Women's employment and the “middle class”

Until the end of the 1970s, much empirical work on social class in British sociology was taken to be broadly synonymous with studies of men’s employment alone (Goldthorpe et al. 1968/69, Roberts et al. 1977, Goldthorpe with Llewellyn and Payne 1987, Blackburn & Mann 1979, see also for the United States Blau & Duncan 1967). In assuming this stance, sociologists in Britain and elsewhere uncritically reflected the then dominant “male breadwinner” ideology relating to the gender division of labour, in which women’s paid employment (if any) was seen as “secondary” as far as the economic fate of the household was concerned, and women’s domestic work within the household was not taken into account at all (Stacey 1981).