Old wine in new bottles? women working inside and outside the household

Abstract

Traditional gender ideologies concerning the domestic division of labour and responsibility for childcare continue to influence the circumstances under which women are brought into formal and informal employment. The implications of this for different groups of married women are explored in the article. The first section of the article outlines the continued survival of the traditional sexual division of labour within the home and the impact this has on women who work outside the home. The second part focuses on women drawn into the labour market as informal domestic workers, while the third looks at women employed within the home as homeworkers. The fourth section of the article illustrates how men continue to be the ultimate beneficiaries of the sexual division of domestic labour, and the final part examines how women attempt to cope with the resilience of the traditional sexual division of labour.