【１】就業人口の半分以上が従事する産業に時代を代表させ、社会の発展段階を狩猟社会、農業社会、工業社会、情報社会と分類すると、現在は情報社会の盛期に位置するという解釈がある。
　【２】それぞれの社会がどれくらいの期間にわたり持続したかを計算してみると、現代の人間の直系の祖先をネアンデルタールなど後期石器時代の人類とすれば、狩猟社会は数万年、農業社会は数千年、工業社会は数百年という単位で継続し、二十世紀の中ごろから出発した情報社会が数十年という単位で経過したのが現在ということになる。（中略）
　【３】農業社会は特定の地域で特定の作物が集中して栽培される単品種多生産方式が特徴である。工業社会になると、種類を限定した製品を大量に生産する少品種多生産になる。
　情報社会になると、工業製品であっても、同一の仕様のものはきわめて少数しか生産しない多品種少生産が特徴となる。【４】情報社会の産業のコメといわれる集積回路（ＩＣ）の中の特定用途集積回路はその代表である。この特徴は生産技術の進歩にもよるが、希少であるほど価値があるという情報の性質を反映していると理解してもよい。
　【５】この方向を発展させると、一品種一生産という特徴が浮かび上がる。ある製品を一品ずつしか生産しないという特徴は、産業革命以前に逆行するかのようだが、この一品種一生産は高度な技術に支援された方式である。【６】各種の製品についてこのようなシステムが実用化すれば、一品種一生産であっても産業革命以前とは根本的に違う生産方式が実現することになる。
　農業の発生と並行して集合し定住するという生活形態が出現したが、それは農業が短期に多くの労力を必要とするからであり、労働集約生産が農業社会の特徴である。【７】工業社会でも労力は必要だが、より重要な要素は生産設備である。高度な設備の導入が生産効率を向上させるため、企業が競って工場に最新の設備を投入する設備集約生産が工業社会を特徴づける。∵
　情報産業の代表であるソフトウェア産業では状況は大幅に変化する。【８】この分野は新規の労働集約産業といわれ、端末装置が配置された部屋に多数の人間が集まってソフトウェアを生産する。しかしそれらの人間は肉体労働をしているわけではなく、高度な知識を駆使して知的生産に従事しており、知識集約産業と表現するのが適切である。
　【９】次期社会の重要な産業になると期待されているものに映像産業がある。衛星放送やＣＡＴＶ（有線テレビ）の普及によりテレビジョンの総放送時間数は急増し、今後十年間で四倍程度に増加すると予測される。一部は過去の映画などを利用するとしても、ほとんどは新規に制作される必要がある。【０】
　この制作も多数の人間による労働集約的な生産であるが、そこで要求されるのは農業社会での労力でも情報社会の知識でもなく、人間が感動したり感激したりする内容を創造する能力である。この能力を「感性」と表現すれば、次期社会での産業は感性集約産業ということができる。
　工業社会から情報社会に移行する時期に、重厚長大から軽薄短小への転換という言葉が流行した。重量や容積当たりの価格が高価な製品に産業が移行するという現象だが、「軽薄短小」以後は、そのような言葉では表現できない製品を生産する産業が登場してくる。
　次代の十兆円産業と期待される映像産業が創造するイメージウェアは、重量で計測できる製品ではなく、まったく異質の価値基準でなければ測定できず、そこで誕生してきた表現が「美感遊創」である。
　（中略）
　終焉しつつある情報社会を代替して出現する感性社会では、技術は芸術も目指し、技術者は芸術家に変身すると言えよう。

　（月尾嘉男「産業技術」による）

There are some sociologists who claim that a strict division of household tasks between husband and wife is breaking down in western society. It is argued that the family structure is developing in such a way that women's and men's roles are becoming more 'symmetrical'. More women are working outside the home in addition to performing their traditional family roles, and men are increasing their involvement in the family, while maintaining their work commitments. This symmetrical family form is regarded as the most usual mode of family organization for the future. It implies a movement towards a balance between the involvement of husband and wife in the two spheres of domestic and paid work.
Such a view is now the common one in the current picture of family life as shown in the mass media. This picture is based on an interpretation of two particular socio-economic trends. Firstly, it is said that, since the number of women doing paid work has increased greatly, some sharing of household tasks is now quite common. Secondly, the growth in household technology is thought to have removed the dull labour from female domestic work, saved a great deal of time in its performance and rendered most tasks so simple that they can be undertaken by any household member. Such an account also appears to set the conditions for a symmetrical family form and the gradual breakdown of a domestic division of labour based on sex.
But although this view has been widely accepted, a vast amount of concrete evidence suggests otherwise. This evidence is of two kinds: American time-budget surveys, and sociological surveys and studies of housework and the housewife which are mainly British in origin.
In recent years a number of time-budget studies have measured time spent on housework and other activities such as paid work and leisure. Such research generally involves either asking those interviewed to record their activities for particular time intervals over a number of days, or having them keep diaries recording the number and nature of tasks performed and the amount of time spent on each. The findings are remarkably consistent.
One study, for example, completed in the late 1960's, shows that women who have no employment outside the home work an average of fifty-seven hours per week on such activities as preparing and clearing up after meals, washing, cleaning and tidying the house, taking care of children and other family members and shopping. More recent research shows women spending similar amounts of time on domestic tasks, to the extent that if it was paid employment it would certainly be regarded as full-time work.
For women employed outside the home, it appears that the more waged work they do, the fewer hours they spend on housework but the longer their overall work week. It has been reported that women who are in paid employment for more than thirty hours per week work a total of seventy-six hours in all, including an average of thirty-three hours spent on housework. Yet those husbands whose wives have the longest work weeks, have the shortest work weeks themselves. It appears that the husbands of wives in waged work do not spend any more time on housework than those with full-time housewives. This apparent lack of interest on the part of husbands in women's waged work is confirmed by other research, including a study of 3,500 couples in the United States. Wives employed outside the home worked many more hours every day than either their husbands or full-time housewives. They also spent about double their weekday time for housework doing domestic jobs on their days off, whereas husbands, and even full-time housewives, had the weekend for increased leisure.
This burden increases very much when there are very young children, or many children, in the family. In either case the wife's work week expands to meet the needs of the family. Research shows that in families with a child under one year old, the wife fully devoted to her housework spends nearly seventy hours a week in housework; nearly thirty hours of this is spent in child care. The typical husband spends five hours a week on this task, but reduces his time spent on other work around the house, such as home repairs, decorating and cleaning the outside of windows, so that his total domestic commitment does not increase. When the wife is employed outside the home for fifteen or more hours a week, the average husband spends two hours more per week on child care, increasing his total household labour to twenty hours. His wife spends over fifty hours on housework, indicating that the amount of time spent on housework by the employed woman increases greatly with the presence of young children.
In addition, researchers do not appear to regard the housework or childcare activities of husbands as particularly significant. They point out that men are more likely to be occupied ill this way after dinner. At this time child care typically consists of playing with and talking to children, which is not particularly hard. Moreover, while husbands are occupied in this way, their wives are tied up with the less-than-exciting after-dinner jobs. When men are involved with other domestic tasks it is frequently because their wives have to leave for employment after dinner and so are not themselves available to perform them.
Thus the activities of husbands are a form of back-up, or reserve labour, for a series of tasks which remain mainly the women's responsibility. Most married women still spend a considerable part of every day performing the necessary and most time-consuming work in the household. It is also noteworthy that the work week of domestic labourers is longer than that of the average person in the labour-force. Thus, it is clearly demonstrated that although waged women do less housework than unwaged women, this has little effect on the distribution of particular tasks within the home. Domestic labour is still very strictly separated along sex lines and this division appears to be constant across regions and nations. Time-budget data indicate that there has been no significant change in the sexual division of labour within the household.
One significant finding suggests that in the nineteenth century there was an alteration in the content, although not in the amount, of housework performed. Although technological changes were slower in reaching the home than the work-place, they did begin to enter the richer homes towards the end of the nineteenth century. However, major technological developments did not affect the households of most of the population until shortly after World War I. The significance of these developments cannot be neglected. As a certain sociologist says, 'Three things dramatically reduced dirty, heavy work for the housewife: gas and electricity for cooking, heating, and lighting; indoor running water; and the washing machine.' The use of household technology as seen in refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and freezers, and also convenience foods have also made activities such as cooking and cleaning easier. This has led one researcher to suggest that technological changes in the home have been equal to, and as important as, those of the Industrial Revolution.
Thus in the 1920's a large proportion of a housewife's time would have been spent in heavy routine and boring jobs such as fetching, hand-washing and cleaning. Today, time is more likely to be spent in arranging activities, particularly child care and planning shopping expeditions. The continuing emphasis on the physical, moral and emotional stability of childhood as a significant part of mothering has obviously influenced the amount of time women spend on the bringing up of children. But despite the increased availability of household technology, the purchase of household equipment does not necessarily make woman's domestic role easier. Rather, it is suggested that the more technology present in a household, the more time spent in getting it, and its use and maintenance. For example, food mixers encourage the preparation of more ambitious meals, and washing machines, together with better levels of tidiness, mean that more washing is carried out more often. Indeed, Parkinson's Law seems to operate, keeping women's housework at a constant level despite improvements in household technology. The situation appears to have changed very little over the last eighty years or so, since the amount of time devoted by full-time housewives to housework has remained remarkably stable during this time. Moreover, household technology has been developed on an individual and family basis, thus increasing the particular nature of the domestic work which women perform. Despite the many developments made in this area, housework remains unsystematic and is performed in isolated, relatively inefficient units. For all these reasons it has been argued that instead of challenging the sexual division of labour within the home, modern technology has tended to support, and even strengthen, the traditional distribution of domestic roles.
symmetrical対称の time-budget生活時間の配分 work week週労働時間
Parkinson's Law イギリスの政治・経済学者パーキンソンが「仕事は使える時間いっぱいまでのびる」という前提から諷刺的に導いた経験則