How will we ever achieve an equal society if we can’t even live in equality with those whom we love?
--Maria Sveland
Heterosexual women and men in our society often describe their relationships as egalitarian and fair while also reporting relationship patterns that are objectively unfair.
For instance, they may report that they both do housework--but
measurements of how much time each spouse puts in almost always reveal that the
woman does more (on average, 80% of the work). One man said that his wife did
all the cooking, but he did the dishes. By “doing the dishes” he meant putting
the dishes in the dishwasher, leaving his wife to notice when they were done
and put them away.
Or spouses may say that they are both responsible for
childcare--but often, the man’s contribution to childcare is playing sports,
going on outings, and watching TV with the kids, while the woman remains in
charge of cleaning up after the kids, nagging them to take a bath, going to
doctor’s appointments, and other boring stuff. Even when spouses sincerely
attempt to share the burden, often the woman remains the manager, in charge of
the family schedule, remembering what needs to be done, and reminding her
husband to do it.
Couples may talk as though they are peers, but behave in ways that unintentionally promote invisible male power. Research in the ‘90s that examined couples’ shared work and family decisions found that even though both partners reported that their decisions were mutual, outcomes tended to favor the husband’s needs and goals more than the wife’s.
One reason this “pseudomutuality” exists is that, when you
ask women whether their relationship is equal, they don’t compare the
relationship to an ideal of equality; they compare to an imagined “evil man”
scenario. I know my husband is not a wife-beater or crude cartoon misogynist.
He helps out more than my friends’ husbands. So I have nothing to worry about,
right?
This cultural narrative of evil men trying to control women appears very important to women as something to avoid and to men as unacceptable behavior. Although this discourse appears useful as a negative model of what to stay away from, it also seems to be applied to individual men in a sort of all-or-nothing way. Some men dominate and control; others don’t. The more subtle ways that male power is embedded within normative gender discourse and social structures did not seem to be part of the story. When men do not fit the dominating male pattern, couples can have a false sense of security about the existence of male power in their relationship and are less likely to look for or recognize the more subtle forms of male power built into the gender-differences discourse.
Within heterosexual relationships, and, the research
suggests but does not prove, especially within marriage, even women who believe
in equality are often pulled towards traditional gender roles. They may find
themselves feeling that the condition of the house reflects on them--a feeling
that husbands are unlikely to share. Or, with the modesty our society teaches
women to feel or pretend to feel, they may say that their husband’s careers are
more important than theirs (this tends to occur even when he makes less money).
This leads to lives structured to accommodate the husband’s career.
Francine Deutsch describes two couples she encountered. In one couple, he was a college professor and she was a physician, and in the other couple she was the college professor and he the physician. But in both cases, both the husband and wife claimed the man’s job was less flexible.
There is
no happy ending to this post, but I will leave you with a hilarious anecdote from
Linda Hirshman . A female professor of her acquaintance decided to drop out of
the workforce. When Hirshman asked her why, she said she had no choice:
commuting 300 miles every weekday was driving her crazy. Hirshman asked the
obvious question: why in the world had she chosen to live 150 miles from her
university? The answer, equally obvious, was that she lived right next to her
husband’s office.
The
serious point here is that one traditional choice tends to lead to another
traditional choice. In most marriages, the husband makes more money, so it
might seem reasonable to value his career more. But for this woman, that seemingly
innocuous choice led to locating near his workplace, spending most of her free
time commuting, and, ultimately, housewifery.
I’m not
going to bother precisely attributing these quotes, but here is my essential
bibliography:
Couples, Gender and Power, Carmen Knudson-Martin
Gender Vertigo, Barbara Risman
Wifework, Susan Maushart
Get to Work, Linda Hirshman
Fiction and memoir:
An Unconventional Family, Sandra Lipsitz Bem
Bitter Bitch, Maria Sveland
We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver
Update: more quotes along the same lines.
Update: more quotes along the same lines.
Some research suggests that men cope with such uncomfortable inequities by denying that housework matters--or that it even exists! Male respondents to a time use study frequently tried to draw the interviewer into a collusive dismissal of the significance of housework and child care. Male partners were sometimes unaware that cleaners were doing some of the work. All they knew--and all they needed to know--was that it was getting done, and by someone else. One man admitted that he did no cooking, but claimed it was because he wasn’t interested in cooked food. When a wife suggested they might alternate responsibility for bed-making, the husband said he didn’t believe in bed-making. Or male respondents implied that their attitude toward housekeeping was tolerant and their wives’ obsessive. To most men, the suggestion that there might be a right and a wrong way to vacuum or fold a nappy or hang out the laundry inspires eye-rolling, or even disbelief. This is another way in which we betray the very deeply held assumptions that what men accomplish matters, and what women accomplish doesn’t...a women who persists in framing housework as skilled work, and who cares about the results obtained, is routinely stigmatized as too fussy or a control freak.The persistence of marrying up or hypergamy is one of the most serious obstacles to achieving genuine equality within marriage today.
