TOWARDS SOME ASPECTS OF CHILDCARE AND HOUSEWORK FROM THE GENDER PERSPECTIVE

• Authors: Chorvat I.
• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The article deals primarily with the division of household labour in the family from the gender perspective. Although the concept of the working woman is not at all new, the growing participation of women in a paid work and their increased professional realization has not been accompanied by a more egalitarian division of household work in families. This is the situation which can be described as a gender gap in the private sphere. Household work continues to be structurally as well as symbolically tied up with the woman. On the other hand we can be a witness of some technological processes that lead to the de-qualification of household work and feelings of meaninglessness of housework for women. Conventional identities (homemaker, breadwinner) may be challenged but cultural notions of masculinity and femininity run deep. The paper further investigates husbands' and wives' perception of fairness of the domestic division of labour as well as micro- and macro-level factors that influence the division of housework. In the final part two perspectives dealing with the position and role of fathers in families are analysed - the perspective of role inadequacy and the developmental perspective. It is stressed that the developmental perspective is more appropriate for researching changes in men's family roles. Changes in men's behaviour by stressing what father more involved in activities around children gains in comparison with stressing what he sacrifices makes the developmental perspective more advantageous over other perspectives in solving the problem of low activity of men in childcare. In the conclusion we ask whether it is useful at all to aspire for the more equal distribution of household labour in the family.

Keywords

EN

CHILDCARE; FATEHERHOOD; GENDER GAP; GENERATIVITY; HOUSEHOLD LABOR; MEN'S FAMILY ROLE

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Sociológia (Sociology)
• Year: 2006
• Volume: 38
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 31-48
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Chorvat I.

• I. Chorvat, Ústav vedy a výskumu UMB, Cesta na amfiteáter 1, 974 01 Banská Bystrica, Slovak Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

06SKAAAA00972243