1. Read the passage given below.
1. Wages for housework would reinforce occupational stereotyping by freezing women into their traditional roles. Unless women and men are paid equally in the labor force and there is no division of labor based on sex, women’s work in the home will have no value.
2. Since it is not clear what constitutes housework, and we know that housework standards vary greatly, it would be difficult to know how to reward it.
3. Pay for housework might place homemakers (mainly wives) in the difficult position of having their work assessed by their husbands, while in the case of single home-makers, it is not clear who would do the assessing.
4. Wages housework, derived from spouse payments overlook the contribution women make to the society by training children to be good citizens and assume that their work is only beneficial to their own families.
5. Finally, payment for housework does not address itself to the basic reason why women with family responsibilities work: to increase family income over that which the employed husband father makes. Also, single women with family responsibilities work because they are the family bread winners.
6. It may seem puzzling that the hours of U.S. Women’s home activities have not declined because of the availability of many appliances (washing machines, gas and electric ranges, blenders etc.) The truth is that appliances tend to be energy-saving, rather than time-saving, and lead to a rise in the standards of house-keeping. Hence women today spend more time than their grandmothers, doing laundry, since family members demand more frequent changes of clothing today than in earlier generations. Husbands and children expect more varied meals. Advertising encourages women to devote an inordinate amount of time and money to waxing floors, creating rooms free of ‘odour-causing’ germs and seeking to meet other extraordinary standards of cleanliness. Furthermore, the increasing concern with good nutrition means that many home-makers are now spending more time preparing foods that are not available in the market place or which are only available at great costs.
Based on your understanding of the passage, answer ANY FIVE questions from the six given below.
i. Why does woman’s work have no value?
ii. Who assesses the work of homemakers?
iii. Does the author approve of his attitude to wages for homework?
iv. What is the division of labor based on in the modern set up?
v. Why do women with family responsibilities work?
vi. Rewrite the following sentence by replacing the underlined phrase with a word that means the same from para 6.
His decision to hold talks is very unusual because it could mean the real end of the war.
