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Functionalist View

The functionalist view argues that traditional gender roles in families contribute to social stability by establishing a division of labor where women take on expressive and emotionally supportive roles while men specialize in instrumental and practical tasks. However, conflict theorists argue that this gendered division of labor is not neutral and actually serves to systematically advantage men and disadvantage women. By devaluing women's work both in the home and workforce, it entrenches male dominance and power in society at the expense of women.

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85 views2 pages

Functionalist View

The functionalist view argues that traditional gender roles in families contribute to social stability by establishing a division of labor where women take on expressive and emotionally supportive roles while men specialize in instrumental and practical tasks. However, conflict theorists argue that this gendered division of labor is not neutral and actually serves to systematically advantage men and disadvantage women. By devaluing women's work both in the home and workforce, it entrenches male dominance and power in society at the expense of women.

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Functionalist View

Nhã: Functionalists maintain that gender differentiation has contributed to overall social stability.

Sociologists Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales (1955) argued that to function most effectively,

the family requires adults who specialize in particular roles. They viewed the traditional gender

roles as arising out of the need to establish a division of labor between marital partners.

Parsons and Bales contended that women take the expressive, emotionally supportive

role and men the instrumental, practical role, with the two complementing each other.

Instrumentality refers to an emphasis on tasks, a focus on more distant goals, and a concern

for the external relationship between one’s family and other social institutions.

Expressiveness denotes concern for the maintenance of harmony and the internal emotional

affairs of the family. According to this theory, women’s interest in expressive goals frees men

for instrumental tasks, and vice versa. Women become anchored in the family as wives,

mothers, and household managers; men become anchored in the occupational world outside

the home.

Nhựt: Although theorists do not explicitly agree with traditional gender roles, they implicitly divide the
role of women and men in the family.

However, today women can still work, socialize and vice versa, men can still take care of children or do
housework if they like. Therefore, the limitation by gender stereotyping can harm the individual and
communities:

.+ people will not be able to do what they like if it is not their role

+ limit the contribution of many talented people to society.

Therefore, Prejudice that men should be assgined categorically to the instrumental role, and women to
the espressive role is not entirely true
Conflict view
According to feminists and conflict theorists, any division of labor by gender into
instrumental and expressive tasks is far from neutral in its impact on women
Ex:Although social institutions may pay lip service to women's expressive skills,
men's instrumental skills are more highly rewarded, whether in terms of money
or prestige.
Conflict theorists contend that gender inequality is rooted in the female-male
relationship, with men in a dominant position over women.
Ex Men have become powerful in preindustrial times because of some reasons
such as their size, physical strength, and freedom from childbearing duties that
allowed them to dominate women physical.
In contemporary societies, such considerations are not so important, yet cultural
beliefs about the sexes are long established, as anthropology Margaret Mead and
feminist sociologist Helen Mayer Hacker (1951, 1974) both stressed.
Using an analogy to Marx’s analysis of class conflict, we can say that males are like
the bourgeoisie, or capitalists; they control most of the society's wealth, prestige,
and power.
Females are like the proletariat, or workers; they can acquire valuable resources
only by following the dictates of their bosses.
Men's work is uniformly valued;
women's work (whether unpaid labor in the home or wage labor) is devalued

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