Steven Lake examines how we define the sh*t jobs around the house and who does the clean up.
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The old saying, “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is applicable to the subject at hand. Who does the dirty work at home? But before we get into the dirty work, let’s look at the some dirty statistics.
Working women still get the shaft when it comes to household chores. Multiple studies in different countries consistently show that working women handle between 70-80% of household chores which means they work approximately 30 hours a week for the household while working men do 10-15 hours.
There are some interesting differences in the type of work done as well. Men tend to do intermittent chores (e.g., mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage) while women do daily tasks like cooking, house-cleaning, shopping, and child care. Men’s activities are more outdoors and women’s indoors. When men cook, it is on the BBQ.
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Another argument I hear to explain away this inequity, is in the type of work done. This is a variation on the “dangerous work hypothesis.”
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These behaviors change dramatically if the man is a stay-at-home Dad looking after young children. Then, there is a massive shift away from the traditional assignment of household duties. I can hear some men remonstrating that, “Hey, I cook at home, I clean the bathroom, I vacuum.” And yes, more men do these chores than ever before. However, the surveys still show that the inequity is large.
What accounts for this? I believe from these results we can infer that changing cultural stereotypes around gender, and tasks associated with gender, is a slow process. My students and I were having this discussion just the other night. It is an all women class of fifteen graduate students aged between 25-35 years old and they (the ones that are in relationships) had the same concerns that I heard thirty years ago. These women, even though working and studying full time, still do most of the housework.
Another argument I hear to explain away this inequity, is in the type of work done. This is a variation on the “dangerous work hypothesis.” Who cleans the gutters, replaces shingles on the steep roof, cuts down a rotting tree? Men do in most cases. Proponents of this argument say that these tasks should carry more weight on the measuring scales. It is not a simple one task for one task equivalency.
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This is the context in which I ask the question – who does the icky tasks? I am talking about things like getting the hair out of the bathroom drain, taking the dead mouse out of the trap, fixing and cleaning up the toilet that has overflowed and there is shit everywhere, cleaning the pots and pans, catching or killing flies and wasps.
As I was talking to my wife about this, I realized that we each had preferences and what was one person’s so icky I don’t even want to look at it task, was the other person’s, no problem task. Are these preferences affected by stereotypical gender attribution? Let’s examine my little household.
I get all the killing tasks. And I hate killing those poor little guys, whether they be silver fish, hornets or mice.
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Our home consists of two people and I don’t for one moment think our reality is generalizable to the population at large. However, you may relate in some way or have your own unique situation, and I would love to hear about it in the comment section. This way we can all learn and grow from each other.
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My wife is a Feminist. Has never been married (we are common law), has not taken on my last name, and yet, she is feminine, loves to cook and definitely does almost all of the housework. How can this be? Seems like a paradox. No, she is not a stay-at-home-kept person. She has supported herself her whole adult life. She works for her money. We do however have an exchange around the amount of work she does in the home. I work more hours outside the home, she works more inside.
There is both an understanding and a reality that my outside-the-home work, on an hourly basis is more profitable, and therefore it makes more sense for me to be earning outside the home. We are a team and the inside work is her contribution to the team effort. If the situation were to change, and it may, as the release of her new book is fast approaching, there would need to be a re-assessment of who does what around the house. And I would be OK with that.
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But what about those icky tasks I mentioned earlier? Well, some of them seem to have a gender bias. I get all the killing tasks. And I hate killing those poor little guys, whether they be silver fish, hornets or mice. Due to differences in physical strength I get to do things like opening bottles or jars with tight lids. But these hardly fit into the icky category.
Time to get down and dirty. The distasteful tasks for my wife include killing, hairballs in the bathtub drain, and dirty pots and pans. My list includes, cleaning the toilet, dusting (I have the perfect excuse, I’m asthmatic), and self-care (see a previous article).
When I was about three years old, my mother caught me playing with a large rat. She grabbed a rifle and shot it.
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Fortunately, we do not share similar aversions. What she finds disgusting I have no problem with and vice versa. She will almost get sick to her stomach looking at the hairball that has emerged from the bathtub. I’m grossed out when I find dust balls behind the bedroom door.
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As for gender distribution of the ickyness factor, other than killing living things, I don’t see much of one. As a boy, I played at killing other boys in our war games. With other boys we destroyed ant hills, and killed insects, and in biology class I pithed frogs (a very strange experience). As a teenager, I had to kill litters of kittens (very upsetting). I guess all these experiences makes me the obvious choice for taking care of those pesky critters in the house.
I’m sure women on the farm have similar experiences. When I was about three years old, my mother caught me playing with a large rat. She grabbed a rifle and shot it. Probably made an impression on me. Certainly did with the rat.
The upshot of these vignettes is that when it comes to what we find icky, for the most part, depends a lot on personal preference that comes from life experiences. Sure there are cultural influences, but despite the slow changes of work distribution on the home front, the world, or at least the Western world, has undergone changes that support the continual shifting from an old paradigm of inequity to a new world that allows men and women to find their own preferences in how they behave and engage with their environment and the people around them.
So who does the dirty work in your home, and what do you consider to be “icky?”
Photo: Flickr/J.D. Hancock
I second Archy’s comment above about the overall workload.
Where I live, there are multiple, recurring studies showing that, if anything, men are doing slightly MORE work overall than women are doing.
Yes, it’s true that women do more household work then men do. But they do correspondlngly less out-of-home work.
So why is it that a woman doing 25 hours a week at a “regular” job and 25 hours at home, she gets called a “double-working woman”, while a man doing 40 hours business weeks and 10 hours at home just gets called LAZY??
FlyingKal I like your math. A strict quantitative analysis, a total hour addition of at work and at home work, summation, and comparison. Given your example, 50 hours for the man should be equal to 50 hours for the woman. The problem, from all my reading and the stories I hear at work, is when both partners work 40 hours and the female still does twice or three times as many hours in the home.
Hi Mr Lake,
As I said, there are nomerous recurring nation-wide studies confirming this, so my advice to you would be: Next time youread or hear a story about this, ask yourself if the comparisons are done on relationships where both partners, on average, actually work 40 hours per week. Or is it someone with an agenda who just wants you to believe that?
I can provide figures, but I’ll be “away from keyboard” for a couple of days.
In the meantime you can google “Tidsanvändningsundersökning” and employ your Swedish-to-English dictionary 🙂
A recent study (April, 2014) in the journal Sex Roles looked at “The Role of Couple Discrepancies in Cognitive and Behavioral Egalitarianism in Marital Quality” (that’s a mouthful), found that expectations of how chores are to be divided is the critical factor in marital satisfaction. However the chores are divided, as long as both spouses are in agreement – no problem. The lead author, Ogolsky, stated that, “Newlyweds need to thoughtfully plan how they can make their expectations about sharing chores work out in real life, especially if the new spouses strongly value gender equality in household labor. This issue… Read more »
Interesting ….. when my wife and I married, there was no definition as to who did what where and when, things just happened. Of course I came from a traditional home, dad busted his ass working long hours and doing the maintenance and mom busted her as with the household. My wife came from a single parent home but relished a traditional life style.
Tom, you sound like a lucky man insofar, as without the discussion, you and your wife had the same ideas as to how you would work together. Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky especially in this day where traditional roles are in such flux. Many of my male clients in the 25-45 year age bracket are seriously confused as to what is expected of them. I come from the, better safe than sorry school, and advise having a talk about expectations before getting seriously involved. In the old days, role expectations were ubiquitous and everyone new the rules. Not so… Read more »
To be honest, “luck” had little to do with it. In those days, people (men and women) were secure in the traditional roles.Although we were in the throws of feminism, there were still many who were okay with fulfilling those roles. It was 8 years before we had our first child, so we were the proverbial “DINKS” but even without kids, it was clear that my wife and I enjoyed our roles, neither of which were better or worse then the other. Personally I feel that many men and women, rather then simply being who they are in that they… Read more »
Not all women are wimps, in my neighborhood I see plenty of women mowing the lawn and doing yard work. Today I tilled the garden and cleaned out the gutters.. I swear I would trade straight up the outdoor chores and icky chores over the “come home every night after work and every weekend day too and do what needs to be done chores” in a *heartbeat*. Keeping a family fed, clothed and not living in a pit of despair is thankless and completely freaking endless. Couples could easily share *all* the chores indoors and out and most women would… Read more »
jike, of course there are women that do some of these things, no one said there isn’t. But as the norm, men do most of it. Can we men ever get credit where credit is deserved without women saying “we do this too?”
“Working women still get the shaft when it comes to household chores. Multiple studies in different countries consistently show that working women handle between 70-80% of household chores which means they work approximately 30 hours a week for the household while working men do 10-15 hours. ” Do not for one second think women work more hours though at the jobsite + home. Men do more outside work, women do more inside work, multiple studies prove this such as the labor stats of the US gov. Men get the shaft of having to bring in more income. It’s also wrong… Read more »
This has always been a thorn in my behind. Back in the day, there was countless articles that showed what a housewife/mom was worth in dollars. And of course, the chores men were settled with above and beyond their full time jobs were completely ignored or minimized. My wife has been a stay at homer for most of our marriage. Yup, she did the house cleaning, meals and other sundry jobs but the truth be told, with a well organized, well run household, she had a LOT of time on her hands. So when I’d come home from a business… Read more »
My ex was a burly carpenter with a sensitive stomach. I always did all the yard work (I like it) and all the housework, and always all the icky tasks. except cleaning the fridge which he would do because he would be grossed out by science experiments before me. I’m a farm girl, not afraid of spiders or mice, or hard physical work. I knew he truly loved me when I was pregnant and he managed to take care of the cat litter box without puking for nine months both times. Yet I felt like the maid or his mother… Read more »