7 ms·

I don’t like how this article spins that doing housework is like a degenerate or bad thing for a woman to do. More housework = more inequality. Uh, ok. It has

I don’t like how this article spins that doing housework is like a degenerate or bad thing for a woman to do. More housework = more inequality. Uh, ok. It has to be done. That’s how teamwork, works.

yetihehe 7y ago
Maybe it should be viewed as "doing ALL of the housework by woman"? If woman is burdened with taking care of everything, this is imbalance.
- kolinko 7y ago
  Well, it depends if the man is burdened with earning all the money, doesn’t it? While it’s not my preferred arrangement, some families have one partner worry solely about money, and another solely about the housework.
  - nostrebored 7y ago
    I think you mean one partner with the ability to leave the relationship
    - michannne 7y ago
      You don't suddenly become trapped in a relationship when you stop earning money yourself.
      - nostrebored 7y ago
        Your barriers to leaving become much higher when you're staying at home, haven't worked in years, and have a family. Thinking otherwise is dense. I personally know people who are in relationships with horrendous people because they have no exit strategies. This is a common thing people talk about in stay at home circles.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        pdpi 7y ago
        The reverse is also true: People not leaving stay-at-home spouses because they feel guilty about how vulnerable they'd be. It's just a messed up power dynamic in general.
        toasterlovin 7y ago
        The math of leaving is the same, regardless of which parent initiates. Family income is split in half and then whichever parent gets majority custody gets additional money in the form of child support. People, men and women, get trapped in marriages. This happens because the economics of splitting one household income to pay for two households is brutal.
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      Leaving? What happened to "until death do us part"? Which is the context in which this kind of arrangement originated from. Apparently the deal has changed and all we can do is to pray that it won't change further...
      - kaybe 7y ago
        The deal also doesn't include abusing your spouse, but here we are..
        Kaiyou 7y ago
        If you want to go farther back, only women were supposed to wear wedding rings, because it symbolizes the chains the men used to keep them,.. so I guess abuse was part of the arrangement, way way back.
        aetherspawn 7y ago
        If you go farther back, there’s no record of a tradition of a wedding ring at all.
  - yetihehe 7y ago
    World is not black and white. People are all over this spectrum. I would happily be stay-at-home husband if my wife could earn as much as us both. She can't but she earns good income. If I left all housework for her, she would not have enough time for work at all. Some women accept this, some even want this, BUT NOT EVERYONE wants this. The whole premise of Bill Gates charity is about enabling people to do what they want to with their lives.
  - falsedan 7y ago
    I think the point from the article is: women never get the choice. Once they're born, their whole career path is laid out and set in stone. You might think about how that's not the case where you live/according to your background. Congratulations on being born in one of the places where it's easy to succeed!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
pjc50 7y ago
If it was teamwork, men would be doing it equally.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  Thats precisely the opposite on how trade works.
- reportgunner 7y ago
  What makes you think they don't ?
  - pjc50 7y ago
    In individual cases? They may do. In statistical aggregate? They don't. Edit: in poorer households it's quite common for both partners to go out to work - the four hours a day housework is on top of that.
    - reportgunner 7y ago
      I still don't understand where this fact is coming from. Are you monitoring households and producing statistics on who is doing the housework ?
      - nostrebored 7y ago
        This fact is coming from every piece of research done on the subject...
    - spodek 7y ago
      It's also more common for the man to do work that is more dangerous, exposed to the elements, requires more travel, and other hazards to earn the extra money the risk brings.
      - michannne 7y ago
        Yeah. Any relationship I've been in, it was mostly her doing cooking, dishes, and general home decor, while I did gardening, vacuuming, fixing and hardware setup, and occasionally helped with dishes. Early dating sometimes I'd treat her to a specialty and cook myself, but outside of that I only cook if they aren't already cooking. I've seen so many articles complain about this setup being somehow sexist, but it has always played to our strengths and weaknesses. My partners usually never liked bugs, I can garden. I also find vacuuming relaxing, and I'll take any opportunity to fix somthing to grease my skills. They are usually picky eaters, so my partners cook, they usually like the home kept in a certain way, so they clean and buy things for the home. It is just the way things are, there is no deep-sexism inherent in any of my relationships, just a reduction of the commons
daliusd 7y ago
The problem is that there is no teamwork if you have no choice what to do or not to do. If you do not agree with me then I hope I will never meet your in professional situation. Interestingly there exists inequality still in Western world as well. I had some interesting discussions with my wife about that. First random article about this, but there are many more: https://www.ft.com/content/0c9f068c-711f-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5 https://www.ft.com/content/0c9f068c-711f-11e9-bf5c-6eeb83756...
qaq 7y ago
I think what often gets overlooked is risk profile of a given activity. E.g. I enjoy doing dishes because I am pretty certain that if I clean them they will be clean I don't need to manage risks/uncertainty while I am cleaning dishes. Many work activities involve dealing with uncertainty and risks outside of one's control which comes with much higher stress level.
jefe_ 7y ago
Housework in many parts of Africa is hard, grueling work, and the women perform it from sunrise to sunset every day. Washing clothes without a washing machine, scrubbing dusty floors, cooking on charcoal stoves. None of these tasks use ergonomic materials and much of the work occurs very close to the floor, which creates a lot of up and down movement that strains back and knees. Coupled with hauling water around from sources up to 300 yards away and lack of electricity, I would not want that to be my only option in life.
- andrepd 7y ago
  >300 yards Make that 10 miles.
  - kaybe 7y ago
    There must be a very good reason why the village is built that far from water sources. I have some theories, but does someone have facts?
- fromthestart 7y ago
  > Washing clothes without a washing machine, scrubbing dusty floors, cooking on charcoal stoves. Your anglocentric view severely overestimates the similarly between our standards of cleanliness and theirs. I doubt these women are washing loads of clothes daily, if they even have more than a handful of items of clothing, or mopping dirt floors with any frequency. Cooking on charcoal isn't that much worse than cooking over a modern stovetop. You also seem to imply that men are just sitting around all day, based on the context of the message this is responding to - but I don't know enough about the culture in these remote African areas to say if that's wrong. I don't understand this habit of bending over backwards to show that women have it harder everywhere. Aside from hauling water from long distances, the work you describe is hardly grueling - and says nothing of what the men in these areas are experiencing. If you want to talk about gendered violence and lack of rights as second class citizens, that's one thing, but there seems to be a tendency to exaggerate as a signal of virtue or something.
  - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hogFeast 7y ago
The irony of this view (that housework is a bad thing) is that it is almost totally a function of current views about gender. Before the widespread automation of many household tasks (in the rich world) starting in the 1950/60s, housework was more gruelling than most paid jobs. And if you go back further, to the proto-industry of the 18th century, then housework was just work (i.e. merchants putting out work to women and children). I think this has led to a misunderstanding of why gender inequality exists today and existed in the past. Which is unfortunate because it mainly leads to poor recommendations (particularly when people who live in one context start telling people in another context they should be more like them).
renjimen 7y ago
The point is choice. As a woman, in many places you have no choice about what you do with your life. Of course, in many of those same places, men have little choice about what to do with their lives, but as the article points out, men tend to have a greater amount of choice on average.
tootie 7y ago
It's not inherently negative, it's an opportunity cost. Unpaid housework preempts income-earning work.

yetihehe 7y ago

Maybe it should be viewed as "doing ALL of the housework by woman"? If woman is burdened with taking care of everything, this is imbalance.

kolinko 7y ago
Well, it depends if the man is burdened with earning all the money, doesn’t it? While it’s not my preferred arrangement, some families have one partner worry solely about money, and another solely about the housework.
- nostrebored 7y ago
  I think you mean one partner with the ability to leave the relationship
  - michannne 7y ago
    You don't suddenly become trapped in a relationship when you stop earning money yourself.
    - nostrebored 7y ago
      Your barriers to leaving become much higher when you're staying at home, haven't worked in years, and have a family. Thinking otherwise is dense. I personally know people who are in relationships with horrendous people because they have no exit strategies. This is a common thing people talk about in stay at home circles.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - pdpi 7y ago
        The reverse is also true: People not leaving stay-at-home spouses because they feel guilty about how vulnerable they'd be. It's just a messed up power dynamic in general.
      - toasterlovin 7y ago
        The math of leaving is the same, regardless of which parent initiates. Family income is split in half and then whichever parent gets majority custody gets additional money in the form of child support. People, men and women, get trapped in marriages. This happens because the economics of splitting one household income to pay for two households is brutal.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    Leaving? What happened to "until death do us part"? Which is the context in which this kind of arrangement originated from. Apparently the deal has changed and all we can do is to pray that it won't change further...
    - kaybe 7y ago
      The deal also doesn't include abusing your spouse, but here we are..
      - Kaiyou 7y ago
        If you want to go farther back, only women were supposed to wear wedding rings, because it symbolizes the chains the men used to keep them,.. so I guess abuse was part of the arrangement, way way back.
        aetherspawn 7y ago
        If you go farther back, there’s no record of a tradition of a wedding ring at all.
- yetihehe 7y ago
  World is not black and white. People are all over this spectrum. I would happily be stay-at-home husband if my wife could earn as much as us both. She can't but she earns good income. If I left all housework for her, she would not have enough time for work at all. Some women accept this, some even want this, BUT NOT EVERYONE wants this. The whole premise of Bill Gates charity is about enabling people to do what they want to with their lives.
- falsedan 7y ago
  I think the point from the article is: women never get the choice. Once they're born, their whole career path is laid out and set in stone. You might think about how that's not the case where you live/according to your background. Congratulations on being born in one of the places where it's easy to succeed!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

pjc50 7y ago

If it was teamwork, men would be doing it equally.

conanbatt 7y ago
Thats precisely the opposite on how trade works.
reportgunner 7y ago
What makes you think they don't ?
- pjc50 7y ago
  In individual cases? They may do. In statistical aggregate? They don't. Edit: in poorer households it's quite common for both partners to go out to work - the four hours a day housework is on top of that.
  - reportgunner 7y ago
    I still don't understand where this fact is coming from. Are you monitoring households and producing statistics on who is doing the housework ?
    - nostrebored 7y ago
      This fact is coming from every piece of research done on the subject...
  - spodek 7y ago
    It's also more common for the man to do work that is more dangerous, exposed to the elements, requires more travel, and other hazards to earn the extra money the risk brings.
    - michannne 7y ago
      Yeah. Any relationship I've been in, it was mostly her doing cooking, dishes, and general home decor, while I did gardening, vacuuming, fixing and hardware setup, and occasionally helped with dishes. Early dating sometimes I'd treat her to a specialty and cook myself, but outside of that I only cook if they aren't already cooking. I've seen so many articles complain about this setup being somehow sexist, but it has always played to our strengths and weaknesses. My partners usually never liked bugs, I can garden. I also find vacuuming relaxing, and I'll take any opportunity to fix somthing to grease my skills. They are usually picky eaters, so my partners cook, they usually like the home kept in a certain way, so they clean and buy things for the home. It is just the way things are, there is no deep-sexism inherent in any of my relationships, just a reduction of the commons

daliusd 7y ago

The problem is that there is no teamwork if you have no choice what to do or not to do. If you do not agree with me then I hope I will never meet your in professional situation. Interestingly there exists inequality still in Western world as well. I had some interesting discussions with my wife about that. First random article about this, but there are many more: https://www.ft.com/content/0c9f068c-711f-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5 https://www.ft.com/content/0c9f068c-711f-11e9-bf5c-6eeb83756...

qaq 7y ago

I think what often gets overlooked is risk profile of a given activity. E.g. I enjoy doing dishes because I am pretty certain that if I clean them they will be clean I don't need to manage risks/uncertainty while I am cleaning dishes. Many work activities involve dealing with uncertainty and risks outside of one's control which comes with much higher stress level.

jefe_ 7y ago

Housework in many parts of Africa is hard, grueling work, and the women perform it from sunrise to sunset every day. Washing clothes without a washing machine, scrubbing dusty floors, cooking on charcoal stoves. None of these tasks use ergonomic materials and much of the work occurs very close to the floor, which creates a lot of up and down movement that strains back and knees. Coupled with hauling water around from sources up to 300 yards away and lack of electricity, I would not want that to be my only option in life.

andrepd 7y ago
>300 yards Make that 10 miles.
- kaybe 7y ago
  There must be a very good reason why the village is built that far from water sources. I have some theories, but does someone have facts?
fromthestart 7y ago
> Washing clothes without a washing machine, scrubbing dusty floors, cooking on charcoal stoves. Your anglocentric view severely overestimates the similarly between our standards of cleanliness and theirs. I doubt these women are washing loads of clothes daily, if they even have more than a handful of items of clothing, or mopping dirt floors with any frequency. Cooking on charcoal isn't that much worse than cooking over a modern stovetop. You also seem to imply that men are just sitting around all day, based on the context of the message this is responding to - but I don't know enough about the culture in these remote African areas to say if that's wrong. I don't understand this habit of bending over backwards to show that women have it harder everywhere. Aside from hauling water from long distances, the work you describe is hardly grueling - and says nothing of what the men in these areas are experiencing. If you want to talk about gendered violence and lack of rights as second class citizens, that's one thing, but there seems to be a tendency to exaggerate as a signal of virtue or something.
- 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hogFeast 7y ago

The irony of this view (that housework is a bad thing) is that it is almost totally a function of current views about gender. Before the widespread automation of many household tasks (in the rich world) starting in the 1950/60s, housework was more gruelling than most paid jobs. And if you go back further, to the proto-industry of the 18th century, then housework was just work (i.e. merchants putting out work to women and children). I think this has led to a misunderstanding of why gender inequality exists today and existed in the past. Which is unfortunate because it mainly leads to poor recommendations (particularly when people who live in one context start telling people in another context they should be more like them).

renjimen 7y ago

The point is choice. As a woman, in many places you have no choice about what you do with your life. Of course, in many of those same places, men have little choice about what to do with their lives, but as the article points out, men tend to have a greater amount of choice on average.

tootie 7y ago

It's not inherently negative, it's an opportunity cost. Unpaid housework preempts income-earning work.