Amossé, Thomas <br/><br/>
Men and Women in Household Statistics : A Piece In Three Acts 

 -  2011.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> Statistical categories participate in social representations in their own way. Tracing their evolution is a way of observing the transformations within a society. Looking at the changes in the concepts of “household” and “individual,” we offer a three-part history of the place accorded to gender categories in statistics. From the immediate postwar period to the 1970s, women were hardly visible, hidden behind the “head of household” or reduced to their role as mothers and to their reproductive function. At the turn of the 70s, statistics gradually began to focus on individuals, and reveal inequalities between men and women that needed to be reduced. Finally, more recently, the place of the individual within the household and the articulation of men’s and women’s roles have come to the forefront of sociology and economics. The aim is no longer only to reveal certain ongoing inequalities, but to understand how those inequalities develop within couples. In this third era, statistical science has become less normative, political orientation more uncertain, scientific controversy more acute. We are just at the beginning of this period, and there is still “some housework to be done.”