Crossposted on Troppo.
Well, subject to the usual caveats - I take all responsibility for errors of fact, judgement, taste and ideology - I still thank you all for helping me out on this column which has now been published.
Whether you think it’s any good or not, this was the most successful exercise in ‘open-sourcing’ a column I’ve had. It began with some musings a week or so ago cross posted to LP.
Reactions helped me sort out my ideas. I was struck by the strong (and reductionist) dichotomy between nature and nurture. Often this was invoked by feminists for the purposes of sending it up. “Don’t tell me women are genetically programmed for housework.” I agree that that’s a long bow to draw. Still I’d used the word ‘temperament’ in the previous post.
The ground is so contested and adversarial that it’s easy to be misunderstood – in fact it’s almost impossible not to be misunderstood.
You’ll notice that in the piece though I mention neuro-psychology which suggests that boys and girls’ cognitive development are quite different, I don’t really go into the content of it. I tried that and then thought I was getting trapped into ‘Women are more nurturing’ kind of statements. I am pretty suspicious of that kind of stuff, though I expect that’s the kind of thing many will think I’m arguing.
So if you have a look at what I’ve said there are several things I’ve tried to do.
1. Not specify the differences between the sexes specifically – except to say that women often choose some things willingly – as do men.
2. Say that, given that there are strong differences it isn’t surprising that complementary roles emerge (though we shouldn’t get too sure that they’re all that perfectly complementary), and – thought it’s not stated in the column they might change from time to time and even reverse.
3. Specify my three stages approach differentiation – which is
a) Biological makeup influencing orientations
b) Personal developmental choices doing a lot of the solidifying, amplifying and interpreting of how those orientations will develop
c) All this taking place in a cultural context.
The word ‘model’ is quite misleading here with all its mechanistic and deterministic implications. The word ‘discourses’ is a tad fashionable for me, but it’s probably the best word I can think of off the top of my head. The three things (discourses a, b, c) outlined above are powerfully interacting influences. That means that I don’t really think that women are more suited to do the housework biologically, or that under different cultural circumstances it mightn’t be entirely OK for it to be ‘men’s work’.
When I try to think about it in the way I’ve set out (and written up less definitively in the column) the important question to me is “Given the biologico-personal-cultural histories of the players, to what extent are the gender roles oppressive (which is bad) and to what extent are they good because they deepen life experiences of value?”
The idea that women can raise children and that doing this is valued in their culture can be oppressive, but for many it deepens their experience of something that (I feel) is as valuable thing as we can do. Given this view I also want men to be involved, and – accordingly – for their role to be reinforced in the culture.
But I have no hangups whatever about there being ‘equality’ in gender roles. Though equality of workload is a practical and political matter between the couple (which is both understandable and not a bad thing) that seems to me to be something between the couple. Gender roles should certainly be flexible (unoppressive) enough not to be a major obstacle to equality of effort if that’s what someone wants to negotiate in a couple.
So while gender roles should not impose inequality where that is felt as an oppression, I don’t think gender roles should be principally about equality. They should be about the things that men and women do – they should help them do them and value and deepen (and in so doing assist) their achievements.
I guess I reckon gender roles are like clothes. They’re supposed to permit differentiation which enriches us – without commanding it or preventing those couples who wish to dress in Mao suits (figuratively or literally) from doing so. But of course that’s a tall order and there are necessary tradeoffs in this fallen world of ours.
Anyway, the column’s below the fold.
The lion’s share of work around the house
I wonder who cooked and washed up your Christmas dinner? Chances are it was women. Scores of studies reveal women are still doing the lioness’s share of the work at home. (Lions never did do much work.)
Today, though they begin sentences with “I’m no feminist but . . . “, women jealously guard what gender equality they have won (and hang on to an advantage or two).
Confident that gender roles were ‘social constructs’ many expected a revolution in the household division of labour as women poured into the paid workforce. But as one disappointed feminist put it, we’ve got a ‘stalled revolution’ on our hands.
Here’s a snapshot. In the mid 1990s women in Australian couples spent nearly twelve hours a week preparing food – their men just three. They spent fourteen hours washing clothes and cleaning the house – to their men’s two and a half. Childcare involved a similar division of labour.
There are two mitigating factors. First, blokes do more of the ‘traditional’ men’s tasks. They spend slightly more time on family finances and putting out the garbage (though neither takes long!). They garden and mow. And do three of the four hours per week spent on improving the house (or resisting its fall into ruin).
Second, as women take on more paid work they do cut back a little around the house. Even so, women still do lots more housework and childcare.
Recently women have scaled back on meal preparation by outsourcing it to the market. Home delivered pizza or Chinese anyone? Pasta sauce or chilled soup from the supermarket? In case you’re wondering, after outsourcing the cooking, couples are outsourcing Dad’s gardening more than Mum’s house cleaning.
Why is there such a disparity? And does it matter?
One view is that it’s all a purely economic transaction. With men earning at higher rates the ‘opportunity cost’ of their time is higher. And specialisation in the division of labour usually improves efficiency.
You’ll be unsurprised to hear that feminists see things differently. They see stereotyped gender roles which have come under vigorous challenge in public life still thriving in the privacy of our homes.
They argue that women’s disproportionate household contribution arises from a power imbalance in favour of men. With women receiving lower pay and couples still paying more attention to the man’s career trajectory, the patriarchy gets its gender expectations met and perpetuates its dominance.
The fact that women’s share of household labour does fall as their relative earnings in the household rises supports both explanations. But the effect is quite small. Women with the same hours and earnings as their men still do most housework. These patterns are similar in all rich Western countries.
New research suggests that men’s contribution rises most if both partners work part-time. But once women’s share of earnings rises above their men’s, men seem to ‘strike’ to defend their (threatened?) masculinity. They actually withdraw from housework.
Even if the couple shares a feminist ‘gender ideology’ of equal housework guess what? Even that narrows the gender housework gap very little.
What’s going on?
Oddly existing research virtually ignores emerging neuro-psychological research that’s showing just how much differing gender behaviour might reflect different cognitive and neurological development between the sexes.
Boys and girls start with hard-wired cognitive biases. Habits then form from repeated individual choices. And no-one would deny that those choices themselves occur within a culture which thinks differently about men and women.
Given that, it’s not so surprising that the sexes often have strong (somewhat) complementary preferences. On becoming parents most women are willing primary providers of primary care – and milk. That gives them enduring skill advantages. So too men often become the handymen without complaint.
There’s usually housework that neither partner fancies. Often men can ‘hold out’ longer while that question of who’ll tidy the lounge just hangs in the air! But though most prefer tidiness, caring relatively less about untidiness is a preference too.
Of course those preferences reflect (amongst other things) social expectations. But the important question is how well gender roles suit men and women – whether they’re experienced as oppressive or as something which enhances and deepens valuable lived experience.
And it doesn’t seem that women experience the gender housework gap as oppressively imposed by outside expectations. When asked, only one in seven Australian women say they’re unsatisfied. A paltry three percent are very unsatisfied, though nearly a third think their men could do more.
Meanwhile back in the academy, feminists speak of women’s relative satisfaction in the same way that Marxists used to bemoan the ‘false consciousness’ of proletarians who weren’t revolutionaries.
No doubt there are horror stories amongst the unsatisfied women. And some of us men should probably do more at home. But it doesn’t look like a huge problem.
But I would say that wouldn’t I?
Anyway I’ve got to go – dinner’s ready.
I think the nature/nurture dichotomy is reductionist, and I also like this:
Perhaps though another dichotomy that you set up - between equality and (chosen?) behaviours - is a bit too neat. It still seems to me that there’s a residue of angst about feminism in your introductory remarks - and I think you might be arguing against a bit of a straw-woman. Equality isn’t or shouldn’t be inconsistent with people going in different directions. Perhaps the “mathematical” equality that feminists see as a measure of progress in the studies you discuss is as much a product of the methodology as anything else. Life can be a bit complex to reduce to numbers, and when you start thinking about numbers too much perhaps you mistake equality in the sense of absolute sameness for equity. We don’t hear about it too much in this country but there’s a strong strand in feminist theory called “difference feminism” which tries to affirm being female as a positivity without reducing it to a neuter (and therefore normatively male) equality.
Anyway, I’ve taken the liberty of doing some LP housework and have edited your post a little to fix up some typos
Hope that’s ok!
Reductionist, outdated, philosophically troublesome.
1. The inimitable PZ Myers:
2. Some pretty smart Europeans who would also find it troublesome too http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/articles/article/93-STENGERS.html
So I take issue with hardness of ‘hard-wiring’, and with your ‘model’.
The piece is good with discussions of observable social phenomenon, and the cheeky humour very readable.
And what Kim said about straw-feminists and difference feminism.
Interesting, dk.au. That also ties in with the post Mark put up about madness and science.
It strikes me also that nature is often a stand in for God or (worse) natural law in many of these debates, sometimes unacknowledged, sometimes not consciously held but a residue of theism lurking around the edges of scientific epistemology. There’s also the competition between different academic disciplines to take into account. The mob that are doing the neuro-psychological research have a stake in maintaining the dichotomy (so they can say their side is right) as do sociologists on the other side.
It’d be far more productive to junk it. Politically too - in terms of debates about feminism, inequality, race, etc. as well as in terms of advancing knowledge.
Thanks for the high quality and very civil comments so far. But there’s something interesting going on.
KateKim comments that “It still seems to me that there’s a residue of angst about feminism in your introductory remarks”.Well far be it from me not to have a residue of angst about feminism. But the remarks - I take it you are referring to the second paragraph - were offered in sympathy with feminism. They sought to say that though many women decry it, they are in fact proud standard bearers for (certain important aspects of) feminism.
Indeed what’s happened (which seems to me to be a misunderstanding) illustrates some of the angst that I do have about feminism. One of the things that feminism does is tease out often quite subtle things and and argue that they embody assumptions which are then contested. This is generally a very good thing.
Problem is when things are sutle, it’s easy for things to be misunderstood. It’s also easy for those being tackled to feel that they’re being misunderstood. That the interpretation given to what they’re saying is insufficiently generous.
None of this is an accusation, or a personal complaint (at least in this instance I can only be grateful for the quality and civility of the comments above). It’s a lament about our fallen state. But I thought I’d throw in the comment for what it is worth.
Feminism is thought contesting and can be taken by those it tackles as being thought policing. All part of the rich tapestry . . .
I think one’s view of feminism - whether as a monolithic enterprise (as per EP’s tiresome refrains) or an evolving, diverse group of actors contesting policy goals, research agendas, epistemologies and ontologies - has a bearing on people’s experiences with ‘it’ and expectations of ‘it’.
If by “teasing out often quite subtle things”, Nicholas, you’re referring to reminders of the masculinity of neutral ‘persons’ in aiding policy formulations I can sort of see what you mean. But if you’re talking about the work of redrawing the boundaries between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ (or smudging those boundaries out of significance), or an ongoing crusade against logocentrism, I’d argue that these things aren’t subtle at all. They’re utterly fundamental to the way we relate to the world, how we come to know each other, formulate our own identities and prioritise our futures.
And Kim, I’ve found that social scientists take genes, neurons, chemicals and other nonhuman ‘actors’ - inside the body and out - very seriously. eg. Elisabeth Wilson has a nice paper on oral anti-depressants here http://nchsr.arts.unsw.edu.au/TwoCultures/twoculturesabstracts.htm#Wilson
(ps. that was me that corrected the typo in Nicholas’s comment)
dk.au
Subtle not in the sense of being of slight importance but as in the sense of requiring subtlety in detecting it - and in comprehending it when pointed out.
I don’t see how, Nicholas. Surely thought contesting is a good thing?
Nice column, with some very cute lines. My main issue with it is similar to Kim’s, re statistical averages versus ‘gender roles’. (FWIW, I interpreted your first couple of paras as sympathetic to ‘feminism’ - but it’s particularly easy to misinterpret things written cf things spoken.)
You write:
“But the important question is how well gender roles suit men and women”
If you mean how well gender roles fit men and women on average, then I’d say that’s not the important question. I think the important question is whether those gender roles are imposed on unwilling individuals. And honestly, I think they are, and in the case of housework it tends to be the women who are most unwilling to comply.
Also: is there any survey on how many men are unhappy with the household division of labour or think their women should do more around the house? Coz I reckon having a 1 in 7 chance of being dis-satisfied is pretty important, especially if there’s no chance you’d be dis-satisfied if you were a man. (Perhaps it depends which side of the fence you were born on.)
Yes Kim I agree,
I began my discussion of thought contesting by saying “This is generally a very good thing.” So you won’t find me disagreeing with your comment that it is a good thing.
I invite you to try to work out what I might have meant by my next comment, that it can appear as thought policing, and can in some ways BE thought policing.
Raising an earlier point in this thread, it’s a subtle but important point. I’m not sure I can really demonstrate it to someone who’s not sympathetic to the point I’m trying to make. But think of EP - was his thought contesting good in your view? Or did you experience it as a failure and perhaps even a refusal to listen to your point of view?
Subtle not in the sense of being of slight importance but as in the sense of requiring subtlety in detecting it - and in comprehending it when pointed out.
Hoisted by my own petard it would seem.
was [EP’s] thought contesting good in your view
I’ll bite: No, it was boorish, predictable, unoriginal and ham-fisted. On the other thing, I don’t see how your (or my) position is any less ‘thought policing’ than any alternatives - feminist or other. Perhaps you can give us an example? (sorry, just a bit confused here and fwiw I didn’t mean to come off as harshly in my previous comment as I did)
Christine - I agree that gender roles should not be experienced as oppressive, but I don’t think it is the only issue. Otherwise - to use the analogy I made with clothes, all gender roles become Mao suits.
There’s also the positive side. Valuing women for their ‘nurturing role’ is a very valuable thing - certainly for those for whom nurturing others is important. But of course like I said about our ‘fallen world’ it is not possible to do this without it generating stereotypes which are experienced as oppressive by others.
On satisfaction your suspicions are correct. Men are more satisfied with the division of household labour than women. In the study I quoted in the column amongst women, 32% thought their partners could do more, of which 10-11% were unsatisfied plus 3% very unsatisfied. Not surprisingly men are much less unsatisfied. Their figures are 8%, 2% and 1% respectively. I would have liked to get that into the column but it took space I used elsewhere and I was wary of impairing readability with too many stats.
Sorry to come late to this discussion. I like this column a lot more than I thought I would (but I think I over-reacted to your last set of commenters who said the imbalance was only because women liked doing housework).
I haven’t read the research you refer to:
Oddly existing research virtually ignores emerging neuro-psychological research that’s showing just how much differing gender behaviour might reflect different cognitive and neurological development between the sexes.
but when measuring abilities to do all sorts of things, every piece of research I have read suggests there is a huge overlapping range of abilities - so that whether someone is a man or a woman tells you little about their individual abilities, even if on average women are better than men at something (say nurturing). So I’ve always been very sceptical about research that claims to show any attribute is hard-wired strongly in one or the other gender - I’ve seen so many gender type studies contradicted strongly by other researchers who started with the opposite set of assumptions.
I would also, along with Christine, draw a quite different conclusion from your level of satisfaction research, and thanks for the link to it, so I can read the statistics to my hearts content.