Dual Role of Women

Dual Role of Women Definition

The dual role of women is a term embracing the two major roles undertaken by an increasingly large proportion of women: wage-earner and housewife. It names the situation in which entry into paid employment has not released women from primary responsibility for the home.

The Persistence of the Double Load

Feminists such as Ann Oakley point out that even though the majority of women of working age are now in paid employment, they are still expected to play the traditional role of the person primarily responsible for domestic tasks and child care. The expectation operates regardless of the demands of a woman’s job, so that paid work is added to, rather than substituted for, domestic obligations. There is evidence that the partners of women in full-time employment take a greater share of domestic tasks and child care than the partners of women employed part-time, but even so, most women continue to carry the major share of the burden.

Consequences

One measurable result is that women, on average, have less leisure time than men: the hours saved by any redistribution of housework fall well short of the hours women commit to employment. The dual role has also been linked to the distinctive shape of women’s working lives — the concentration of women in part-time work, interrupted career patterns, and constrained occupational choices all partly reflect the need to accommodate domestic responsibility. The concept is closely related to the domestic division of labor, to the idea of the “double shift” worked by employed women, and to feminist arguments that genuine equality in the labor market presupposes equality in the home.