Degendering Family & Work
Assignment #7 Question
On
Judith Lorber’s Book
Breaking The Bowls: Degendering and Feminist Change

Sabrina Hickey
SOCI 4031


Men and boys can benefit from the degendering of the family and the work world in that they can take part in carework as much as mothers and other women have, without the stigma attached that it is presumably the work of only women. Men can not be expected to be the ‘breadwinners’ in two parent families and boys can learn this from their father’s parenting roles. Men and boys can learn that nuturance is not something that is tied intimately to the female sex and gender and so they too can also learn to embody empathy and affection as caretakers. Men and boys can learn that women entering the work world are not becoming masculinized and men who stay home or take on carework are not becoming feminized.

The concrete ways in which men and boys can benefit are, by having more active engagement in nuturing young children and babies on a daily basis, and less felt pressure to overperform at work. Richard Jones gives us a personal take on his role as a degendered father, in which he feels, “degendering Daddy meant that I could no longer permit those aribitrary restrictions and constraints to be placed on me as a parent. Gone [are those] days of distinctive parent roles…degendered parenting has softened me …it has helped me become more sensitive and responsive to the emotional needs of my children and others.” (Jones 2005). Richard Jones has learned that by overcoming the violence towards women of his past and by learning to let go of sterotypes between men and women he could become a better person, not just a better father.
Men and boys can also have better health and less stress because of reduced work demands of being the main breadwinner and increased work hours and also because of the increased ability to express care and nuturance. Perhaps reduced stress can help lead to longer lifespans of men in comparison to the well known ideas that women outlive men, which really has nothing to do with gender or sex but maybe the very work lives men have lived since the 19th Century.

There are challenges in achieving a degendered family and work world. For
example in, policy areas such as domestic violence, family policy or health care are
gendered, as in domestic violence victims and perpetrators have faces as well the children or care providers and those in need of care. Explicit gendered issues are topics where the impact of roles and positions of subjects is visible at first sight. Where men and women are visible in policy areas and their positions in society and how they relate to one another, is what policies presume. One example of such a policy is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). Curran and Abrams (2000) have suggested that, “interventions into men’s fathering hold paradoxical implications for equitable gender relations. Recognizing that gender relations cannot be examined outside the nexus of race and class relations…PRWORA’s fathering policies use feminist and gender claims to advance dominant race and class interests.” (Curran & Abrams 2000: 663).

One idea that relates to this is how the welfare state can be seen to be acting as substitute wage earning husband for single mothers and may reward men’s wage earning and also welfare can also undermine the gender hierarchy. Curran and Abrams further highlight how Robert Connell (2005) holds the notion that the welfare state does not only work to support male wage earning. Instead men become marginalized by class, sexuality and race and the state can be a source of violence and ‘alien power’ to lower class men and men of color (664). Connell is referring to how state policies really reinforce and produce hegemonic masculinity. Degendering of parenting roles can do away with state policies presumed definitions of fathering based on hegemonic masculinity and the further benefiting of middle and upper class fathers in relation to child support. In this way it can stop the further support by the state to the dominant image of masculinity or gendered distributions of power to the white middle to upper class male. Curran and Abrams feel that although, “Fathering programs…[are]… individually empowering for the low income men and men of color…” they can also at the same time, “do little to undermine structural race and class priviledge.” (673).

Policies like these can be seen as mediators that set up the masculine father role in a way that keeps a woman dependant on one man and it also perpetuates the hegemonic masculine in a way that it presumes the father is needing reinforcement to pay up to child support and that the father is absent. Although this may be the case in certain circumstances, sometimes a fathers lack of payments can be due to unemployment because of unlucky or unavoidable circumstances. Policies also presume dominant views on gendered and heterosexual relationships and do not include same sex relations in their views, in terms of child support.

Nancy Dowd’s discussion on public policies in relation to child care, suggests that one of the hardest things to overcome in the need to change the assumptions of the mother as the person who does carework and not the father primarily is due to, “The culture of work…[and]…of masculinity both devalue carework….This cultural barrier is so strong that available benefits…[are]…avoided or ignored…[and the cultural barrier is a] more complex barrier to carework than the economic barrier….a public education model is essential to reorient thinking about fatherhood….” (Dowd 2004: 19). There is more evidence to the idea that a more likely barrier to carework is a cultural rather than the economic barrier. Lorber points out that, “A societies attitudes towards the importance of having children greatly influences attitudes toward organizing work time around family responsibilities.” Lorber further points out there are differences in, for example, countries like the US and Israel where men and women working in men predominant professions take different approaches to balancing child care and work based on the importance of having children. In Israel there is more of an importance for both men and women to have children, and so are offered more opportunity to take time away from work or schedule work around family, as opposed to the US where this was not seen as an option and both men and women put work before family. (Lorber 2005: 75).

This is an example of a cultural reasoning or barrier (in relation to the US example), where the reasoning for carework, as seen in Israel was due to the importance of bearing and raising children and also where men and women were allowed time away from work without giving up on work or being reprimanded for their choices to take part in carework over work. Whereas in the US, carework over work was not seen as an option, for either men or women in male dominated professions. This can be due to cultural barriers of carework seen as equated with the female, rather than economic barriers as being the reason for either choosing carework or work over the other.

It seems that women who gain notoriety in male dominated professions, who do not make the same income as their male counterparts are not using a reasoning based on money, as explained in this example, for not willing to take part in carework but it becomes a cultural reasoning of performing masculinity, working in masculine perfessions. These women performing in such ways really only reinforces gendered workplaces, especially masculine dominated ones. A degendering of a workplace would not see divided reasonings for carework nor would see women behaving as men in male dominated workplaces. Nor would it see men in female dominated workplaces as still being able to behave as men and still gaining economic advantage.


Sources

Curran, L & Laura Abrams. 2000. “Making Men Into Dads: Fatherhood, the State and

Welfare Reform.” Gender and Society. Vol.14(5); 662-678. JSTOR. Retrieved

Oct. 21, 2006.

Dowd, N. 2004. “Bringing The Margin To The Center: Comprehensive Strategies For

Work/Family Policies.” University Of Cinncinatti Law Review. Vol 73. Retrived

Oct. 21, 2006. (http://www.law.uc.edu/lawreview/uclaw73pdf/0433dowd.pdf).

Jones, R. 2005. “Degendering Daddy” XY Online. Retrieved October. 21, 2006.

(http://www.xyonline.net/DegenderingDaddy.shtml)

Lorber, J. 2005. Breaking The Bowls: Degendering and Feminist Change. New York,

NY: W. W. Norton and Company Inc.