Tag: Radical Feminism

How Motherhood and Fatherhood affect paid and domestic work

mothers are more likely to take time off work and do 10 hours more housework and childcare than fathers.

One of way of measuring the relative effects of motherhood and fatherhood on paid and domestic labour is to compare the following two subsets:

  • Mothers in relation to women without dependent children compared to
  • Fathers in relation to men without dependent children.

Comparing these two subsets would be a useful contribution to evaluating Liberal and Radical Feminist theories about how family life affects women. Broadly speaking:

  • Liberal Feminists claim that family life (compared to women remaining childless) has little or no negative impact on women.
  • Radical Feminists claim that family life has a negative impact on women, as women are more likely to quit their jobs when children are born, and they end up doing more childcare than men, and continue to do more housework too, suffering from the triple shift.

Generally speaking if mothers are doing less paid work and more domestic work than women without dependent children, while fathers are doing more paid work and less domestic work than men without dependent children, it’s reasonable to say this suggests more support for radical compared to liberal feminism.

HOWEVER, we’d still need to do further research to test this out: statistics don’t give us in-depth data and allow us to conclusively prove or dismiss either of these broad theoretical positions, they just point in one direction or the other.

This post looks at the following data taken from the ONS’ (1)

  • The percentages of mothers, fathers and men and women without dependent children in employment
  • The percentage of mothers in full time work by age of child
  • The percentages of 24-35 year old mothers and fathers in work.
  • How much housework mothers and fathers do.

You can view all of the stats below on my Tableau page.

Motherhood and fatherhood encourage traditional gender roles

The graphic below shows the percentages of mothers, fathers and men/ women without dependent children in paid employment 2002-21, U.K.

In 2021 72% of men without dependent children were in work compared to 92% of fathers. 69% of women were in work compared to 76% of mothers.

So… both men and women with children are more likely to be in work compared to those without children (but this data also includes retired people, so no surprise, maybe!)

What’s interesting is the relative difference between men and women without children and mothers and fathers:

Mothers are much less likely to be work than fathers, the figures for men and women without children in work are much closer together.

This suggests having children is more likely to result in women leaving paid employment to take on a caring role while having children encourages men into the breadwinner role.

Only 30% of women with new born children work full-time

Bar chart showing percentage of mothers in full time work by age of child.

It’s probably unsurprising, but only 30% of women with very young children aged one, and the percentage increases gradually until 49% of women with 18 year olds are in paid employment.

This is a clear trend of women taken a period of employment and then gradually returning in greater numbers as their children get older.

The figures for men hardly change at all with children being born (not shown on graphic).

Young women are affected most

This statistic is the strongest evidence of how motherhood has a detrimental affect on women’s careers compared to fatherhood.

bar chart comparing number of young mothers and fathers in work, UK 2022.

For 24-35 year olds, MORE women without dependent children are in paid work than men.

However, only 69% of 24-35 year old mothers are in employment compared to a massive 92% of fathers in the same age category.

Women do more housework and childcare

In 2022 women did 30 minutes more unpaid housework per day than men and they did one hour extra of childcare.

Over the course of a week, this means women with dependent children are doing 10 hours more childcare and housework combined than men.

This seems to be strong evidence of mothers suffering from the triple shift.

Conclusions: support for radical feminism?

The above statistical evidence seems to offer some support for the radical feminist view that families are harmful to women, in that having children results in women being more likely to take time off paid-work compared to men and mothers doing 10 hours more domestic labour and childcare per week than men.

Sources and Signposting

This material is most relevant to the families and households module, usually taught as part of the first year A-level sociology course.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

(1) Office for National Statistics: Families and the Labour Market UK, 2021.

Screenshots of Tableau embeds:

women and men in paid work
bar chart showing hours per day childcare and domestic labour done by mothers and fathers, UK 2022.

Shulamith Firestone – And the Artificial Womb

Shulamith Firestone argues that that the main cause of gender inequality is the biological fact of childbirth – which puts women at a physical disadvantage to men.

She suggests that we need to develop an artificial womb so that women have the choice to be free from the biological necessity of childbirth.

Shulamith Firestone

Her best known work is the Dialectic of Sex, published in 1970.

Firestone argues that the ‘sexual class system’ was the first form of stratification – such systems existed before class based systems and capitalism.

She argues that biological differences between men and women formed the basis for a differentiated division of labour , organised into what she calls the ‘biological family’, which has four key characteristics:

Characteristics of the Biological Family

  1. Women are disadvantaged by the biology – especially pregnancy and childbirth. When they are weakened and caring for their young children they are dependent on men (husbands, brothers, fathers) for their physical survival.)
  2. Women’s dependency on men is severe because of the long period of time it takes human infants to mature.
  3. The interdependence between mother and child, and both of them on men is found in every human society, and this dependency relationship produces unequal relationships.
  4. The sexual class system forms the basis of all other class systems. Men enjoy their power over women in the biological family and seek to extend this into other realms of social and economic life.

Hence Firestone argues that the sexual class system gives rise to the economic class system (not the other way around as Engels suggested.

Women need control over reproduction for gender equality

Firestone argued that contraception was a step towards greater gender equality, because it gave women more control over when they got pregnant.

However, she argues that for full equality women needed even more control over pregnancy – that we need to develop artificial wombs so that reproduction can take place without women being physically ‘disabled’ for several months compared to men. This would be necessary to break women’s dependency on men.

Firestone didn’t argue that artificial wombs were a ‘one stop shop’ for bringing about gender equality – she argued that we would have to fight economic inequalities, power psychology and other aspects of gender inequality to, in order to achieve genuine sexual equality.

Evaluations of Firestone

The biological fact that women give birth may well go some way to explaining the widespread fact of gender equality, however, even in traditional societies, ther eare wide differences in the level of gender power inequalities, and her theory doesn’t explain these variations.

Moreover, whether we need artificial wombs for gender equality is debatable – huge steps have been made recently towards greater equality without artificial wombs.

The article below is worth a read for some further evaluations:

Is artificial womb technology a tool for women’s liberation?

Artificial wombs aren’t science fiction

This is an interesting video outlining how artificial wombs are being developed for premature babies – it’s not quite what Firestone imagine, but it’s a step towards them maybe…

Sources

Some of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn, edition 8!

Relevance to A-level sociology – This post is relevant to the Families and Households module, it is an example of a radical feminist perspective on the family.

The Dialectic of Sex (wiki link).

Political Lesbianism

The main idea of Political Lesbianism is that sexuality is a choice. It’s about rejecting heterosexuality and men, not necessarily about having sex with women.

It is one of the key ideas of Radical Feminism, although keep in mind that this is extreme, and not representative of all Radical Feminists!

According to Julie Bindel the debate over whether Feminists should ‘give up heterosexual sex and adopt Political Lesbianism as a practice started with the publication of a pamphlet in 1979 called ‘Love Your Enemy: the debate between heterosexual feminism and political lesbianism’, put together by the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group, and the main author being Shiela Jeffries.

You can download a full copy of this radical feminist pamphlet here. It’s commonly known as the ‘LYE’ pamphlet, or ‘Love your Enemy’

Some of the key ideas of ‘Love your Enemy’

  • Women needed to get rid of men from their beds and their heads to be truly free.
  • Male oppression is the only system of oppression in which the oppressor literally invades and colonises the interior of the other.
  • Penetrative sex (between men and women) is more than a symbol of oppression, its function and effect is the punishment and control of women.
  • Sexuality is not determined by genetics, it is not just biological, it is shaped by culture and it is a choice.

The pamphlet caused quite a debate within Feminism in the early 1980s, and it probably enhanced divisions within the movement. The video below explores some of the issues and conflicts surrounding Political Lesbianism

Criticisms of Political Lesbianism

Bea Campbell argued that it was more important to challenge men’s behaviour in heterosexual relationships than to insist that women give up heterosexual desire.

Lynne Segal also thinks we should celebrate heterosexuality.

Political Lesbianism seems to be based on a fear of men, rather than a love of women and/ or diversity!

Further reading on Political Lesbianism

A Radical Feminist Perspective on the Family

the norm of the traditional, privatised nuclear family can disadvantage women who would be more free in women only households.

Radical feminists see society as patriarchal: all social institutions are systematically structured to run in the interests of men and to maintain male power over women.

The traditional nuclear family is seen as one of the most important institutions which subordinates women to male power by putting women into the roles of housewives and mothers, through which they become financially dependent on men.

Physical violence against women is one of the main ways male domination over women is maintained and the ideology of the the privatised nuclear family makes it easier for men to commit domestic violence. If the family is private in makes it easier for domestic violence to continue on, hidden away from public view.

Precisely because the family is supposed to be private, victims of domestic violence are reluctant to report crimes against them and friends, neighbours and state agencies reluctant to investigate.

For radical feminists men and women have different interests and part of the radical feminist strategy is consciousness raising to help women realise this. Part of this involves challenging women’s ideas that the nuclear family set up is good, and getting them to question whether they need to have children or families at all.

Some radical feminists have suggested that in order to combat patriarchy women need to live in radically alternative family structures: such as women only households or even adopting lesbian relationships.

Germaine Greer – The Whole Woman and The Family

Germaine Greer (2000) argues that the family continues to disadvantage women. She focuses on looking at the role of women as wives, mothers and daughters.

Women as Wives

Greer argues that there is a strong ideology suggesting that being a wife is the most important female role. The wives of presidents and prime ministers get considerable publicity, but often have to be subservient to their husbands. Such a role demands that the woman…

‘Must not only be seen to be at her husband’s side on all formal occasions, she must also be seen to adore him and never to appear less than dazzled by everything he may say or do. Her eyes should be fixed on him but he should do his best never to be caught looking at her’.

Radical feminist criticism of marriage

This inequality is mirrored in most marriages. Greer argues that marriage reinforces patriarchal relations from the outset. What she refers to as the ‘ghastly figure of the bride’ expresses traditional conceptions of femininity and once the honeymoon period is over marriage settles into a pattern in which husbands spend more time outside of the home compared to the wife (reinforcing the gendered public-private divide), spends more money on himself, does less housework and generally does better out of the relationship. Wives tend to see it as their job to keep the husband happy, while the husband thinks he has done all he needs to keep his wife happy just by consenting to marry her.

It is typically women who are more likely to think they need to be married in order to be happy, but in reality this is a myth. In fact it is men who do better out of marriage than women. Married men report higher levels of satisfaction than non-married men, while single women report higher levels of satisfaction than married women.

Three quarters of divorces are initiated by women, which has led to a decline in the stable married-family in recent years. Greer sees this as a good thing because the illusion of traditional family life was built on the silence of suffering women.

Women as mothers

Greer consents that motherhood can be intrinsically satisfying she argues that it is not valued by society. She says ‘mothers bear children in pain, feed them from their bodies, cherish and nourish and prepare to lose them’. Children are expected to leave their mother’s home when quite young and to ow their mothers little or nothing in return. Many of the elderly who die of hypothermia are mothers, yet their children accept no responsibility for helping to support them. Society attaches no or little value to motherhood:

‘Mother’ is not a career option; the woman who gave her all to mothering has to get in shape, find a job, and jeep young and beautiful if she wants to be loved. ‘Motherly is a word for people who are frumpish and suffocating’.

Greer suggests at least the following pieces of evidence to demonstrate that mothers are undervalued in society:

  1. In childbirth, the attention focuses mostly on the well-being of the child. The mother’s health takes a back-seat.
  2. Mothers and babies are generally not welcomed in society – in restaurants and public transport for example.
  3. Women are expected to return to work shortly after giving birth, on top of all of the child care duties.
  4. The feminine ideal is to be slim and hipless, while broad hips and the blossom of maternity are seen as monstrous. Women are expected to ‘regain their figure’ shortly after childbirth.
  5. After all is said and done the final role for mothers is to take the blame if their children go bad. Single mothers are here singled out for special attention.

Women as daughters

According to Greer men expect to exercise control over women and expect them to service their needs. Greer argues that daughters are quite likely to experience sexual abuse from their fathers, step-fathers and other male relatives and that this is a particularly horrendous form of patriarchy and is an extension of male heterosexuality.

She believes that such abuse is very much more common than most of us think and that ‘it is understood that heterosexual men fancy young things, that youth itself is a turn-on, but no-one is sure how young is too young. Why after all are sexy young women called ‘babes’?

Solutions to patriarchal families

While Greer does not believe that women should cut themselves off from men altogether she thinks they would be better off in matrilocal households, where all the adults are female. She believes such households have a lot to offer women, especially if they incorporate the many older women currently living alone.

Evaluations of radical feminism

A problem with Greer’s work is that it makes sweeping generalisations which are not backed up by evidence. In fairness it took me a while to find the above picture of the Camerons, most of them seem to involve them looking at each other, rather than her looking at him.

Jennifer Somerville in particular is very critical of Greer, arguing that she does not take into account the progress women have made in terms of family life in recent years.

This 2019 comparative study of the subjective well being of men and women in cohabiting and married relationships found that married women and men are no happier than those cohabiting, so at the very least we can say marriage doesn’t make you happier, and thus maybe isn’t necessary!

Evidence supporting radical feminism

Women still do more housework and childcare than men

In 2022 women did 30 minutes more housework per day than men and an hour per day more childcare.

According to a 2021 YouGov survey  38% of women in full time work say they are primarily responsible for childcare and housework compared to only 9% of men. 

Around 40% of men and women say they share domestic chores and housework equally. 

Things haven’t changed since 2017. 

Same sex couples share domestic chores more equally

One (2020) study: Same Sex Couples Division of Labour from a Cross National Perspective  found that both male and female same-sex couples divide their domestic chores more equally than opposite sex couples, and female couples share more equally than male couples. 

It also found that where paid work is concerned male couples do more paid work than females: suggesting broad support for gender role socialisation norms carrying on into adulthood independently of the heterosexual family. 

The shocking maternity laws in the U.S.A

25% of women in the U.S. have to return to work two weeks after childbirth (1) because their employers only give them the minimum of two weeks statutory maternity pay. 

This affects women in low-paid jobs more, professional women are far more likely to get more generous maternity packages. 

The problem is with social policy in America: the law only requires companies provide a minimum of two weeks paid leave, it’s a good example of social policy not working for women. 

(1) (2020) Why one in four women in the U.S. return to work two weeks after childbirth 

Related Posts

This material is mainly relevant to the families and households topic within A-level sociology.

Feminist perspectives on the family (which covers all three types of Feminism)

The Liberal Feminist Perspective on the Family

The Marxist Feminist perspective on the family

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