circumstances, but definitely not after the eighteenth day, when neural tube closure begins to develop. The neural tube is the beginning of the nervous system, including the brain, in adult humans (Marshall 1024). Thus the scientific community seems to be giving more moral consideration to an embryo then a majority of society gives to a more developed fetus during abortion The experiments that the panel recommended be banned include impregnating human embryos in other animal species, impregnating cloned embryos into humans, the use of embryos for sex selection, or the transfer of one nucleus from one embryo to another. These are but a few of the procedures that the panel felt were inappropriate for federal funding (Marshall 1024). However, the above limitations only apply to federally funded experiments. Currently there are no laws directly prohibiting any of the above procedures in private research settings. It should also be stated that all of the above procedures have or can be carried out with our current technology. Although the NIH does not have the ability to stop privately funded cloning clinics like the one Richard Seed plans to build, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does. The [FDA] already has the power to quash attempts to clone people. Eccentric scientists… can announce plans to open human-cloning clinics. But without FDA approval, they'll be committing a crime. And they won't get FDA approval (Carey 1). Whenever a new idea is introduced into society, it is usually met with criticism and fear by some and with joy and hope by others. Just like criticism and fear arrived with the delivery of Louise Brown, the first In Vitro fertilization baby born in 1978 (Tudge 34), the same will hold true for cloning. However, there is hope. Not only is In Vitro fertilization accepted now, but it is used daily by hundreds of couples trying to conceive when it was impossible to even imagine a family before. The plain and simple truth is that both cloning and gene therapy provide many new and exciting possibilities such as the production of organs and hormones and the control of disease to ensure the future health of the human race. Like In Vitro fertilization, humans need to open their eyes and accept these new techniques that are creeping over the horizon which can not only save lives, but increase our longevity as a society. Many critics of cloning and gene therapy do not stop to think about the possibilities of these technologies or about the possibility that one of their offspring could need some genetically engineered or cloned substance to save their life in the future. They worry about one or two scientists trying to clone humans instead of the possibilities that will be available to the world to fight disease. If humans would just take a look at the bigger picture they would realize that cloning and gene therapy will not be the downfall of society, but will increase our longevity and health as a whole.
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