ABSTRACT
The debates on domestic labour and patriarchy both became of interest in their own right and, to some extent, their connection to women’s paid employment was not always explicit and central. More generally, both economics and sociology have attempted to explain women’s disadvantaged position within labour-markets. Three separate issues are fundamentally involved-the level of labourmarket participation, occupational segregation and differentials in pay. At the most abstract level, sociology at times drew upon patriarchy theory to explain these features just as political economy employed the determining role of women’s confinement to domestic labour. Both of these general explanations prove inadequate as matters of greater empirical and historical detail are broached. The theories had to become more refined.
