ABSTRACT
Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002: xxiv) suggested that it was possible that ‘elements of a gender-specific socialisation’ were still at work in a late modern society, with gender being sometimes referred to as a zombie category (ibid.: 113 and 203). For Connell (2005: 13), ‘One of the most important circumstances of young people’s lives is the gender order they live in’. The family is widely seen as a crucial institution in constructing and reproducing that gender order. Families through their structures, processes and practices, create gendered individuals; perpetuate ways of ‘doing boy/girl’ and legitimate gendered constructions of masculinity and femininity, while obscuring their hierarchical elements. Such gendered constructions are then depicted as ‘natural’, and are seen as inevitably leading to horizontal and vertical segregation in paid employment and in differential participation in other parts of the public arena. The underlying question of whether the gender order is legitimating unequal relationships is rarely raised.
