Coppie di ieri e coppie di oggi: asimmetrie e ruoli di genere tra stabilità e cambiamento

In the space of the last fifty years the principle of equality between men and women in the public sphere has been ever so establishing itself, through the promulgation of laws which intend to overcome the asymmetry between genders. These regulative innovations have been accompanied by wide adhesion to egalitarian attitude and by changes which, even if with difficulty and uncertainty, have modified gender relations in both public life and workplace (Felson, 2002; Fenster, 2005; Gornick, Meyers, 2008). To these changes, don’t seem to correspond the same significant changes in private life and intimate relationships where persists a rigid division between gender roles. Numerous sociological surveys and psychological studies in fact convey in highlighting the persistence of a substantial disparity in heterosexual couples, where the task and work division result still today being strongly typified on a gender base (Arendell, 2000; Coltrane, 2000; Sullivan, 2000; Solomon et al., 2004; Cunningham, 2005; Hill, 2005; Gordon, Whelan-Berry, 2005; Beagan et al., 2008; Monacelli, Caricati, 2009; Perrone et al., 2009). This thesis intends to describe and analyze the ambivalence between stability and change building and rebuilding gender roles in heterosexual cohabiting couples. The research is structured into two parts. The first inquires into the persistence, throughout the generations, of couple relational models based on a traditional subdivision of gender roles. For this purpose 25 Italian heterosexual cohabiting couples have been interviewed, divided into three generational groups (young adults, adults and elderly) on the base of the family life cycle phase they were living during the interview (Malagoli Togliatti, Lubrano Lavadera, 2002). The “couple” was chosen as the narrative context because it represents the place, the essential condition in which partners negotiate and experiment their actions, their roles and legitimate the shared significance (Bercelli, Leonardi, Viaro, 1999). All the interviews have been therefore conducted in the partner’s presence. Conducting the textual analysis with an phenomenological interpretive approach (Smith, Osborn, 2008; Smith et al., 2009) has allowed to outline the beliefs, the value and significance systems throughout which couples give sense to their way of carrying out household duties in their everyday life. Results indicate that the way couples use to coordinate their everyday lives generally tend towards reproduction and, basically, generational conservation. However, in each generation, there is a reconstruction, in the sense that behavior is informed by different beliefs and systems. Each new generation does more or less the same things than the one before but “for different reasons”. The second study intends to inquire into the gender dynamics which develop in the couple’s interactional sphere. The general hypothesis is that the persistence of gender asymmetries in private life can find a correspondence in the gender asymmetries which structure interaction between partners. For this purpose to ten heterosexual cohabiting couples was proposed a negotiation task. The method is observational and the interaction between partners was analyzed through the procedure of post-production (Kreppner, 2009) made available by video recording. The gathered material has been entirely transcript in its verbal and analogical contents. Through the analysis of the speech acts and the position assumed by the interlocutors (positioning), the specific interactive processes (interactive patterns) of each couple have been analyzed. The results show that couples carry out different interactive patterns. The gender seems to structure stereotipically the couple’s interaction in particular when partners negotiate their respective positions in the power and evaluation context.