I've travelled through South and Southeast Asia and will say I saw women doing much more work than men in rural villages. The men often take to drink (alcohol) which the women don't. It causes a lot of problems like laziness, unemployment and abuse.
Partnered women without kids worked 27% less time than unpartnered women - 2:34 vs 3:32.
== And women WITH kids? How much did they work?
Male sole parents spent 170% more time educating themselves than females.
== Was Grandma babysitting so her son could "educate" himself?
Male sole parents also coped much better than females - being much less likely to feel rushed or pressed for time.
== Why don't they feel rushed or pressed for time? Why DO women feel rushed and pressed?
Men also increased the amount of time spent on domestic activities by 34% (women’s time didn’t change).
== How much time do women already spend on domestic activities? One would think women's % would finally be able to DECREASE if men are increasing.
When child-care facilities closed down during Covid, it was mainly fathers who stepped up – increasing child-care time by 67% compared to previous surveys (female increase was 10%)
== How much child-care time do women already put in?
Societal norms make us conveniently forget what constitutes domestic duties.
Things like,
House maintenance, garden, painting, mowing, rubbish, pool, construction, renovation, vehicle maintenance, kids homework help, pets, paying bills.
Working, providing, earning, and travelling to do it takes a person away from the very place they are working to enjoy..... And it sucks, specially when you get home to be told you don't do enough.
The official Australian gender pay gap is currently 14.1% for FT workers. Let’s leave aside that people are in different industries and just take this headline figure. Two weeks ago the ABS published the results of their “How Australians Use their Time” survey.
A key statistic in this survey is that amongst those in FT paid employment males spent on average 8 hours 13 minutes compared to females 7 hours 12 minutes. This is 493 minutes compared to 432 minutes which is exactly 14.1% higher!
Bettina, thanks. Very encouraging to see that we do our but. Although, I must say, while my wife is in hospital, doing all the house work and meals while still working does make one a little weary.
It was good to see that a couple of readers of the article in The Conversation pointed out to the authors that counting steps is a poor way to measure work. For example, a man taking 1,000 steps in 8 hours could be working much harder than a women taking 12,000. The reply, bristling with defensiveness, merely said that counting steps was more practical. But this only hints at the simplicity of the study's method and reveals a lack of curiosity about what the authors claim to be researching. Fitbit watches, even the cheapest models, also measure calories consumed, "zone" or effort minutes, heart rate, and sleep. Did the fitness tracker used by the researchers offer similar data that the authors did not incorporate? Other questions: Who paid for the 500 fitness trackers? The basic FB model costs about $100 US. Who taught these people how to use them? It took me days to figure out what mine could do. If all 500 people interviewed were "invited" to wear the trackers, how many did? How often were results downloaded, and to what device? Who kept track of the data? And isn't it reasonable to ask how many wide-ranging conclusions can be extrapolated from such a modest and fragmentary attempt to measure one of a culture's most complex features, its understanding and valuation of work? Relevant to comments on men's contributions in Australia is Tom Golden's post on work in terms of equality, URL below.
TC do not allow comments any more. I was banned under four different names for drawing attention to their bollocks. They are an odious propoganda outreach program of the academy.
There is a phrase getting popular in the UK media that women have to do 'the double shift'. They're expected to do a job and to come home and look after the kids. This is all perception. I've seen a time-use survey where the participants logged what they actually did every hour. Men worked on average 44 hours per week and women 40. That's 10% more for men. This included paid work, parenting, care work (elderly) and housework. Like all these things: the gender pay gap, the pink tax, this double shift doesn't exist. I'm sure there are some lazy men married to hardworking women: there's always room in a graph of averages, towards both ends, for people who aren't average. But these are not the norm.
And during the covid lockdown we got a lot of media articles declaring women did the lion's share of childcare whilst trying to work from home. But what kind of women were working from home? Not teachers, waitresses, office cleaners, receptionists, factory workers, shop staff, hoteliers, air stewards. They were all fuloughed. No, these double-shifting, suffering women were the better off ones such as the journalists writing the articles.
Some while back in the UK women were screaming about how they should be paid for doing housework. That is, getting paid for cleaning their own belongings. - A realistic man then suggested that she should pay him, IN CASH, for any and all the 'handyman' things he did for her. Problem solved.
Fred, it is certainly true that many men do a great deal of handyman chores which often would equate to the time women put into housework. (I certainly appreciate having my gutters cleaned!) But I do feel there are periods in women's lives, when they have young children, where the burden of household work plus childcare would be greater for women but that is usually the time when fathers intensify their paid work commitment to cover the loss of the mother's income. The equation is complex and we need to acknowledge that.
Please explain what you mean by the "tend" regarding high income earners.
Private, Government, others? Are you conflating tend with a possible trend. Auto spell checks can do you in and a caveat should be in place in such matters. You stated.....
"fathers (sic) tend to be the highest income earners".
Now to you stupid single guys, get in the breeding box and procreate. Wealth awaits you!
Women should not complain about working too much ,isn’t this what they wanted ? a career and a marriage and a family , all this adds up to a lot of time and effort. As well they might buy a house with a big mortgage , a car on finance etc . is it any wonder women are postponing childbearing. There is a lot to be said for a return to traditional family structures with the woman staying home to concentrate on raising kids and men working. This arrangement worked well and helped build a strong nation but now the birth rate has dropped to below replacement and politicians do nothing.
That previous arrangement worked well for some women but certainly not all. There were many women who were most frustrated by not engaging in the paid workforce and who missed out on the thrill of engaging in the public world. I could never have imagined devoting my whole life to raising my wonderful children and they certainly benefitted from not being the sole object of my passion and attention! We have to be careful not to be too Neanderthal, hankering for the good old days which were also not great for men who carried the burden of breadwinning totally on their own.
"I could never have imagined devoting my whole life to raising my wonderful children and they certainly benefitted from not being the sole object of my passion and attention!"
I always wanted my mom to work outside the home but she didn't want to. I don't buy for a second that it's better for one parent (usually they mean the mom) to be at home all day.
As you say Bettina, humans are complicated, too much so for their own good most of the time. My experience with wife, sister in laws - is yes they pine for the adult contact and content that work provides - which is understandable. To Kens point, media bombards women with the premise that to be valuable you need a career. House wife Mother is degraded. So women feel that and go back to work, anecdotally, commonly within 12 months. That’s too quick imo. The pendulum has swung too far. Mine now ex went back after 8months - so I reduced my work to 3 days. Too young for a child to be in day care 3-4 days pw.
I will add Bettina. I did take 4-5 months leave during my daughters first year or so. life was easy, so don’t understand the complaining. I will say I did miss a fathers group or similar for regular adult interaction. When day care started I worked, did drop off and pick ups. Yes you get home late, though as long as you don’t need to bring work home life is still good!
You are right it was unfair on the many women who had talent and wanted to work but the birth rate in Western countries is dropping and a nation needs a large pool of young people.The classic case was WW2 when the allied countries including Russia had a lot of people in their 20’s to fight Hitler. The reason for this is the early 20th century was an age of large families and women were stuck in the role of housewife and mother, but just as well in hindsight.
Another really good summary, Bettina. As you may be aware, this issue has been going on in one form or another since at least the 1970s without much evidence in support of the claim that household chores are the same as paid employment, or that women who perform everyday household chores are, in fact, unpaid. The Australian Census contains loaded questions which are specifically designed to misrepresent time being spent in household chores as "unpaid housework." The funny thing about the term "unpaid housework" is that it generally refers to something that, at least in Australian law and custom, can sometimes lead to extraordinary remuneration. For many decades chores carried out within long term marriages or de facto relationships become paid work as soon as the partnership breaks down, for whatever reason. Here's some possible candidates for payments that are actually being made for supposedly"unpaid" household chores. 1) Immediate access to the pooled income and assets of the married or de facto couple, including use of principal place of residence and access to pooled income via joint bank accounts, income from the family business, distributed income from family and discretionary trusts, rental income from investment properties plus capital gains from shares, managed investments and investment properties etc 2) Maternity leave payments paid by the government (in some cases, this is paid even though employers also pay maternity leave over the same period) 3) Family Tax Benefit A plus supplements 4) Family Tax Benefit B plus supplements 5) Child Support calculated for us by the government 6) Parenting Benefit/Single Mother's Pension 7) Delayed primary claim to the pooled assets of the marriage after break down, including houses, holiday homes and investment property plus accumulated pooled superannuation savings etc 8) Delayed primary claim to the future income of the husband to maintain the lifestyle of the wife and the upkeep of any children (this can sometimes be paid while the former partner is in another relationship, Family Tax Benefit A , Family Tax Benefit B and Child Support may also apply) 9) Delayed primary claim to retirement income derived from pooled superannuation savings and any reversionary benefit 10) Delayed access, if applicable, to the Age Pension at age 67 and 11) Senior Australians Tax Offset which indirectly pays seniors for their household chores. That makes it eleven ways where the so called second income earner is indirectly remunerated for unpaid chores. In addition, current generous child care subsidies are another way that taxpayers compensate employed women for "unpaid housework" which is clearly intended to relieve them of time spent on domestic chores. In 2016, the peak welfare body, the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS), was keen to point out that for a hypothetical single mother, the family tax benefit is not an insignificant amount, boosting the income of a median wage earner by between $20,000 and $25,000. I'll close with an interesting study that was carried out by the University of Chicago in the mid-1990s that I read about which involved periodic checking of the chores that were being done by husbands and wives over several months after each was first quizzed about their assessment of theirs' and their partners' share of household chores. The two memorable conclusions were: 1) Both the husband and the wife "vastly exaggerated" the amount of chores the wife actually performed; and 2) the same chore that was classed by the husband as not being a household chore was categorised by the wife as a household chore (example given in the study was time spent "making a cup of tea" which wives generally classified as "contributing to the family").
USA BLS time use study found that women get 30 minutes more sleep per night than men.
Let’s not pretend and forget that all that extra 40% hours worked by men has billions of taxes paid above that paid by women. Men paid all that extra taxes to support tens of thousands of women working in government and nonprofit agencies that are 100% working to advantage women.
The real statistic to find is how many years of retirement do women get before their husband retires.
My mate is near retirement age and is 7 years older than his spouse. She thinks she can retire when he retires from work. She will work 7 years less than him or 17% less years than him.
And she thinks she deserves to retire and not work 7 more years.
Call the last one out Bettina. Just the stat on when the last of the two in a couple retires versus years worked.
And he started working at 16, she at 22 after university.
I must have a bloody good dose of "female"! If I'm out of the supermarket in under an hour something is wrong... :-) :-) :-)
I've travelled through South and Southeast Asia and will say I saw women doing much more work than men in rural villages. The men often take to drink (alcohol) which the women don't. It causes a lot of problems like laziness, unemployment and abuse.
Partnered women without kids worked 27% less time than unpartnered women - 2:34 vs 3:32.
== And women WITH kids? How much did they work?
Male sole parents spent 170% more time educating themselves than females.
== Was Grandma babysitting so her son could "educate" himself?
Male sole parents also coped much better than females - being much less likely to feel rushed or pressed for time.
== Why don't they feel rushed or pressed for time? Why DO women feel rushed and pressed?
Men also increased the amount of time spent on domestic activities by 34% (women’s time didn’t change).
== How much time do women already spend on domestic activities? One would think women's % would finally be able to DECREASE if men are increasing.
When child-care facilities closed down during Covid, it was mainly fathers who stepped up – increasing child-care time by 67% compared to previous surveys (female increase was 10%)
== How much child-care time do women already put in?
Societal norms make us conveniently forget what constitutes domestic duties.
Things like,
House maintenance, garden, painting, mowing, rubbish, pool, construction, renovation, vehicle maintenance, kids homework help, pets, paying bills.
Working, providing, earning, and travelling to do it takes a person away from the very place they are working to enjoy..... And it sucks, specially when you get home to be told you don't do enough.
I used to get attacked that often when I got home from work that I just started saying
"Hi honey, another days holiday over" when I got home from work
Please read and comment on my recent OLO article (https://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=22414) There is also a version here(https://clubtroppo.com.au/2023/03/31/the-bigotry-we-are-blind-to/#comment-716400)
As well as Tina's!
The official Australian gender pay gap is currently 14.1% for FT workers. Let’s leave aside that people are in different industries and just take this headline figure. Two weeks ago the ABS published the results of their “How Australians Use their Time” survey.
A key statistic in this survey is that amongst those in FT paid employment males spent on average 8 hours 13 minutes compared to females 7 hours 12 minutes. This is 493 minutes compared to 432 minutes which is exactly 14.1% higher!
I fucking love stats!
The evolution of human physiology seems to indicate men have been working harder than women through the species entire history.
Bettina, thanks. Very encouraging to see that we do our but. Although, I must say, while my wife is in hospital, doing all the house work and meals while still working does make one a little weary.
So good to read a rare, balanced, look at Male/Female relationships! Keep up the good work Tina :-)
It was good to see that a couple of readers of the article in The Conversation pointed out to the authors that counting steps is a poor way to measure work. For example, a man taking 1,000 steps in 8 hours could be working much harder than a women taking 12,000. The reply, bristling with defensiveness, merely said that counting steps was more practical. But this only hints at the simplicity of the study's method and reveals a lack of curiosity about what the authors claim to be researching. Fitbit watches, even the cheapest models, also measure calories consumed, "zone" or effort minutes, heart rate, and sleep. Did the fitness tracker used by the researchers offer similar data that the authors did not incorporate? Other questions: Who paid for the 500 fitness trackers? The basic FB model costs about $100 US. Who taught these people how to use them? It took me days to figure out what mine could do. If all 500 people interviewed were "invited" to wear the trackers, how many did? How often were results downloaded, and to what device? Who kept track of the data? And isn't it reasonable to ask how many wide-ranging conclusions can be extrapolated from such a modest and fragmentary attempt to measure one of a culture's most complex features, its understanding and valuation of work? Relevant to comments on men's contributions in Australia is Tom Golden's post on work in terms of equality, URL below.
https://menaregood.substack.com/p/equality-a-step-down-for-women
TC do not allow comments any more. I was banned under four different names for drawing attention to their bollocks. They are an odious propoganda outreach program of the academy.
There is a phrase getting popular in the UK media that women have to do 'the double shift'. They're expected to do a job and to come home and look after the kids. This is all perception. I've seen a time-use survey where the participants logged what they actually did every hour. Men worked on average 44 hours per week and women 40. That's 10% more for men. This included paid work, parenting, care work (elderly) and housework. Like all these things: the gender pay gap, the pink tax, this double shift doesn't exist. I'm sure there are some lazy men married to hardworking women: there's always room in a graph of averages, towards both ends, for people who aren't average. But these are not the norm.
And during the covid lockdown we got a lot of media articles declaring women did the lion's share of childcare whilst trying to work from home. But what kind of women were working from home? Not teachers, waitresses, office cleaners, receptionists, factory workers, shop staff, hoteliers, air stewards. They were all fuloughed. No, these double-shifting, suffering women were the better off ones such as the journalists writing the articles.
"But what kind of women were working from home? Not teachers,"
Teachers WERE teaching from home. School went online.
Mayor humdinger. On repeat in our house lol
Some while back in the UK women were screaming about how they should be paid for doing housework. That is, getting paid for cleaning their own belongings. - A realistic man then suggested that she should pay him, IN CASH, for any and all the 'handyman' things he did for her. Problem solved.
Fred, it is certainly true that many men do a great deal of handyman chores which often would equate to the time women put into housework. (I certainly appreciate having my gutters cleaned!) But I do feel there are periods in women's lives, when they have young children, where the burden of household work plus childcare would be greater for women but that is usually the time when fathers intensify their paid work commitment to cover the loss of the mother's income. The equation is complex and we need to acknowledge that.
"where the burden of household work plus childcare"
In one aspect this is true, but I wonder how much influence "Maternal gatekeeping" plays in it?
I just wish you would keep your mind out the gutters Bettina! LOL :-)
There is research that suggests fathers tend to be the highest income earners.
Phillip,
Please explain what you mean by the "tend" regarding high income earners.
Private, Government, others? Are you conflating tend with a possible trend. Auto spell checks can do you in and a caveat should be in place in such matters. You stated.....
"fathers (sic) tend to be the highest income earners".
Now to you stupid single guys, get in the breeding box and procreate. Wealth awaits you!
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180614213621.htm
Women should not complain about working too much ,isn’t this what they wanted ? a career and a marriage and a family , all this adds up to a lot of time and effort. As well they might buy a house with a big mortgage , a car on finance etc . is it any wonder women are postponing childbearing. There is a lot to be said for a return to traditional family structures with the woman staying home to concentrate on raising kids and men working. This arrangement worked well and helped build a strong nation but now the birth rate has dropped to below replacement and politicians do nothing.
That previous arrangement worked well for some women but certainly not all. There were many women who were most frustrated by not engaging in the paid workforce and who missed out on the thrill of engaging in the public world. I could never have imagined devoting my whole life to raising my wonderful children and they certainly benefitted from not being the sole object of my passion and attention! We have to be careful not to be too Neanderthal, hankering for the good old days which were also not great for men who carried the burden of breadwinning totally on their own.
"I could never have imagined devoting my whole life to raising my wonderful children and they certainly benefitted from not being the sole object of my passion and attention!"
I always wanted my mom to work outside the home but she didn't want to. I don't buy for a second that it's better for one parent (usually they mean the mom) to be at home all day.
As you say Bettina, humans are complicated, too much so for their own good most of the time. My experience with wife, sister in laws - is yes they pine for the adult contact and content that work provides - which is understandable. To Kens point, media bombards women with the premise that to be valuable you need a career. House wife Mother is degraded. So women feel that and go back to work, anecdotally, commonly within 12 months. That’s too quick imo. The pendulum has swung too far. Mine now ex went back after 8months - so I reduced my work to 3 days. Too young for a child to be in day care 3-4 days pw.
I will add Bettina. I did take 4-5 months leave during my daughters first year or so. life was easy, so don’t understand the complaining. I will say I did miss a fathers group or similar for regular adult interaction. When day care started I worked, did drop off and pick ups. Yes you get home late, though as long as you don’t need to bring work home life is still good!
You are right it was unfair on the many women who had talent and wanted to work but the birth rate in Western countries is dropping and a nation needs a large pool of young people.The classic case was WW2 when the allied countries including Russia had a lot of people in their 20’s to fight Hitler. The reason for this is the early 20th century was an age of large families and women were stuck in the role of housewife and mother, but just as well in hindsight.
Another really good summary, Bettina. As you may be aware, this issue has been going on in one form or another since at least the 1970s without much evidence in support of the claim that household chores are the same as paid employment, or that women who perform everyday household chores are, in fact, unpaid. The Australian Census contains loaded questions which are specifically designed to misrepresent time being spent in household chores as "unpaid housework." The funny thing about the term "unpaid housework" is that it generally refers to something that, at least in Australian law and custom, can sometimes lead to extraordinary remuneration. For many decades chores carried out within long term marriages or de facto relationships become paid work as soon as the partnership breaks down, for whatever reason. Here's some possible candidates for payments that are actually being made for supposedly"unpaid" household chores. 1) Immediate access to the pooled income and assets of the married or de facto couple, including use of principal place of residence and access to pooled income via joint bank accounts, income from the family business, distributed income from family and discretionary trusts, rental income from investment properties plus capital gains from shares, managed investments and investment properties etc 2) Maternity leave payments paid by the government (in some cases, this is paid even though employers also pay maternity leave over the same period) 3) Family Tax Benefit A plus supplements 4) Family Tax Benefit B plus supplements 5) Child Support calculated for us by the government 6) Parenting Benefit/Single Mother's Pension 7) Delayed primary claim to the pooled assets of the marriage after break down, including houses, holiday homes and investment property plus accumulated pooled superannuation savings etc 8) Delayed primary claim to the future income of the husband to maintain the lifestyle of the wife and the upkeep of any children (this can sometimes be paid while the former partner is in another relationship, Family Tax Benefit A , Family Tax Benefit B and Child Support may also apply) 9) Delayed primary claim to retirement income derived from pooled superannuation savings and any reversionary benefit 10) Delayed access, if applicable, to the Age Pension at age 67 and 11) Senior Australians Tax Offset which indirectly pays seniors for their household chores. That makes it eleven ways where the so called second income earner is indirectly remunerated for unpaid chores. In addition, current generous child care subsidies are another way that taxpayers compensate employed women for "unpaid housework" which is clearly intended to relieve them of time spent on domestic chores. In 2016, the peak welfare body, the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS), was keen to point out that for a hypothetical single mother, the family tax benefit is not an insignificant amount, boosting the income of a median wage earner by between $20,000 and $25,000. I'll close with an interesting study that was carried out by the University of Chicago in the mid-1990s that I read about which involved periodic checking of the chores that were being done by husbands and wives over several months after each was first quizzed about their assessment of theirs' and their partners' share of household chores. The two memorable conclusions were: 1) Both the husband and the wife "vastly exaggerated" the amount of chores the wife actually performed; and 2) the same chore that was classed by the husband as not being a household chore was categorised by the wife as a household chore (example given in the study was time spent "making a cup of tea" which wives generally classified as "contributing to the family").
The best thing is for both partners to work and then they can hire domedtic help if they earn enough.
USA BLS time use study found that women get 30 minutes more sleep per night than men.
Let’s not pretend and forget that all that extra 40% hours worked by men has billions of taxes paid above that paid by women. Men paid all that extra taxes to support tens of thousands of women working in government and nonprofit agencies that are 100% working to advantage women.
The real statistic to find is how many years of retirement do women get before their husband retires.
My mate is near retirement age and is 7 years older than his spouse. She thinks she can retire when he retires from work. She will work 7 years less than him or 17% less years than him.
And she thinks she deserves to retire and not work 7 more years.
Call the last one out Bettina. Just the stat on when the last of the two in a couple retires versus years worked.
And he started working at 16, she at 22 after university.