Household Labour

Another week flew by, and I am sat here frantically typing in an attempt to unscramble my thoughts and observations in a coherent post, in time for the Friday ‘hit send’ button.

This week, my inspiration originates from an article a colleague shared with me a while ago about unpaid household labour like childcare, laundry, cleaning etc, being considered to become officially measured in government data - in the article it is referred to as women's’ work!

When I first read the article, I didn’t think too much of it…maybe because I was raised in a more traditionally patriarchal culture and society where my mum and all women I know, irrelevant of age, just do all that is needed for the ‘home’ at the end of their full-time working lives, or maybe because I want to believe that things are improving in that front.

But, upon my return from a work trip late on Wednesday evening, after two exhausting days of meetings, I came home to find the laundry pile exactly where I left it, the dishes unwashed in the sink, the beds unmade and a general sense of chaos everywhere…which led me to re-read the article I had disregarded previously and do some more research on the matter.

When both males and females are equal breadwinners in a family unit, one expects that the equality extends to other areas also. At least that’s what should happen in an ideal world where the scales do not tilt more towards the woman when it comes to responsibilities involved in running the household.

Unfortunately, on Wednesday evening, following my disappointment and inner explosion, I realised yet again that the ideal world is still pretty elusive, and I started to fold laundry…

Throughout recent centuries, old and imperceptible cultural principles have set out that the woman should constantly take on beyond what her shoulders can carry with regards to work inside the house -it very well may be caring for the children, cooking, cleaning, taking them to school, helping them with their schoolwork, appearing for parent meetings, doing the shopping…the list is endless.

Nowadays, we have women progressing in each circle of life and gaining unbounded headway while crushing the glass ceiling at their work environments, and yet some things essentially remain the same regarding housework responsibilities.

When it comes to women who are career-oriented, and yet there is no way out from the traditional job of the prime caretaker of the family unit, work turns out to be twofold, triple and sometimes a bit difficult to carry, if there is no family support system or help from other caretakers.

That women go to the workplace, work as hard as their significant others, but still need to return home to a heap of filthy dishes and the undone laundry and various other errands while the males are excluded from doing any of this work, is the present status of things in many areas of the world. And while the world has progressed and women are shining and achieving in every field, this unpleasant reality does not seem to be changing.

A recent survey (April 2023) by the Pew Research Centre on working heterosexual couples in the US, shows that despite earning equal incomes, men tend to have fewer household responsibilities than their partners. In the survey, it was detailed that 29% of heterosexual couples were the ones where the man and woman earned the same and yet it found that men spent more time in leisure activities than women, almost 3.5 hours more per week, while women spend almost 2.5 hours more per week than men doing chores in the house.

Indeed, even as men stay the primary provider in a larger part of heterosexual relationships, the portion of women who earn as much as or more has generally significantly increased throughout recent years. Women are earning more, but they are still doing the majority of the housework. This gender disparity is showing no signs of going away. With both genders being equal financial contributors, there is a tremendous irregularity by the way they balance out the work at home.

As per the European Union’s Knowledge Centre on Gender Equality Index 2021, gender differences in housework are engrained in from childhood. The most unequally shared one if of course housework and the other two are childcare and long-term care for older people and people with disabilities and other chronic conditions.

Around 91% of women with kids spend a minimum of one hour out of every day on housework, contrasted with only 30% of men with children. The most recent data shows that working women spend around 2.3 hours daily on housework; for working men, this figure is 1.6 hours.

As the world marches on with the aim of equality, this trend at this point, gives no indication of evolving. Data from the Office for National Statistics in Britain in 2016 showed that women did almost 60% more of unpaid work on average than men; and even in places like Sweden where most men chose full-time parenthood, women averaged 45 additional minutes of daily chores.

So, what's the issue? Are men simply indifferent and disrespectful with regards to aiding around the house and they would rather sit and guzzle a beer and stay glued to a screen? Of course it is not that simple.

Some studies show that one simple reason encouraging the imbalance in housework sharing, could be the male response to the crazily high standards that most female partners have where they feel that they can do the job better. The outcome is that men just leave it to the women to avoid criticism and that women end up with an unending workload. I have to put my hand up and admit that in our family, that may be (a little) true…but still, coming back on Wednesday evening after my work trip to what I call chaos, is neither fair nor equal.

What is the solution, I wonder? Perhaps, what the famous JK Rowling said in a BBC narrative when asked how she'd carved out opportunity to compose the first Harry Potter book, is accurate. Her response was, "I didn't do housework for a considerable length of time."

I don’t know about you, but I am not sure that I can get rid of my engrained responsibility to own all housework…or if I can train myself to be a bit more acceptable to a bit of chaos by not doing housework, like JK Rowling….BUT I will try – if for no other reason, purely for my mental health and to maybe start changing the perception that housework is women's’ work.3