Why should women do most of the housework?
Women do more housework because of societal forces
Today’s women spend a lot of time in their paid profession but still come home to their second shift. On an average day, nearly half of women will do housework, but only 20 percent of men will do the same. And women put more time into scrubbing the toilet or doing the laundry — three more hours each week than men. Men carve out three more hours of leisure time. Even mothers who work full-time will still put in a week and a half’s worth more time on household tasks than their male partners each year. When the division of household labor falls along gender lines, who can we ask for an answer?
Typically, people think that women take on more of the childrearing work — moms spend twice the time on childcare each week that dads do — because they are biologically inclined to be caregivers. And it’s true that the female body is the one equipped to carry a pregnancy and breastfeed and that these experiences can create bonds, although there is also evidence that giving dads the time to be present during the earliest moments causes a bond that gets them more involved with their children later on.
But there’s no biological determinant for housework. No gender is physically predisposed to want to do the dishes or take out the trash. Chores rarely bring the joy and fulfillment of parenting.
At least one cause of the housework gap can be traced back to childhood chores. Many researchers have found that girls are asked to do more work around the house than boys. One study found that girls did two more hours of chores a week while boys got twice as much time to play. This dynamic carries a lesson for both genders: girls learn that housework falls on their shoulders, and boys learn that girls will clean up after them.
The gendered disparity doesn’t end at time and effort, either. Girls may do more housework, but they don’t get as much pay for it. Sixty-seven percent of boys get allowances, but just 59 percent of girls do. The study finding that girls do two more hours of chores per week also found that boys are 15 percent more likely to get an allowance for doing them. And when they do get paid for it, girls will get less. The lesson: boys are doing something special to be rewarded when they do a load of laundry or mow the lawn, while girls are doing something “natural” that doesn’t require pay. People will only notice when something is not done (Davis, 1981).
There’s evidence that we carry these experiences as we age. One study found that boys who grew up only with sisters are 13.5 percent more conservative in their views of women’s roles compared to boys who grew up only with brothers. The researchers say that because their sisters are given the housework, those boys tend to assume domestic chores are women’s work.
There’s another idea, of course, that women just have higher cleanliness standards. “Men are dirty pigs who don’t care!” the thinking goes. But this too is at heart a social construction that culture inculcates in both genders. Marketing messages illustrate the point: only about 2 percent of commercials featuring men show them cooking, cleaning or running after kids, while the majority of commercials featuring women are selling home products like cleaners or furniture. The same study that produced these numbers found that men who view commercials with a male character in a nontraditional role are more likely to favor domestic goals — but few are getting that exposure.
Instead of assuming that women want cleaner homes, remember that they face higher expectations around cleanliness, a judgment that doesn’t impact their male partners. According to Jessica Grose, “she worried I would be judged for the beef jerky wrappers.… Somewhere lodged within me was the message that it was my responsibility.” Think back to the little girls being handed chores without pay: the cleanliness of the house is your responsibility.
And any woman who wants to change this dynamic confronts another problem. What man has been called a nag? But when women ask that their husbands pitch in more, they run the risk of conjuring up this old label. A nag is just a person making a request that annoys the requestee. Women are told by parents, advertising companies and many other societal forces that they are responsible for making the house clean, and when they disagree, people will express their disapproval. No wonder women spend so much more time cleaning. It is proabbly more exhausting to try and have it any other way.
Until then, however, housework will be the burden women bear. If there is any clear sign that society molds the way each gender views unpaid work, it’s household chores. I don’t see a good reason for why women are the ones who have to take out the broom.
