ABSTRACT
Women increase their participation in paid work while maintaining their domestic responsibilities and thus acquire a 'dual burden'. Full time employed wives with similarly employed husbands are doing more than three-fifths of their household's domestic work. The meaning of the standard employment status classification differs between the sexes. And indeed the pluri-generational time scale is, on the basis of the arguments, inevitable, since children who grow up in households with an unequal division of housework will of necessity incorporate this as part of their own gender ideologies. The growth in women's employment means that the mid-century male-breadwinner/housewife pattern is no longer the dominant pattern for British households. The consequence of changes in a couple's joint employment status is overall that he learns from his experience of her employment to do more housework, and she learns from her experience of his non-employment to do less housework.
