Guilt
about not doing enough housework may be harming working women’s health,
according to new analysis of data from the International Social Survey
Programme.
Over a two-year period, women in 24 countries were asked
to rate the amount of household chores they do each day in terms of
their perceived “fair share”. They also ranked their physical health
levels.
“Women who are not working a lot in the house are actually
having poorer health than women who are working more household hours,”
said Candice Thomas, the new paper’s co-author and an assistant
professor of psychology at Saint Louis University. “How much you work at
home is impacting health in a way we didn’t expect.”
According to
the analysis, published in the academic journal Sex Roles: “Although the
worst health was reported among women with higher work and household
hours ... the relationship between job work hours and physical health is
stronger when women are not contributing to the household workload as
intensively.”
The authors suggest this link might be down to women
feeling “guilt and empathy toward their spouses, as well as a transfer
of stress from their spouses”.
According to Thomas, the research
shows it is “how women feel about the distribution [of housework] that
really matters. And I think guilt is something that probably plays a
role in it – that you’re not doing your fair share.”
In the UK,
averaging across all seven days of the week, women and men now spend a
near-identical amount of time working when household chores are included
(women: 7hr 10min per day; men: five minutes more). But men are paid
for almost 25% more of their work (5hr 14min of their daily average,
compared to 3hr 26min for women). And men are also paid better, both in
the UK and across the world.
This data comes from a new working paper
by by Oxford University’s Centre for Time Use Research (CTUR): a gender
analysis of 75 national time-use surveys for people aged 20–59 from 24
countries over the last 58 years.
The study shows that women in the
UK now spend an average of 2hr 12min per day doing household chores,
compared to men’s contribution of 1hr 9min.
“The convergence [between
men and women’s work time] is only partial, but change is happening,”
said professor Jonathan Gershuny, head of the CTUR. “The public policy
issue is how far the state is going to go to make sure this collective
effort on the part of women does not lead to the punishment of women in
terms of power and influence.”
The unequal distribution of unpaid
work between men and women is one of the most important gender equality
issues in many countries, according to a 2017 OECD report which cites
its impact on pay gaps and career progression.
A recent analysis by
the Financial Times found women accounted for just a quarter of senior
staff at 50 of the world’s biggest banks, insurers and asset managers – a
proportion that has improved only slightly since 2014.
The unequal
distribution of labour has also been found to have a wider economic
impact, with one recent study suggesting the US economy would improve
significantly if men took on more of the housework.
Across the 24
countries included in the CTUR analysis, women are still typically
taking on around 65% of the housework load, down from 85% in the 1960s –
despite having increased their average paid working hours by as much as
47% (UK), 115% (Denmark) and 215% (Holland) over broadly the same
period.
While more women are in paid work than ever before, for many
people the traditional, archaic ideas of what a man and women “should”
do in the household linger on.
“This guilt is linked to some
expectations of what women are ‘supposed’ to do, even if they don’t
agree with it,” said Melissa Milkie, a sociologist specialising in
gender at the University of Toronto. “Although women and men’s roles are
much more similar than they used to be, the expectations lag to some
degree – we’re still stuck culturally. This may be true for men too, in
that they still have to be breadwinners.”
At 31, Holly Marriott is
the founder and CEO of her own company, but still finds herself
constantly grappling with a question of her identity: “Am I the powerful
person running a business, or am I the person incapable of keeping my
house clean?”
Marriott lives with her partner in Norfolk, and because
of work commitments feels she isn’t able to take on her share of the
household work. “It’s classic house pride: ‘I’m a woman – I should be
able to keep a house clean.’ But I don’t have time to do that.”
The
feeling of guilt is something Marriott can’t seem to shake off – even
though she is the higher earner in the household. “I feel like I should
be able to do more, even though I work long hours. I think it’s related
to traditional roles: even though my role has changed and I’m working
flat-out, I feel that I need to keep things tidy. It’s the whole thing
of taking an equal amount of weight. I don’t because I haven’t got time
to – and that bothers me.”
According to Gershuny, society’s ingrained
ideas are the very things that maintain inequality in the workplace.
“It’s this notion of fairness within the household that generates the
societal level of unfairness manifested by the wage gap. For example, if
you are doing more of the childcare, that means you shouldn’t be
working at your job as well,” he said.
“Women are still doing the
double shift of a job and most of the housework, plus caring
responsibilities – and it leaves a lot of women knackered,” said Frances
O’Grady, the first female general secretary of the UK’s Trades Union
Congress.
“This means women have less leisure time than men, and
fewer opportunities to network. For example, it’s harder for women to
hang on after work to build contacts if they want to go for promotion –
all of these things that we know make a difference are much tougher for
women.” - Guardian News & Media
u201cIt’s classic house pride: ‘I’m a woman u2013 I should be able to keep a house clean.’ But I don’t have time to do that.u201d