Skip to main content

Functionalism on Gender

This video presents the same text shown beside it, spoken and on screen. It adds nothing the text does not say.

State

Functionalists argue a gendered division of labor fit conditions like pregnancy and nursing, then persisted to keep the family running.

Show

In a subsistence economy, nursing intervals decided who could hunt or trade; tasks sorted by that constraint and outlived it.

Watch for

Explaining why an arrangement took hold does not show it fits today; working mothers do most unpaid childcare despite paid jobs.