ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the sexual division of labour, indicates the theoretical framework within which we situate it, and discusses the issue that is central to this conceptualisation of the relations between meta-stability and variability of the sexual division of labour. Speaking of the sexual division of labour in the late 1990s in France may seem terribly trite to some people, especially to those in sociology. The sexual division of labour is no longer a subversive concept. Rather it has become an object of descriptive sociological study. The chapter emphases the great heuristic value there would be, in our opinion, in re-deploying the sexual division of labour as a conceptual framework. A number of splits among trends and schools, around the relations between the public and the private, or around the notion of patriarchy have fed debate among historians over the issue of the sexual division of labour.
