ワタスゲ の山 5 月 2 週
◆▲をクリックすると長文だけを表示します。ルビ付き表示

○自由な題名
○学問の意義、自己主張の大切さ

○There are some sociologists(感) 英文のみのページ(翻訳用)
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

★一つの集団は(感)
 【1】一つの集団は、一人の裏切者と、一人の犠牲者を生み出すことによって完成される。つまりその時、集団は論理的に構成されるのである。キリストとユダの伝説が、私にこのヒントを与えてくれた。【2】恐らくあの十三人は、対人関係を独立したメカニズムとして純粋培養するためのベテラン達だったのであり、またそうせざるを得ない環境におかれていたのだろう。(中略)
 私は、はじめにキリストがあって、そこに十二人が従ったという説を、ほぼ信じない。【3】まず、変転としてとらえどころのない奇妙な関係の中に十三人が居たのであり、それが果てしない放浪の末に、ユダとキリストを生むことによって、一つの「関係」として完成されたのである。
 ユダもキリストも、それぞれがそれぞれを含む「十三人目」だったに違いないと、私は考えている。【4】そして、何よりも、ユダが「裏切者」として発明されることによってはじめて、キリストが「犠牲者」となり得たのであろう。新約時代、彼等十三人が為した最大のことは、「裏切者」としてのユダを発明したことであり、むしろキリストを発明したことではなかったのではないかと、私は考えているのだ。(中略)
 【5】創世記に、アブラハムについての奇妙なエピソードが語られている。「神はアブラハムを試みて言われた。『アブラハムよ、あなたの子、あなたの愛するひとり子イサクを連れてモリヤの地に行き、わたしが示す山で、彼をささげなさい』(中略)【6】彼らが神の示された場所にきたとき、アブラハムは、そこに祭壇を築き、たきぎを並べ、その子イサクを縛って祭壇のたき木の上にのせた。そしてアブラハムが手を差しのべ、刃物をとってその子を殺そうとした時、主の使が天から彼を呼んで言った。【7】『アブラハムよ、わらべに手をかけてはいけない。また何も彼にしてはならない。あなたの子、あなたのひとり子をさえわたしのために惜しまないので、あなたが神を恐れる者であることをわたしは今知った』」(第三十二章)∵
 【8】ここから、私は「裏切者」がやがて発明されねばならないという予感を読み取れそうな気がする。このアブラハムの、神に対して一方的にのめりこんでゆく無気味な心情は、恐らく一方で自らのうちに「裏切者」を用意しそれに対する憎悪で相殺(そうさい)され、安定する事を期待するに違いないからである。【9】つまり、この一方に「裏切者」が存在する事によってはじめて、わが子を殺すという行為は、アブラハムに於て自己完結するからである。「裏切者」とは集団の対人関係の、独立して自己完結しようとするメカニズムが必然的に生み出す、ある形態である。【0】集団は、「神に対するおそれ」というとめどもなく一方的な不安定な心情を、「裏切者」によって、緊張しあう安定したものにすることが出来る。「裏切者」というのは絶対的な悪ではない。「裏切る」という行為は相対的なものであり、従って集団は永遠にそれを対象化することが出来ない。故にそれは、集団の内部を律するメカニズムを持続的に緊張させつづけることが出来るのである。
 新約によれば、キリストは、彼を死刑にした外部勢力に対してよりも、ユダに対して緊張しあっている。つまり、その時、その集団は、外部勢力に対して拮抗することではなく、集団として自己完結することを選びつつあったのであり、そのために自ら「裏切者」を用意してみせたのであろう。
 言うまでもなく、集団が自己完結を目指すのは、集団が衰弱しはじめている証拠である。しかし、集団は常に、いつかは衰弱期を迎えるものであり、自己完結することを目指すのである。現に今でも「裏切者」と「犠牲者」によって自己完結を目指しつつある集団をたびたび目にする事ができる。一つの集団を律する原理は、新約時代からちっとも進歩していないのかもしれないのだ。

(別役実「電信柱のある宇宙」から)