Despite a reduction of gender differences in the occupational world in recent years, one occupational role remains entirely feminine: the role of housewife. No law bans men from this occupation, but the weight of economic, social and psychological pressures is against their entry into it. The equation of femaleness with housewifery is basic to the structure of modern society, and to the ideology of gender roles which pervades it.

About eighty-five per cent of all British women between the ages of sixteen and sixty-four are housewives, according to the findings of a national survey described by Audrey Hunt. The definition of who is, and who is not, a housewife is phrased in terms of responsibility: thus a housewife is ‘the person, other than a domestic servant, who is responsible for most of the household duties (or for supervising a domestic servant who carries out these duties)’. A housewife may be married or not, and she may or may not have a job outside the home. In Hunt's survey, nine out of ten non-employed women were housewives, but so were seven out of ten employed women. Thus, not only is the housewife role specifically a feminine role, it is also women's major occupational role today: the responsibility for running a home is one which is shared by the majority of all adult women.

This, then, is the main justification for a study of housework. It is a daily experience in the lives of most women, who in turn make up statistically the greater part of the population. Another reason for looking at women's attitudes to housework comes from surveys of gender differences in the areas of education and employment over the last few decades. These fields, in which there has been a growing attempt to eradicate sex inequality, still show the persistence of women's domestic commitments as a barrier to equality. This division between the life-styles of men and women is well documented, but little is known about the precise form or effect of housework attitudes.