The myth of women doing the majority of housework

This is often trotted out in female spaces with depressing regularity. You can see it here, here and here and any search of any feminist space will bring out the "Men expect women to do all the housework" trope. There are even studies on this which, on the surface, would seem to confirm that women do more housework than men. 

Digging into these studies and it becomes quickly apparent they are extremely skewed and don't provide a very thorough picture.

Measuring all household work

There are two main methods used to measure household work done. The first is a survey, where you simply ask what chores people do, assign time to them and from that you find who is doing the most. This has the benefit that it's less intrusive, you can do a 30min survey and get your data, but you lack accuracy.

A more intrusive, but more accurate method, is to keep a time diary. That is people note down what they are doing and from that you tot up the time on housework. The problem with this is that short things, of a few minutes, aren't worth noting down. So if you carry the shopping from the car to the kitchen well it's not worth noting down. These small tasks can add up and affect the distribution of work between the pair significantly. So the first thing to note is that the housework distribution, as measured in studies, is only talking about the long term blocks which are easier to note down.

What constitutes house work anyway ?

Another issue with all of the studies is that they all differ on what house work is. For example cooking, cleaning, washing is obviously house work. What about gardening ? DIY ? Driving your family about the place to their events ? None of these are considered housework so if you are a man performing these tasks they are discarded.

There's also a difference in how you measure the actual chore. If you put washing, into a washing machine, and then take it out an hour later did you just do an hour of house work or fifteen minutes worth ? If you are cooking dinner, which takes thirty minutes, but five minutes of that was just waiting for something to brown well, is that thirty minutes or twenty five minutes ? 

These inconsistencies make a huge different into household labour.

How can you even compare labour when it's not equal ?

If you have a baby that needs feeding every three hours then Partner A may elect to do 09:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00 & 21:00. Partner B then ends up doing 00:00, 03:00 & 06:00. On the face of it Partner A is doing more work however Partner B is getting the rougher end of the deal. A simply hourly calculation does not sefice.

If you take children to a park, but sit on a bench reading your phone, whilst they play for an hour well is that an hours work you've done or none ?

The hour calculation is not at all representative because it doesn't take into account effort and how hard something is.

Discrepancy in expectations

Finally one partner may say the other doesn't do enough housework because partner B is happy to live in a less well maintained home. Not everybody is the same and some people have very, very different living standards. It could be one partner has higher standards, than the other, and so one partner does more housework just because they think that's what it takes whereas the other does not. That does not mean one is right, or the other not. 

A more holistic approach

Finally there are two forms of labour required to run a home. One is direct, labour expended in the home and taking care of tasks directly. Another is indirect, it is trading labour for money which is then used to make the home more comfortable. If you look at the breakdown of both of these labour that is required then women tend to do more housework (sic) and men tend to work more hours. If you add those two together then they come out at nearly 50/50 and equal. However no study has shown this and you have to take different studies, to add them together, to get this result. Chat GPT is able to perform this for you.

The Myth

The oft quoted "Women do more housework" than men is extremely flawed. It's flawed because:

• Data collection methods which are manual
• Definition of what house work is
• Only hours are counted, not effort
• They only measure part of what it takes to run a house rather than the whole 

For this reason at best we don't know who is providing more labour in a home but more likely it's approximates to 50/50 in the vast majority of cases.