Theories of labour division and gender approach

Abstract

In this article we analyze critically the basic paralelisms of the main division of labor theories from XVIII century to the present, in a history of economic thought perspective. Altruism family models of neclassical economics and functionalist socilogy share with neomarxist economics models of exploitation of women inside the family the same patriarchal idelogy: an explanation of sexual division of family labor based on natural history reasons. Through a case study of rural world, we propose alternatively a materialist explanation of the division of labor taking from gender studies of feminist economics; this perspective rejects biological differences as a factor of inequality and it pays attention to institutional arrangements impregnated by gender relations in patriarchal families, conditioning negotiations forms in a much more realist family model, based on cooperative conflict.