The Male Sister: Sexual Separation of Labor in Society

Emile Durkheim postulated a sexual division of proceeding from natural physiological and emotional differences between the sexes (1933:60-61). What he saw as we see as mythical. There is not a real sexual division of labor proceeding from the requirements of production which would distribute jobs according to their affinities with masculine and feminine attributes, but an artificial sexual separation of labor under male control. The essentiality of a sexual division of labor and the conception of masculinity and femininity, of male dominance and female submissiveness, in fact, the very existence of separate spheres of masculinity and femininity when translated into the world of work, have no intrinsic validity. The sexual separation of occupational roles is institutionalized on implications that it is disgraceful for a man to be directly subordinated to a woman, except in a family-mother-child relationship. In the 1920's and 30's psychologist Lewis Terman and his associates put together a test which measured to what extent men and women of different ages, occupations, educational backgrounds, etc., conformed to histori-