Final answer:
Traditional gender roles suggest that men should be the income earners while women handle domestic responsibilities. This division, often linked with functionalist perspectives in sociology, underscores deep-rooted societal expectations and continues to influence family and economic imbalances with women still doing more unpaid domestic work and experiencing an earnings gap.
Step-by-step explanation:
Individuals who believe that men should be responsible for earning income and women should be responsible for housework and childcare are typically adhering to traditional gender roles. These roles stem from a longstanding division of labor in societies around the world and are deeply influenced by cultural, social, and economic factors.
Despite changes over the years, with men taking on more domestic responsibilities and women increasingly joining the workforce, there is still a perceive that women bear the brunt of household management and childcare. This is sometimes due to ingrained societal expectations that see men as breadwinners and women as caretakers, which is a viewpoint often linked with a functionalist perspective, suggesting that such division of labor maintains societal balance and family structure.
Research has shown that women who are the main earners of family income still undertake a significant share of the unpaid domestic work when compared to their male counterparts, contributing to unequal stress levels and an earnings gap where women tend to earn less than men.
Societal attitudes regarding sexism, particularly in one's place of birth, have been shown to impact a woman's earnings throughout her life, highlighting the need to understand and challenge these traditional roles to achieve greater gender equality both at home and in the workplace.