Why do we assume women care?

Analysis

BBC

Government, Politics, News

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

In spite of progress on men's involvement in childcare the statistics show that women are still doing far more caring of young children. That is extended throughout life to the caring of ill and elderly relatives. And 82 per cent of people working in social care jobs are women. Professor of Sociology at Oxford Brookes University Tina Miller asks to what extent women are still trapped by society and its structures, such as who gets paid parental leave, into caring roles and whether we simply assume that women will care? But as she finds out, in much later life the roles can be reversed. She asks what needs to change in order for men to take on more caring responsibility earlier on.

Producer Caroline Bayley Editor Clare Fordham Sound Engineer: Neva Missirian Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Helena Warwick-Cross

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.6	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.4	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable
0:14.3	experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC
0:20.4	makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:36.3	Hello and thanks for listening to this edition of Analysis from BBC Radio 4.
0:41.5	I'm Tina Miller, Professor of Sociology at Oxford Brooks University, and in this
0:46.0	episode I'm exploring an area that I've studied for many years as an academic, looking
0:51.0	at how families manage caring and paid work.
0:54.0	The question I'm asking is when it comes to looking after children and sick or elderly adults.
1:00.0	Why do we assume that women care? Yeah, I got loads more than chocolate.
1:05.0	And these chocolate.
1:07.0	Did you enjoy a trick-or-treating?
1:08.0	Yeah. This is Umar Kankir.
1:10.0	He and his wife both work full time
1:12.0	and share the care of their two young children equally.
1:15.0	So you know we we both get them up and dressed and you know do all the cooking and
1:21.4	the cleaning taking them to their activities taking them to
1:25.1	school picking them up sometimes in weeks where either one of us are really busy then the
1:29.5	other one will pick up the slack as it were and then when things are a bit more of an even
	...

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