316
wife’s obligation to perform
domestic duties is institutionalized
on entering marriage, making
marriage a labor contract.
This idea has proven to be
controversial, but has received
support from other academics
including the British political
theorist Carole Pateman. Drawing
on the ideas of British philosopher
John Locke, who envisaged a social
contract whereby individuals act as
good citizens and in return receive
protection from the state, Pateman
saw heterosexual relations in terms
of a sexual contract. Women might
be seen to receive protection
from men by being married, but
husbands had acquired a right to
their wives’ work and their bodies
(“rape in marriage” was not yet a
criminal offense in England when
Pateman wrote her book The
Sexual Contract in 1988).
Delphy claims that it is not
simply a case of women’s work
being devalued, as some feminists
have argued. The problem will not
go away by paying women more.
This is because—as Marxist class
analysis has shown—the system
only works if there is a group that
can be exploited. If there is no
exploited group, there is no profit.
The creation of an exploitable group
in turn depends on the existence
of a dominant ideology that runs
throughout a society, continually
positioning a group of people
in a certain way. In a capitalist,
patriarchal society, this ideology is
sexism (prejudice against women
because of their sex).
One critique raised against
Delphy’s ideas is that they do not
take account of the fact that some
women benefit from marriage,
financially and/or sexually. Delphy
does not deny this; she claims,
however, that there is an unequal
exchange. Wives may enjoy some
of the tasks they complete for their
own sake and because they love
their husbands, but this does
not mask the fact that they are
expected to do large amounts ofCHRISTINE DELPHY
unpaid work. Writing with Diana
Leonard, Delphy notes that married
men and women may love each
other—but “loving women does not
prevent men from exploiting them.”A woman is made, not born
Delphy argues that a person’s sex
is far from self-evident: maleness
is not determined solely by the
presence of a penis or chest hair,
for example, nor is femaleness
a function of being able to bear
children. Sex is emphasized in
society because we live in a world
where the simple binary division
by gender gives men priority over
women, and values heterosexuality
over homosexuality. In this way,
gender dictates, or “precedes,” sex,
and the classification of people by
sex maintains hierarchies and
power structures.
Delphy argues that using sex
as a system to classify people is
misguided and leads to serious
errors in thinking. Why should a
person’s sex be more prominent
than other physical traits that
are equally distinguishable? Why
is biological sex the only physical
trait that splits the world’sSurveys conducted among OECD countries (Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development) between 2009 and 2011
have shown a hugely unequal division of labor in the home, with
women spending far more time than men caring for family members
(preparing food, for example) and doing domestic chores.
The fact that domestic work
is unpaid is not inherent to
the particular type of work
done, since when the same
tasks are done outside the
family they are paid for.
Christine Delphy
& Diana Leonard
British sociologist (1941–2010)Care for household
members per dayRoutine housework
per day40 mins 16 mins 168 mins 74 mins