The Role of Men and Women in the Modern Home
The twenty first century has brought with it a rise in equality between the male and female gender, and yet despite contemporary aspiration the roles played in the home by heterosexual couples are arguably stilled embedded in the patriarchal idea that women should be the home-maker and men should be the provider. Although, [1] more than two thirds of women in the UK, of working age and ability, are in employment (72.7%) up from 52.8% (January-March 1971) the weight of housework attributed to each gender has not changed accordingly. [2] Women on average spend 34% more time on housework than their male partners and yet they do not spend 34% less time working outside the home thus making the distribution of household work unequal. Although the statistics point to the idea that women burden more responsibility in the home, I question why this is? Is it simply a learned behaviour that will die out as the patriarchy fades for the first time in human history? Or is it genetic, do women’s maternalistic tendencies mean they are more likely to be homemakers?
The phrase ‘A women’s place is in the home’, though now widely thought to be sexist, is an idea that has remained potent for almost all of human history, excluding the past hundred years. It was first thought to have come from the Ancient Greek play write, [3]Aeschylus, in ‘Seven Against Thebes’, 467 B.C. Who wrote: ‘Let women stay at home and hold their peace.’ Although language translation and interpretation could mean that this phrase may not be an Ancient Greek parallel to the modern phrase ‘A women’s place is in the home’, it still relates to the idea that women should stay home and allow men to venture out. Dating as far back as the Paleolithic times, men were considered the hunters whilst the females nurtured the offspring. However, perhaps, in these times the spread of work was more equal, both genders carried out labour that suited their physiology at the time. With men being physically larger and stronger than women and therefore better adapted to hunt, whilst women possessed more maternalistic behaviours that were better suited to child-rearing. However, society has changed drastically since the Paleolithic period, work is no longer simply physical, indeed, the majority of paid work requires mental ability and as there is no proven physical difference between the mental ability of men and women, there should be no reason why women are disadvantaged in the work place. Indeed, the past century has seen female employed rise from almost zero to around two-third of able and willing females.
However, although the proportion of females in work has risen, the amount of house-work done by men has not risen equally. There is therefore, an unequal distribution of paid and unpaid work between the genders, with women taking on more unpaid work (house-work) than their partners. In fact, an interesting American study[4] shows that women do approximately 28.4 hours of unpaid labour a week with men only doing about 17.5 hours a week. Although, on average men work longer hours than women in the US, when combining both paid and unpaid work, women actually work longer hours. Taking this idea, if women were to be paid for their housework they could earn around $40,000 extra per year, say they were paid the average wage of an American ($26.82 an hour). However, to put it simply, women are not paid for the extra hours of house work that they do and therefore there is still great inequality between the apportioning of gender roles within the home. Theoretically speaking, if each household member was to be paid for the hours of house work they did, I personally would not see harm in either the man or the women doing more as each would be awarded for their work. However, this is not the case and women are subjected to greater amounts of unpaid labour than their male counterparts. Some may argue however, that men contribute more financially to the household.[5] One third of US households have the female contributing at least a half of the income however, although men bring in more income than women, I believe it is not the fault of the women. Women are subjected in the US to the pay gap, with women only making $0.80 for every $1 that a man makes, women are also more likely to sacrifice their careers to support their family by doing unpaid labour.
Indeed, for the majority of my blog post I have spoken of heterosexual partnerships and of course in today’s society around 1.5 million people in the UK identify as gay or bisexual. Interestingly, although not surprisingly, gender roles are not attributed so strictly in homosexual relationships, with housework and paid work being shared more equally between the couple.[6] This may of course be due to the obvious fact that two of the same gender are partnered and therefore cannot place on each other roles that come from a patriarchal structure. However, it may also come from the more liberal politics of members of the LGBTQ community, indeed [7] members of this community challenge traditional gender norms simply by being themselves. It is therefore much less likely for a homosexual couple to experience inequality between paid and unpaid work in their relationship and this is perhaps something that heterosexual couples should learn from.
The past century has seen a dramatic change in society with the patriarch beginning to dissipating for the first time in human history. Perhaps, therefore, as society changes, gender roles may adapt and society may see a change in household roles as men are for the first time not viewed as the provider (in Paleolithic terms the hunter) and women are acknowledged for their mental ability rather than just their ability to raise children. For society to become more equal I do not believe that house work and paid work should necessarily be split 50-50 between man and women. Rather, it makes more sense for each partner to take on the responsibilities that they either enjoy the most or are better at. However, the most important factor being that the roles attributed within a household are not based purely on gender stereotypes. It is of course likely that a women may want to do the cooking and cleaning whilst the man wants to sort the finances however these roles should not be attributed purely because the patriarch has dictated that this is the natural order.
[1] https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-the-workforce-uk/
[2] https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/women-spend-34-more-time-20836482
[3] https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/womans-place-is-in-the-home.html
[4]https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/heres-what-women-could-earn-if-household-chores-were-compensated.html
[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/20/americans-see-men-as-the-financial-providers-even-as-womens-contributions-grow/
[6] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0b16j1l
[7] https://www.alignplatform.org/3-gender-norms-and-lgbtqi-people#main-body