Issues of the Family - Essay Example

This position is consistent with Koabik, Lero and Whitehead’s concept of the significance of women and their involvement in work, to the economy. Women should be economically active to reduce their level of dependence on men, a factor that facilitate gender based oppression. This, however, also identifies a social problem over the sanctity of marriage and stability among families (Koabik, Lero and Whitehead, 2011). Women should also be actively involved in the workplace so that they can exploit their developed potentials through education as their trend in attaining higher education has improved and more women train in professional fields and restricting the women to domestic chores would be uneconomical and unrealistic.

Women’s active role in the workplace is also important in controlling overpopulation and early premarital births through engaging the women. The issue of women’s role therefore affects the entire society that stands to gain economic benefits but may be forced to lose the meaning of family and family values. A social approach, through counseling on importance of families and cohesion within families, can however be employed to promote women’s role in the workplace and stability of the family construct (Koabik, Lero and Whitehead, 2011). . This level of dependence affects the women’s social lives, those of their partners, and the effects may extend to their children’s lives and developmental potentials.

While this phenomenon occurs in the society, a culture of women’s active role in the workplace can promote economic independence and solve the problem of oppression from the society (Hays, 2003). Second shift, its effects on modern families, and effects of genderization at the workplace on work in the home Second shift refers to the domestic work that women perform besides their career roles. Unlike in the ancient social set ups in which women majored in domestic roles and their husbands worked to provide for their families, a developing trend of women in the workplace has witnessed increasing participation of women in paid job but men have not changed to helping in domestic duties.

This leaves women with the extra burden of the second shift. The second shift affects modern families by straining the woman who may then not be able to perform their domestic roles effectively. It also affects women’s potential in the workplace because the strain disadvantages women as compared to men. Further, the work environment that was, and is still, designed to suite the male gender has adverse effects on work at home. This is because the environment does not consider the fact that women have second shift roles and has not been redesigned to have men play roles or to increase women’s time at home.

Women are therefore forced to average their effectiveness at home and I agree with the author’s position that a revolution to change the work environment is a solution to the problem that may undermine domestic roles, and family lives (Hochschild,