Breaking down the question
The question asks you to assess how the gender division of labour affects the development of society. Development here should be read broadly — economic growth, social welfare, human capabilities and the quality of social relations — not merely national income. The examiner wants you to trace the consequences of allocating work by sex for the wider progress of society.
The gender division of labour refers to the socially patterned assignment of tasks and roles to men and women — most fundamentally the association of women with domestic, reproductive and care work in the private sphere and men with paid, productive work in the public sphere. A key sociological point, made by Ann Oakley, is that this division is not natural but socially constructed and historically variable, which means its effects on development are contingent and changeable.
A strong answer shows both sides: how a rigid gender division of labour constrains development, and how its transformation, through women's fuller participation, advances it. The theme connects to our notes on patriarchy and the sexual division of labour.
How to approach it
Open by defining the gender division of labour and stressing, with Oakley, that it is socially constructed rather than biologically given. This framing licenses the argument that its effects can be changed.
Then examine its impact in two movements. First, the developmental costs of a rigid division — the invisibility and undervaluation of reproductive labour, the loss of women's productive potential, the feminisation of poverty, and the reproduction of patriarchy across generations. Second, the developmental gains that follow when the division is loosened — women's education and employment, lower fertility, better child welfare and stronger economic growth.
Conclude with a balanced synthesis, drawing on Engels, Oakley and Walby, arguing that a more equal division of labour is a condition of genuine, inclusive development. Avoid a one-sided lament or an uncritical celebration.
Model answer
The gender division of labour — the socially structured allocation of work to men and women — is one of the most basic features of every known society, and its form has far-reaching consequences for social development. In most societies this division assigns women primarily to domestic, reproductive and care work within the private sphere and men to paid, productive work in the public sphere. Ann Oakley demonstrated that this arrangement is not rooted in biology but is socially constructed and varies across cultures and history, which means it is neither inevitable nor unchangeable. Its impact on development can be assessed both as a set of constraints and as a site of transformation.
A rigid gender division of labour imposes significant developmental costs. The first is the invisibility and undervaluation of women's work. Domestic and care labour — cooking, cleaning, childrearing, tending the sick and the aged — is essential to the reproduction of society and the daily renewal of the workforce, yet because it is unpaid it is excluded from conventional measures of national output and treated as economically worthless. Society thus depends on a vast volume of women's labour while systematically failing to recognise or reward it. Friedrich Engels, in "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", linked the confinement of women to the household to the rise of private property and identified it as the foundation of women's subordination, arguing that their exclusion from social production entrenched inequality.
The second cost is the waste of women's productive potential. Where women are confined to the domestic sphere or restricted to low-paid, insecure and undervalued occupations, society forgoes the full contribution of half its members to innovation, enterprise and productivity. Their exclusion from education and skilled employment lowers the aggregate stock of human capability. The third cost is the feminisation of poverty: because women are concentrated in unpaid or poorly paid work and bear the "double burden" of employment alongside domestic responsibility, they are more economically vulnerable, particularly when households break down. The fourth cost is intergenerational: a sharply gendered division of labour socialises children into unequal roles, reproducing patriarchy — which Sylvia Walby analysed as a system operating through household production, paid work, the state, culture, sexuality and violence — and perpetuating the very inequalities that limit development.
Beyond the material costs, a rigid division distorts social relations themselves. It concentrates power and public authority in men, marginalises women's voice in decision-making, and normalises dependence and hierarchy within the family. A society organised on such lines cannot claim balanced human development, however high its output, because development in the fuller sense includes the expansion of capabilities and freedoms for all its members.
The other side of the argument is equally important: loosening the gender division of labour advances development markedly. Where women gain access to education, their participation in the labour force rises, incomes grow and economies expand. Educated and employed women tend to have fewer, healthier and better-educated children, so improvements in women's status feed directly into gains in child survival, nutrition and schooling — an effect widely documented in development studies. Women's entry into public life strengthens governance and widens the pool of talent. In this sense the transformation of the gender division of labour is not a threat to development but one of its most effective engines, which is why the empowerment of women has become central to contemporary development policy.
The direction of change, however, is uneven and contested. Women's growing participation in paid work has often been added to, rather than substituted for, their domestic responsibilities, producing the "double burden" rather than genuine equality. Occupational segregation, wage gaps and the persistence of care work as a female duty show that the public-private division has softened without dissolving. Development that draws women into the labour market while leaving the domestic division intact secures economic gains at the cost of women's leisure and well-being.
In conclusion, the gender division of labour profoundly shapes the development of society. In its rigid form it constrains development by rendering women's work invisible, wasting their capabilities, feeding poverty and reproducing patriarchy. Its transformation, through education, employment and a fairer sharing of both productive and reproductive work, unlocks powerful gains in growth, welfare and human capability. Because this division is socially constructed rather than natural, as Oakley insisted, it can be reshaped — and genuine, inclusive development requires precisely such a reshaping.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward candidates who read "development" broadly and who insist, with Oakley, that the gender division of labour is socially constructed rather than biologically fixed — this framing is what makes a critical argument possible. The strongest answers are structured as a two-sided assessment: the developmental costs of a rigid division and the developmental gains from its transformation.
Theoretical anchoring in Engels, Oakley and Walby, together with concrete points such as the invisibility of reproductive labour, the double burden and the feminisation of poverty, signals command of the topic. The common weakness is a general lament about women's oppression that never connects to development, or an uncritical claim that women's employment has already solved the problem. A nuanced close, noting that the public-private division has softened without dissolving, secures the higher band.