Summary Theme 4 - Gender Roles and Family

SUMMARY THEME 4- Gender Roles and family The older generation This topic clearly shows the generation gap as far as decisions, chores sharing, jobs are concerned. In the past, most of the parents interviewed talked about how they had to listen to their parents’ and follow their advice as they were supposed to take them as mandatory rather than optional. Authority was much more ingrained in the family hierarchy than it is now. Most of the women didn’t have a job and were just housewives. Sharing housework was something that was never brought up and the division of tasks according to gender was clear: men worked as breadwinners, did DIY jobs and women were very family-oriented and took care of all the housework chores. There were exceptions but in general that was it. After the revolution in 1974 things started to change and it’s rather interesting that one of the students’ parent claims he was brought up in a very balanced way in terms of decision-making and rules. The present generation Some of the students that applied the survey concluded household chores were shared equally between men and women but that surely doesn’t apply to most of the families. Although women have most of the times a job, they usually bear more responsibility for certain tasks that involve children and running the house. One of the students stated her brother didn’t have to help with housework while it was one of her responsibilities. Things have definitely changed over the past 20 years and the tendency is for men to do housework chores along with women. In general, students’ families have room for independent decision-making and nowadays there’s more dialogue between parents and children.