Women's Work: A socio-economic study

Basically, Engels sees the monogamous family as rooted in the supremacy of the man for the express purpose of producing children of undisputed paternity who can inherit the father's property (Engels, 1993: 167). He argues that society's definition of the monogamous family has given the man the right of conjugal fidelity from the wife without a reciprocal obligation on his part. Thus, although the law states that both parties enter into marriage freely and as equal partners, in fact, society gives the man greater rights because of his economic superiority (Engels, 1993: 169). Inside the family, she is to her husband as the proletariat is to the bourgeois outside the family (Engels, 1993: 169).

Engels argues that, on the other hand, the old communistic household entrusted women with the public, socially necessary task of managing the household. But today, the single monogamous family has become a private society in which the wife performs a private service. This private service excludes the woman from public production and a