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Gender Division of Labor

IN TODAY's SOCIETY and in many countries, concepts of work and labor pools have undergone changes, with more women working outside the home than in past centuries. While “women invest significantly more hours in household labor than do men, despite the narrowing of gender differences,” according to S.M. Bianchi et al., women now work part-time or full-time in jobs or careers as well.

As anthropologist Gary Ferraro states, “the household may be made up of a nuclear family (husband, wife, and children) or a more elaborate family structure containing married siblings, multiple wives, and more than two generations,” suggesting that all members of the household participate in household labor. Therefore, it is hard to believe that one aspect of the family has evolved very little over the course of history: the gender division of labor, wherein women and men are seen as responsible for different activities, is as strong today as it was decades ago.

This article will provide definitions of and examine how the gender division of labor has remained relatively unchanged over the years. In addition, it will examine the history of the gender division of labor in the workforce and in the family from a global perspective, as well as a Western culture perspective, and explore the modern challenges for women and men in the context of the gender division of labor.

Definitions

According to Ferraro, “the process of production is the allocation of tasks to be performed—that is, deciding which types of people will perform which categories of work.” In all societies, work to provide for family must be completed, whether the work is to hunt and gather, or cook and clean, or participate in wage employment. Societies have made distinctions for the production of work on the basis of gender and age. L.P. Cooke easily defines the division of labor as when a woman devotes all of her time to unpaid labor while her husband devotes all of his time to paid labor. Jackson states, “gender divisions of labour have been broadly thought of … as the process by which men and women come to perform distinctive activities and roles, beyond the biological imperatives of biological reproduction.”

Historically in Eurocentric terms, men have been known as “breadwinners” or providers for the family, while women are the reproducers and perform domestic tasks. Thus “the roles of wife and mother are intimately tied to expectations for doing housework … and displayed through outcomes such as a clean house,” as noted by Bianchi et al. Throughout history, however, women have eased into the public and paid work arena. As a result, the concrete definition of household gender division of labor has become more one of degrees.

Gender Divisions in the Workforce

Women have entered the workforce, defined here as paid labor outside the household setting, throughout history for different reasons. K.B. Graubart explains that the textile industry was one of the first trades for women entering into wage labor. In 16th-century Peru, women and men worked alongside one another as cumbicamayos (“makers of cumbi”) weaving cloth for textile production. It was not until European colonizers arrived that a division of labor began to develop. According to M.J. Maynes, “one of the most significant and controversial aspects of globalization from a feminist point of view has been its disruption of local gender divisions of labor and its impact on women's wage labor.” Before the European colonizers arrived, both men and women completed weaving; after Spanish colonization, weaving was considered a female activity or job. Widows and single women were put to work making clothing, while “men were assumed to be busy on mitas, in wage labor, fishing or working their plots of lands.”

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