Production and the Context of Women's Daily Life

Abstract

The qualitative structures, potentials, contradictions, and ambivalence in the context of women's daily life and in the social character which develops in that sphere cannot be grasped from a job oriented, strategic point of view.1 Nor is there much use in constructing the ideal type of femaleness by accumulating male and characteristics,2 since this procedure allows hardly any insights into the qualitative problems and contradictions in women's consciousness and behavior. Women's emancipatory potential cannot be realized through accumulation of contrasting characteristics (e.g., emotionality vs. achievement orientation, etc.). The context of women's daily life in household, family, among friends and acquaintances and the professional work related to this sphere is usually not more closely analyzed, even though women (dissatisfied and protesting) clearly relate to this sphere and are oppressed by its everyday routine. The problems of the female role are neither made comprehensible nor explained sociologically through the contradictory structures of this sphere; rather, they are usually attributed to the specific socialization training process of the young female child, in which girls, as compared to boys, experience less encouragement to be independent, more parental care, less cognitive and social pressure to establish unique identities (independent of their mothers) and more hygienic training.