Distribution of duties based on gender roles Research Paper

Distribution of duties based on gender roles - Research Paper Example Moral judgments about the gender based household duties of individuals are made by people in our daily life. Each and every individual owes some kind of work as their daily chores and others placed the demand for it on the individual who owes it. That kind of work is said to be the duty of the individual that the person is obliged to perform. Gender roles are often defined in the cultural context. The overall power relations that existed between the women and the men living in a society determine the distribution of their duties on the basis of gender identity. Basic inequalities among gender exist to a large extent within the households in relation to the household works they are assigned. In many societies even in the twenty first century the professional life of women are accepted only when they could well maintained their household duties along with their outdoor works . Whereas the working of the men outside home is natural and taken for granted. This inequality implies inequali ties in employment status of male and female and also their relations within the family. (Buckley and Moghaddam, 2-5; Sen) Thus the discrimination among men and women on the basis of the distribution of duties of their households in their everyday life is the social phenomenon that is intended to be studied in the paper. The paper reflects that shopping affects gender in a very extensive way through society The research hypothesis The situations of the households have changed over the years and the shares of the household chores performed by the male members of the family have experienced a significant positive change but women contributes larger proportion of the household works especially related ot shopping trends, till date. Research designs and methods Interest for the study The classic work done by Friedman in the year 1963 and then continued by Oakley in the year 1974 urged the sociologists to focus on the issue of the study of household work which was otherwise considered as a topic too marginal to be studied as relevant part of sociology (Buckley and Moghaddam, 6). Sociologists have now become increasingly interested in studying the social factors that determine the work performance of households and the topic became the focus for sophisticated research. There are certain findings that appear in literature work more consistently though the study of the household sector has not really been able to produce a consensus yet among general people. Among those findings what appears to be well documented mostly is that a greater share of the household chores and daily household works are performed by the female members of the family than the male members. Studies suggested that the females of the family invariably perform the largest share of the daily household duties though the relative shares of the work performed by the male and female members vary in terms of individuals’ characteristics and the household circumstances in which they are living the ir livelihood (Buckley and Moghaddam, 6). However with the changing nature of the society the situations of the households are also changing. Most of the couples in the twenty first century are trying to live a more balanced life with a more or less proper sharing of the household works. As women of the twenty first century are catching up with the capacity of their male counterparts in each and every aspects of life (be it political, social and even in economical aspects), the