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Sociology of Housework
This book will be compulsive reading for anyone interested in issues affecting women's liberation. It is a study which challenges both the conventional trivialisation of housework and also the sociological neglect of housework as a serious topic - a neglect which is rooted in the fundamental sexism of sociology.
In sociology women tend to be studied either in their family roles - as wives and mothers - or as workers outside the home, but the role of unpaid domestic worker has not been studied seriously or systematically. This book examines the conventional treatment of women in sociology and analyses interviews with forty young urban housewives. It covers such areas as women's perceptions of housework and of themselves as housewives, the feeling sof monotony and fragmentation among housewives; attitudes to different household tasks; the length of a housewife's working week; the importance of housework standards and routines as a way of ensuring housework gets done, and as a means of providing 'self reward' in housework. An assessment is made of the extent to which women are satisfied or dissatisfied with housework, and class similarities and differences are discussed. The influence of upbringing on women's domesticity is charted, and the divison of labour between the housewife and her husband in the home is analysed; the difficulties of combining housework with motherhood are examined.
The importance of the book lies in the correction of the traditional view that women 'work' outside the home but not inside it; it adopts an entirely novel approach to women's family role by analysing housework as a job, analogous to any other kind of work.
In sociology women tend to be studied either in their family roles - as wives and mothers - or as workers outside the home, but the role of unpaid domestic worker has not been studied seriously or systematically. This book examines the conventional treatment of women in sociology and analyses interviews with forty young urban housewives. It covers such areas as women's perceptions of housework and of themselves as housewives, the feeling sof monotony and fragmentation among housewives; attitudes to different household tasks; the length of a housewife's working week; the importance of housework standards and routines as a way of ensuring housework gets done, and as a means of providing 'self reward' in housework. An assessment is made of the extent to which women are satisfied or dissatisfied with housework, and class similarities and differences are discussed. The influence of upbringing on women's domesticity is charted, and the divison of labour between the housewife and her husband in the home is analysed; the difficulties of combining housework with motherhood are examined.
The importance of the book lies in the correction of the traditional view that women 'work' outside the home but not inside it; it adopts an entirely novel approach to women's family role by analysing housework as a job, analogous to any other kind of work.
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 20, 2025
Based on interviews conducted in England in 1971, this is a study of an almost extinct occupation (stay-at-home homemaker) under a defunct title ('housewife').
Although its current relevance is questionable - indeed, even the author suggested that many of the opinions and attitudes of the subjects may have changed by the time the book was first published in 1974 - it is still valuable for its subtle and nuanced distinctions between the subjects' indentification (or not) with the role of 'housewife' and their feelings about the activity of housework (too often conflated by earlier researchers), between the subjects ostensible attitudes and those perhaps revealed by follow-up statements, and the way it held the assumptions of earlier researchers up to scrutiny. It also has a worthwhile (if heavy) section on how the assumptions of then-contemporary sociology normalised men and regarded differences in women's attitudes / opinions as defects.
Although its current relevance is questionable - indeed, even the author suggested that many of the opinions and attitudes of the subjects may have changed by the time the book was first published in 1974 - it is still valuable for its subtle and nuanced distinctions between the subjects' indentification (or not) with the role of 'housewife' and their feelings about the activity of housework (too often conflated by earlier researchers), between the subjects ostensible attitudes and those perhaps revealed by follow-up statements, and the way it held the assumptions of earlier researchers up to scrutiny. It also has a worthwhile (if heavy) section on how the assumptions of then-contemporary sociology normalised men and regarded differences in women's attitudes / opinions as defects.
February 22, 2021
As relevant as ever.
June 13, 2021
oh dear lord this could have been an article, that's all I'm gonna say about it
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews