Goody’s (1983) historical work on the family in Europe specifically linked changes in marriage rules and in inheritance patterns and dowry payments within families to developments within the church and the state, thereby emphasizing the changing nature of family and property relations in the context of external power structures. Feminist social scientists have examined the relationship between gender and family, arguing that the ideology which represents the conjugal family and the household as ‘natural’ units serves to mask inequalities arising from an association of women with reproduction and men with production, a division which renders a great deal of women’s labour invisible.