Reimagining the Egalitarian Society: A Community-wide Approach to Transcending the Gender Division of Paid and Unpaid Labour

Participant observation and interviews in a large community unique for enacting gender egalitarianism provide evidence that subversive, collective action at the interactional level can redo gender at the wider institutional level. A series of interdependent practices collectively designed and undertaken through member interaction effectively created sustained structural and cultural changes at the institutional level – which simultaneously created conducive conditions for gender-atypical behaviour at the interactional level. These practices include uniform working hours and ‘earnings’ for all members; communal provision of often privatised forms of domestic labour such as childcare; and a 50:50 gender quota for all representative positions underpinned by a comprehensive role rotation system. Two processes of ‘redoing’ gender proved to be mutually reinforcing: as participants become accountable to revised normative conceptions of gender-appropriate behaviour at the institutional level, gender becomes a less salient feature of how work is divided between women and men at the interactional level.