A Woman's Work is Never Done?

As best as can be told, the average man is doing at least as much work as the average woman is.

One of the staple feminist claims heard every March during International Women's Day and Women's History Month is that "women do the work of the world." This myth was publicized by the United Nations during the 1970s ("Women constitute one half of the world's population [and] do two-thirds of the world's work") and reinforced in 1995 with the release of its "Human Development Report" and the presentation of the report at the UN International Women's Conference in Beijing. The report's claim that women do more work than men was reported widely and uncritically by the US media with headlines such as "It's Official: Women Do Work Harder" and "A Woman's Work is Never Done."

To judge who does "the work of the world" in a world of over six billion people is a gargantuan task, but let's begin by asking two questions:

1) Who works the most hours (inside or outside the home) in the average family unit worldwide?

The second question is much easier to answer than the first, so let's start there. According to the International Labor Organization, an estimated 1.1 million workers are killed in industrial accidents each year, exceeding the number killed from war, violence, road accidents and AIDS.

These accidents occur primarily in mining, logging, heavy agricultural labor, construction, fishing, heavy manufacturing and various other overwhelmingly male jobs. The ILO estimates that 600,000 lives would be saved every year if available safety practices were used. The ILO also estimates that there are approximately 250 million victims of occupational accidents and 160 million victims of occupational diseases each year. The ILO doesn't keep figures by gender, but in countries where such figures are available (such as South Africa, England, Australia and Canada), the fatalities and serious injuries are usually over 90 percent male.

The gender breakdowns in the US are little different. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were over 125 million workplace injuries in the United States between 1976 and 1999. Nearly 100,000 American workers died from job-related injuries over the past decade and a half, 95% of them men. Of the 25 most dangerous jobs listed by the US Department of Labor, all of them are between 90 percent and 100 percent male. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, more than three million workers a year are treated in hospital emergency rooms for occupational injuries and nearly 50 American workers are injured every minute of the 40-hour work week. On average, every working day 25 workers die, 24 of them male.

So there is no doubt that the most dangerous and demanding jobs are done by men, in most if not virtually every society, and that men shoulder the burden of dangerous labor in the US Let's consider the other question: Who works the most hours (inside or outside the home) in the average family unit worldwide? It's a much harder question to answer but, as best as can be told, the average man is doing at least as much as the average woman is.

As men's issues author Warren Farrell explained in his 1999 book Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, the UN report upon which most claims of "women work more" are based was deeply flawed. In fact, UN official Terry McKinley admitted in February, 1996 that the UN misrepresented the study in several important ways. For one, the information provided by the UN to the press only applied to countries where women were found to work more hours than men; the countries where men were found to work more hours than women were deliberately excluded.

Moreover, when the data provided by researchers in some countries (including the US) did not fit the UN's intention to show that women "do more," researchers were asked in a private communication to amend their studies. Researchers were asked to include women's voluntary community work as well as hobbies in order to increase women's perceived workload. Researchers were not asked to include these items or new ones in men's labor. As a study of men and women's labor, the UN findings are worthless.

Even if one could possibly do an effective study on how many hours the average man and woman worked inside and outside the home worldwide, a finding that women work more hours would not mean that women work "harder" or "more" because such a study would still not account for the more difficult and dangerous nature of men's work.

Feminists have made similar claims of "women do more" in relation to the division of labor in the United States. The idea of what Farrell calls the "second shift woman and the shiftless man" was brought into vogue in large part by UC Berkeley professor Arlie Hochschild's best-selling 1989 book The Second Shift. In it she wrote (and the media uncritically repeated) "women work an extra month of 24 hour days each year."

However, as Farrell notes, Hochschild arrived at her "women do more" conclusion through a variety of disreputable gimmicks. For one, she compared the housework burdens of full-time employed males with those of part-time employed females, portraying men working 50 hour weeks as lazy and selfish for not doing as much housework as their wives who were working a 20 hour week. Also, she claimed that men did no more housework in the late 1980s than in the pre-feminist era, but, with one minor exception, she used data on male housework from studies done in the pre-feminist era, rendering it worthless. In addition, she also defined "housework" to include chores usually done by women, ignoring many of the household tasks generally performed by men.

In reality, objective, scientifically credible studies have shown that American women are not working more or harder than men. For example, the UN's survey on the United States showed that American men work three more hours a week on average than American women. The Journal of Economic Literature reports that the average man works five hours more, and a study released last year by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, the world's largest academic survey and research organization, put the disparity at three more male hours per week.

In addition, these surveys (both the serious ones and the feminist advocacy ones) count only hours worked. A man doing eight hours of dangerous construction work in the 100-degree heat is credited with no more "work" than a woman who works in an air-conditioned office or who, in the comfort and safety of her own home (and without a supervisor breathing down her neck), cooks breakfast, takes the kids to school, packs her husband's lunch and folds the laundry while chatting on the phone.

Nevertheless, as Farrell notes, negative references to men and housework litter our popular culture. "The Myth of Male Housework: For Women, Toil Looms From Sun to Sun" was a headline in one major publication, over a cartoon depicting a woman juggling (and struggling) with a baby, a roasted turkey, and a house pet, while her husband watches TV and "juggles" his beer and his potato chips. Other major publications have highlighted women's alleged burdens under headlines such as "For Women, Having It All May Mean Doing It All," and "The Trouble with Men," with one even commenting, "A woman's work is never done, a man is drunk from sun to sun."

Feminists are correct to be concerned about the plight of the women in the underdeveloped nations of the world. Their error is that they blame men. The enemy of most of the women of the world is not the man who works hard to provide for his wife and children, but instead the grinding poverty that wreaks devastation on everybody: men, women and children.

Glenn Sacks is a men's and fathers' issues columnist and radio talk show host. His columns have appeared in dozens of America's largest newspapers. To learn more about his radio show, go to His Side with Glenn Sacks. Glenn's website is GlennSacks.com.

I think it depends entirely on the way one has one's marriage set up. As the mother of small children and a part-time worker I certainly worked a very active 120-hour workweek, involving both mental and physical labor, while my husband worked a tranquil seven- or eight-hour executive job and came home to lounge in front of the TV or computer all evening. He made no contribution to housework, cooking, errand-running, home maintenance, yardwork, or childcare. I tolerated this because I'd found that protesting it would lead to the end of the marriage. But this was my choice for marrying as selfish guy when I was young and stupid. No one held a gun to my head and forced me to marry a jerk. Now it's my hope that a younger generation of women will make better choices instead of blaming men. Truthfully, there are just as many lazy self-indulgent women as lazy self-indulgent men.

Well, call me selfish if you will, but my sweetie and I have a clear understanding that I don't lift a finger at home except for the occasional minor handyman job or taking out the garbage. Why? Because I work like a rented mule 60 hours a week, and support my wife in grand style. She doesn't have to work and she makes the most of it. I doubt she spends two hours a day on housework. The kids are in school, and she spends her days watching soaps, shopping, gossiping with her sisters, and lunching with her idle friends. We have a maid and a chef come at least once a week. I tell her I don't care if she hires someone to do it, but the house is her job and to just get it done. When I get home I expect a clean house and dinner on the table and then to spend time with her and the kids, TV or reading or computer or whatever, but I am damn sure not going to come home after working 7 to 7 and start picking s**t up around the house. Them's the rules and though they are rather expensive for me it seems to be working fine. The only test will come if we have to cut back, but there is no sign of that in my current situation.

-ccm

No, I don't think you're selfish at all. You work hard and have what sounds like a fair arrangement. It's an arrangement that has worked successfully for prosperous families for millennia. If you work 609 hours a week and she doesn't work at all there is absolutely no reason on earth why you should have to labor when you get home. I wish to gracious some loving Christian man would support me that way!--though I would have to do something worthwhile with my time, and would pay cash to avoid having to watch soap operas or exchange gossip.

I think though that we were talking about families who can't afford the chef and maid so that all the work fell on the woman who had to do 80% of the total labor involved in keeping the family together.

I would have to do something worthwhile with my time, and would pay cash to avoid having to watch soap operas or exchange gossip.

heh! I'm working on that. I think she got really hooked when the kids were little and she was more housebound. Even back when I made a tenth of what I do now, she wanted to be home with the kids when they were babies. It was tough sometimes but we did it and my kids are much better for it.

I'm trying to get her to switch off the boob tube and go back to school or do some volunteer work or something, but not waste her days watching crud on TV. She does help out at school quite a bit but even that will become less as the kids get older.

I don't mean to sound bitter or resentful, and my wife and I do have a great relationship. I just had to agree with the original post where the author noted a big difference in the kind of work many men do and the kind of work that goes on around the house. Not the same thing in many cases.

Although a couple of times when my wife was sick, I did all my work and all her housework too (mostly dishes and laundry) for a few weeks and I did get a newfound respect for all she does do. But it would be easy to do it in an hour or two every day.

-ccm

I am offering no criticism of her. I don't know what her situation is. I just know that I'm only going to go around once in life, as the old beer commercial used to say, and I don't want to spend it in front of the TV but spend it doing something good. That's my personal choice but her choice may be different. Your wife sounds like a good mom and she makes you and her kids happy, so there's absolutely no problem with the choice she's made. The traditional life situation you've created would, if re-instituted in this country, bring a lot of stability and happiness to millions.

I just had to agree with the original post where the author noted a big difference in the kind of work many men do and the kind of work that goes on around the house. Not the same thing in many cases.

Depends. It's not clear that most male jobs involve danger or physical labor. My point is that if a guy has a sedentary job but then refuses to help a wife who also has a job AND has to do the housework so that she's still doing laundry at 11 p.m., he's being selfish. Or if he has a sedentary job and she is home with three little kids, she may be working 16 or 18 hours a day, with no days off--then it's selfish if he won't help. I mean, she didn't get pregnant by herself, she didn't buy the house herself, she didn't get the yard and dog(s) by herself. It's not fair when one member of the household has to work 100 hours a week and the other works 40.

CC, let's also bear in mind that when a woman is home with her kids (and I am not talking about your situation, with a chef and maid, but the average American family) the wife is doing physical labor: carrying garbage, carrying laundry, hauling groceries, lugging 35-pound toddlers, mowing the lawn, dragging the vacuum, wiping up vomit, scrubbing the floor, chasing the toddler, and so forth. Then add in making four meals a day, cleaning up afer four meals a day, helping with homework, going to the pediatrician every five minutes, picking up messes, changing diapers, dusting, gardening, doing dishes, etc. etc. etc. It is exhausting. If a woman does this all day and then continues to work all evening as her husband sits on his ever-expanding rump watching TV, at bedtime she may have neither the energy nor the emotional inclination to be the cute little sexpot he married. (Phew! Just remembering all that makes me so glad my kids are a little older now.)

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