Privacy in the private sphere

Abstract

This article examines the issue of privacy within the home as a way of exploring the contradiction between feminist views that women and men experience the home differently ‐ and indeed that women may find the home oppressive ‐ and Saunders’ recent (1990) evidence that men and women express similar and equally strong positive sentiments about their home. We conclude that privacy within the home is negotiated within the wider framework of familial ideology and the ideals of ‘home’ and the companionate marriage’, so that within the home there is typically differential access to privacy for adults and children, and men and women.