Passions always run high and issues as important as gender identities or sexual politics. It is difficult not to fall in to any kind of andocentric viewpoint, it is also dangerous to assume any ideas, as gender identities are socialized into us from our first breath. Ann Oakley warns us off these 'myths', and as sociologists we must not take preconceptions for granted. "The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values... Myth stated as fact becomes fact." (Oakley:1974:156) There are indeed many myths surrounding the breadwinner and the homemaker, and more importantly the gender stereotyping surrounding these titles. Even the Oxford English Dictionary has failed to escape them: "Homemaker- a person, especially a housewife, who manages a home". This seems slightly perplexing 'homemaker' is a non gendered word, created infact deliberately to be neutral, yet in its meaning it becomes female. "Housewife- a married women whose main occupation is caring for her family, managing household affairs and doing housework [cleaning and shopping]" Despite the fact that shopping is done away from home, it is given the lower title of 'housework'. "House husband- a man who lives with a partner and carries out household duties traditionally done a by a housewife rather than going to work" Clearly women or more accurately wives do not do not home make instead of going out to work. Their male counterparts, who do not have to married, have shunned their responsibility of going out to work, of being the "Breadwinner- a person who earns money to support their family, typically the sole one." Put the two together and you have a household or family, in which it is clear that some one should work away from home and someone should not. Whether narrating how it is, or would ideally be, it doesn't say much for modern society being equal. The English language is notoriously erratic but this is either very careless or very deliberate. (Oxford:2001) Before taking this question any further is important to identify what is meant by 'modern society', this is of course a conception, and as such is contested. For the purpose of this essay it is convenient to call modern society; urbanized, capitalist and industrialized society. As such modern society begins in the late 18 th century, starting in Britain, spreading to Europe and the United States. For modern society to create the sexual division of societal roles, pre-modern society must not have had these, and if it did, did modern society exaggerate these differences? Laslett called pre-modern society patriarchal, in the sense that it was dominated by men as only they could inherit property (Bradley:1992:181). This may not promote the breadwinner and homemaker scenario, but it does create the same economic security and dependence on the male of the household. This male domination of the home and family extended throughout all society's institutions, like parliament and the police. So evidently modern society did not create a gender gap; that already existed. It is a common assumption that this gap has existed as long as homo-sapiens: "females were too busy rearing the young to be able to play a major role in chasing and catching prey... the hunting ape...had to abandon the meandering nomadic ways of it's ancestors. A home base was necessary, a place to come back to with the spoils, where the females and young would be waiting and could share the food. This step... has had profound effects on many of the aspects of behaviour of even the most sophisticated naked apes of today" (Morris:1974:176)So according to Morris the male is breadwinner, allowing the female to stay at home and be concerned with what females do best, make home, and children. Oakley reverses this; what if by staying at home the female allowed the male to go an 'win bread'. Morris' argument like many other sociologists is andocentric, and shows current society's values: that real work, the most useful and important work is not done in the home. The myth that women are better suited to domestic work and have always done it become fact in many minds. There is infact: no biological reason for this work gap between men and women, birth is not the handicap that we often make it, and pregnancy need only take a small amount of time out of a women's working career. Oakley debunks various 'myths' throughout her book 'Housewife' constantly coming back to the fact that gender differences are constructed by society. Falling back on original sin and rudimentary evolutionary processes does not and can not vindicate modern or any society's unequal treatment of women. Alice Clark argues that the gender gap increased with industrialisation, as before factories the household was the source of work, and women had more of a stake in it. All work was domestic work, though father was still head of the household, the home was not synonymous with women's work (Bradley:1992:183). Once work was taken out of the home, and men with it, women became restricted to the house. Marxists would argue that capitalism requires the family unit to have a breadwinner and a homemaker, as the they require the free labour of homemakers in order to keep their own costs down. This does not explain why the homemaker must be female though, other than simply following 'myths' and traditions. But after all that is what society does best: reproduce itself. It is more likely that the combination of capitalism combining with a pre-existing ideology of male supremacy, that led to the female role becoming less important and less valued (Creighton:1996:312). Catherine Hall agrees with Clark and recognises that early capitalism was detrimental to women, but it was not necessarily as simple as the men worked, the women stayed at home. The Victorian era introduced an attitude that women were not made for work; who were seen as pure but easily led astray. This began in the wealthier classes where women were more dependent on husbands and fathers, as work was now too dangerous or dirty for them. They therefore had to say at home living in 'gilded cages'. Married women could not be productive; so developed the ideology of domesticity. This upper/middle class ideology filtered down to the working class, where it combined with men's desire for less competition for jobs, creating the new role of all women in the home (Hall:1992:201). Women did still have jobs during this time, but they were less respected, they had less rights, and were on lower wages. By the start of the 20 th century women had more jobs in factories, albeit predominantly in 'traditional' women's work, such as textiles and domestic labour. Only once men were dying in their tens of thousands in the Great War were women allowed to enter the male workplace of machines and munitions. Simple economics tells us that is workers had more costs at home (paying for a cleaner and child carer) they would demand higher wages In a study by Murdock 0 in 224 cultures allowed women to manufacture weapons cited in Housewife 1974 But that was early capitalism, jobs are different in the 21 st century, childcare is better- income support means that women can work. So why do women in couples earn under half what the male earns? Only when men and women are single are their earnings close, and still men earn more. Clearly in couple the relationship is one of breadwinner for the man, and the other role, homemaker, for the women, even if she is earning enough to be self sufficient. Whereas previously women may have seen the only way to security was through a man, even when dependency is available they are still subordinated. Such is socialization: patriarchal repression of women as sexual objects, often propounded by women also. How many female super-heroes are there? And with only 6.8% of the worlds politicians being female it is not hard to see why many women still can grow up wanting to play mother and family. To say things have not improved since modern society began would not be true, if initially it caused a worsening of women's situation it also brought women together- with similar effects, albeit slower to the effect of the working class coming together. Contemporary society is nearly formally equal and is working towards more than paper based equality. This will not happen until the stigma of and undervaluing of the homemaker, or the actual homemaker is abolished. See attached graph on references page  "No nation can be free when half the population is enslaved in the kitchen" (Oakley:1974:222)Even if women are no longer physically as bound to the kitchen as the were, they are mentally trapped in a society that still propagates the myth of motherhood and marriage. The social division of men as the breadwinner and women as the homemaker, is not a product of modern society: it is a product of men. Historic locations have allowed the expansion or contraction of this chauvinist ideology, but the essential cause has always been the same. Marriage is a patriarchal institution designed to be the only socially acceptable outlet for women's sexuality as well as guaranteeing (to a certain extent) paternal claims to the children produced. "However muted its present appearance may be, sexual domination obtains nevertheless as perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its [society's] fundamental concept of power" (Millet:1977:24)The question of home or work is at it's purist a power struggle; who will do the self demeaning tasks of housework, and who will do the recognised and valued work in the industrial world. Our society like all other historic societies is a patriarchy, and this is nothing new. But previously such was the level of control and the nature of History that we women had few chances to have a voice. Although true equality is further away than most 21 st citizens probably imagine, modern society, or more accurately post total war society, must degenerate sexual division as never before have we been so acutely aware of the problems of gender discrimination. 