Intersectional Lens

There is a huge debate going on today about gender. Society believes you’re a boy if you like blue, and like to play sports and go hunting; and you’re a girl if you like pink and have long hair and pig tails and play with Barbie dolls. Society has forced us to choose between the two. I believe that both women and men can both have it all. As Dorment says, ‘competing work life balance and home as much as women’. (Dorment 697) I believe in this article Richard Dorment, has argued his opinion very well, I think both men and woman equally need to be involved in housework as well as taking care of the children. In today’s world were judging who were going to be even before were born. Throughout this article Dorment effectively convinces his audience that men and women should be equal by using statistics and emotional stories, Dorment uses personal stories and extensive research to make readers believe in his credibility, and lastly Dorment employs the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos effectively.

In Stephen Mays’ essay “What about Gender Roles in Same-sex Relationships?” published in They Say I Say, the author discusses how people often assign gender roles automatically, even with gay and lesbian couples. Mays stresses the concept of femininity and masculinity, and also shows the difference in their roles, supports them with vivid imagery, and gives a rare example of gay male preferences, all while using the correct diction when referring to personal experiences. Although the author reiterates gender roles and their effect on same-sex relationships, he gives clear examples that support the idea of masculine or feminine qualities.

Whether it is the past or the present, there have always been gender roles in society. In most homes, it is the woman’s responsibility to take care of the house. This includes cleaning, meal preparations, raising and taking care of the children as well as the husband. Compared to the men who take care of the more physical activities, such as yard work. It was known throughout many years that it was a woman’s responsibility to stay in the house while the man would go out and look for work to provide money for his family. Although the intensity of gender roles has changed, it still exists.

Women are known to be the nurturing part of human nature. It is women who birth and generally care for the young of human kind; however, the roles of women have progressed to be so much more in today’s society. Now women are looked to not only as a homemaker, but a breadwinner as well. In many families, the women provide a major source of income and are responsible for the wellbeing of the family. “More than a quarter century has passed since Arlie Hochschild’s The Second Shift powerfully made the case that women cannot compete fairly with men when they are doing two jobs and men are doing only one.” (Moravcsik). He goes on to say that women’s roles have shifted to being able to balance a job and a family at one time. Despite the many jobs that

Women and men are to work side by side in the home. The truth that men are not as capable as women in the home is derived not from the innate incapability, but from the lack of practice. They were never taught to work in the home, as in their youth they were given the chores of the men, and left the housework to their sisters under the firm direction of their mother. As a result of this, they became helpless when it came to housework. This practice has left feminists in a horrified state. The training of young boys and girls starts now.

Jones observe (2002: 15). In these ways, institutionalized heterosexuality is central to some of the key motivation(s) behind and design of public policy frameworks in the United States. By “institutionalized heterosexuality” I am referring to the set of ideas, institutions and relationships that make the heterosexual family the societal norm, while rendering homosexual/queer families “abnormal” or “deviant” (Ingraham 1999). My queer analysis of social welfare involves examining how sexuality and gender can be rethought and reorganized in economic and social policy frameworks, theories and practices. Throughout the article I examine how heterosexuality is assumed to be the natural basis for defining the family, and by extension, society, both explicitly (by excluding LGBT people from the analysis and by stigmatizing certain individuals as “non-family” or “anti-family”) and implicitly (by assuming that all people are heterosexual, that marriage is a given and exists only between a traditionally-defined man and woman, and that all people fit more or less into traditional gender roles; see Foucault 1978; Fraser and Gordon 1994; Ingraham 1999; Phelan 2001;

These types of issues require not only an intersectionality approach, but re-conceptualizing our understanding of individuals. Much of the work that culminated in the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act was predicated on the idea that through legislation, barriers could be removed to allow disabled people to achieve “independence.” Just a quick persuing of the disability organizations in Wisconsin finds eight with the word “independence” right in the organization name (http://www.disabilityrightswi.org/links). However, it is important, especially for disabled people, to unpack the ontological baggage of that term and the implications in devising strategies to dismantle structural inequities. We live in societies dominated by

Intersectionality requires us to look at the multiple identities that people hold. Oppressions based on race, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity do not act independently from each other, and as such a person who is at an “intersection” between two or more of these oppressed groups will face different forms of prejudice. Intersectional theory requires us to be aware that people are diverse beings, and that talking the about the oppression that broad groups of people (i.e. women, black people, queer people, etc.) face is not sufficient enough. We have to take into consideration how, for example, black women are not only victims of racism, but also sexism. If we do not take into consideration the complexities of people’s

“The Second Shift” by Arlie Russell Hochschild sheds light on the fact that America is stuck in a perpetual loop, unable to change its societal gender expectations. Substantial progress has been made when it comes to women in the workplace, but that same progress is lacking when it comes to a woman’s work within the home. When looking at employed women the term “second shift” can be brought to the forefront. The expression “second shift” refers to the tasks done around the house after the initial work hours are through. Hochschild critiques how the American career system treats the “second shift”; she makes it clear that the working American society has yet to take the additional shift into consideration due to the already implemented

Within a household, women and men, mothers and fathers, have different roles and responsibilities, much of which are based on the person’s gender. Typically, women or mothers are “responsible for the emotional, social, and physical well-being of her family” (Lober 80), “most of the hands-on family work” (Lorber 81), and keep up of the house. The men or fathers are usually seen as the “bread winners” of the family. Due to this and the work they do outside of the house, men usually have little to no responsibilities to the family and within the home. It is not unusual for women to clean the house, make sure the children are well taken care of, and cook while the man, or father, is at work. When he gets back home, after work, it is expected for him to relax and unwind. Although they are a couple with similar obligations, the divide of them is not equally distributed among the two and offer either one different results.

Who does the Housework? This article shows that Women do the vast majority of housework and men work in out in the real world. The five concepts that I found that relate to the chapters we have discussed thus far include; Dominant group, gender, gender roles, patriarchy, and Equalism. Males are the dominant group in our society not allowing the women often times to get out in the world and work. In this article, women were only getting jobs outside the home when the families started owning bigger houses. This gave them less time to spend doing childcare and housework. Fathers were still not motivated to help even when mothers went back to work. Gender refers to the expected behaviors that your culture assigns to each sex. As this article

Several studies ‘link the performance or avoidance of housework to one’s gender ideology’ which is a set of beliefs about what is appropriate behaviour for men and women in this instance ‘household work’ (Baxter, Hewitt & Western 2011). Chesters (2012) states that men with ‘traditional gender attitudes’ will spend less time doing housework whilst women with the ‘same traditional attitudes’ will spend more time doing housework in comparison to women with more ‘egalitarian gender attitudes’ will spend less time doing household work as men with the same ‘egalitarian gender attitudes’ will spend more time doing housework. Despite women’s greater role in the workplace, there is still a power imbalance in favour of men where women receiving lower wages consequently couples paying more attention to the man’s career path (Healy 2014, p.8). This encourages women to rather withdraw from paid work to take on work around the home (Healy 2014, p.8). A report published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 2014) found that although 58% of women are in some form of paid employment, they still spend 18 hours doing housework as to the 7 hours per week reported by men. (Baxter, Hewitt & Western 2009). Considering that women outperform men by far in the area of housework suggests that gender is still the basis of who does housework. From this perspective, it is reasonable to say that due to the power imbalance women is still doing the majority of household work while men continue to do the majority of paid

“Wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry” (Kincaid). A little girl is being told that she needs to do the jobs around the house now and when she’s older so her house is in tip-top shape. “Gender stereotypes begin the second a baby’s gender if found out.” (Brewer). They are taught at a young age to do work around the house to help the mother, to tend to their husbands and to be a homemaker (PBS). “Women are supposed to cook and do housework. Women are responsible for raising children” (Brewer). That is what

Women for years have been automatically given the role of the domestic housewife, where their only job is to cook, clean, and take care of the children. Men have usually taken the primary responsibility for economic support and contact with the rest of society, while women have traditionally taken the role of providing love, nurturing, emotional support, and maintenance of the home. However, in today’s society women over the age of sixteen work outside of the home, and there are more single parent households that are headed by women than at any other time in the history of the United States (Thompson 301.)

Sexual division of labour refers to the different tasks delegated to men and women in a society. It has persisted in throughout human history, and one of the modern manifestations is the cross-cultural observation that women do the lion’s share of domestic labour. How can our evolutionary past help us understand the roles of the men and women in the home today?