New Dimensions to Gendered Power Relations in Families

Abstract

The question of gender relations within families or households has been an important area of enquiry for both feminist sociologists and economists in the UK since the 1970s. As other contributors to this volume have indicated, there has been a close association between feminists in these different disciplines who worked or still work under the umbrella category of socialist feminism. During the 1970s and 1980s, sociologists took economic analysis as a basis for explaining the defects and problems associated with marriage, domestic labour, women’s paid labour and divorce (Barrett and McIntosh, 1982; Bland et al., 1978; Land, 1976; Pahl, 1980; Smart, 1984; Whitehead, 1981). The relationship between the private and the public spheres (as these areas were then conceptualized) provided a cornerstone of analysis, with feminists attempting to show that the two were intimately related, with both needing reform in order to improve the disadvantageous position of women.¹