Exploitation in the Domestic Division of Labour: An Australian Case Study

Abstract

This article emanates from an Australian rural community study. It draws on data from formal surveys and direct obser vation conducted over a period of 14 years. The principal pur pose is to demonstrate that during each major stage of the life course females have an inequitable share of domestic labour. Adult women are shown to have entire responsibility for house hold management and major responsibility for child care. The inequity is of such a nature and sufficiently extensive to warrant describing it as exploitative. The exploitation is most apparent among wives engaged in paid work and wives married to men who themselves have left the paid workforce. Edgell's thesis that men may make a different but equal contribution to domestic labour is examined and refuted. A major aim of the article is to show that during adolescence girls begin preparing for their future subordinate and servant activities as wives by servicing brothers and fathers. In the process they are often exploited by their brothers who enter their own marriages committed to the view that women exist primarily to serve as carers and nurturers of men and their offspring.