An article in yesterday’s Chronicle notes that there’s still a lot of inequity when it comes to household chores, according to a study from the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender and Research, at Stanford University. The study, “Housework Is an Academic Issue,” found that female scientists shoulder “54 percent” of “core household tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry—about twice as much as their male counterparts,” while still working “at their paying jobs about 56 hours a week, almost the same number of hours as men do.”
They are hardly alone. Many working women “do a disproportionate amount of housework,” says Jennifer Sheridan, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute.
That’s hardly a revelation. For the scientists, though, “more housework doesn’t affect the quality of work but its quantity, which could make a difference in academe,” Ms. Sheridan told The Chronicle. “Some studies of faculty productivity have found that women faculty may produce fewer articles,” a crucial factor in tenure-and-promotion decisions.
The question is what to do about the problem. Londa Schiebinger, one of the authors of the study, suggests that college provide flexible-benefits packages to help with housework, like some Swedish companies do. But that’s unlikely to happen at a time when campus budgets are under increased pressure, Ms. Sheridan notes. What solutions do you propose?
As one commenter on the article noted, it’s not simply a matter of women with spouses and children “just individually turn[ing] the entire societal tide in which we swim and announc[ing] ‘It’s now 50/50!’ And therefore, it will happen.” Nor do we need “a law dictating which spouse takes out the garbage, who does the cooking, etc.,” as another noted sarcastically.
Read about how some academic couples divvy up their household duties and tell us what works for you.
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12 Responses to How Dishwashing Works Against Tenure
schaber - January 20, 2010 at 12:07 pm
The second comment that follows the article linked to in the first sentence of this post sums up my feelings perfectly: “And what about those of us who are single? We get to do it all – something that my married colleagues forget. But that’s life, folks. There are ills in the world that need funding more than a ‘maid benefit!’”
cunningham2 - January 20, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Yes, single people get to do it all, but only for themselves. Married with kids generates a great deal more of everything in terms of housework, to the extent that after the birth of a first child people sometimes find themselves musing about what on earth they did with their time pre-children. So, it isn’t just a case of self care, but other care, which substantially reduces the time and energy available for other things, paid work included.Another interesting statistic I have seen more than once is that married male academics have the highest rate of publication of any class of scholar.Combine that with research that shows that the only time that men spend as much time on housework as women is when they are single and it starts to add up to a picture of one group of people – women – providing another – men – with services that benefit the latter while disadvantaging the former.
sharryfloyd - January 20, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Many years ago when I was in a doctoral program at the Harvard School of Education I noted that ALL the married women with children still managed their households, did much or most of the cooking and housecare, were primarily responsible for the organizing their children’s lives – and conducted their research, fellowships, etc. (One of the women was expected to produce multi-course meals for her graduate student husband every evening.) ALL of the married men (I asked them and their wives) in the program were completely excused from household chores and other responsibilities except for attending the occasional child event. One man’s wife – a doctoral student at another university in another state kept their four children with her.
goxewu - January 21, 2010 at 1:11 am
Women academics and, generally, the wives of male academics are intelligent, educated women, right?Presumably these women–unlike the poorer, less educated women who clerk at the Dollar Store–make their major choices with clear heads and open eyes.Whether or not to prepare oneself for employment should the need arise, when and to whom to marry, if and when to have children are among those major decisions, right?Presumably male academic husbands can’t and don’t hold their wives in physical bondage, right? (Yeah, yeah, there are cases…)So, the women academics and the wives of male academics in marriages in which they end up doing the majority of the housework, choose to have marriages like this. Otherwise, they’d leave and/or divorce their husbands, wouldn’t they?What, they “can’t” because then they couldn’t support themselves? You mean that in spite of their intelligence and education they failed to prepare for the time when they might have to support themselves without the aid of a husband?What, they can’t “because of the children”? You mean that in spite of their intelligence and education they went ahead and had children and figured that they’d always have the financial support of a husband?How old are these women? If they’re not already grandmothers, they must have come of age post-”Women’s Movement,” and should have known the fix they could be getting into if they put themselves into marriages where they were a) totally reliant on their husbands’ incomes, and b) expected to hold jobs and still to do the majority of the housework? Shouldn’t they have known better?If they knew better, and yet still got into these fixes in large numbers, might not that indicate that there’s something, well, genetic about women doing the majority of the housework?And if there’s not something genetic about intelligent and educated women getting themselves into situations where they still do, even though they don’t want to, the majority of the housework, why do they get into those situations?Why is there always such a strong implication in posts and comments such as the one above, that Somebody Else (the school, the town, the state, etc.) should implement a Policy that would somehow rectify their marriages for them?”One man’s wife – a doctoral student at another university in another state kept their four children with her.” These were children (four of them!) born of somebody else that the state decreed she’d have to raise? Or were these children she made the decision to have, one by one? And this was the husband she allowed to go off to another state and be a graduate student, leaving her with the kids? This is a woman with enough smarts and resolve to get a Ph.D. in something?”…one group of people – women – providing another – men – with services that benefit the latter while disadvantaging the former.” Again, this is among academics? Do the women providing the service do it voluntarily? If the service is not provided voluntarily, what’s compelling them to provide it, genetics? And if it’s not genetics…oh, we’ve been here before.
11242283 - January 21, 2010 at 6:26 am
Maybe if tenue committees didn’t just count but actually read the work (or listened to the external reviewers) this wouldn’t be such a problem —- since quantity, not quality seems to be the issue. As my time on our university tenure and promotion committee proved, scientists are the most mindless “counters” when it comes to this issue.So there you have it: researchers identify a “problem” and the solution is to propose that universities somehow compensate women faculty for it, not that they think about their own practices. Everyone in the academy seems to worship at the altar of quantity and all this does is increase the amount of useless drivel being published. A few years ago, the Chronicle published an article about being single in academia and, as I remember, it was met by hoots of laughter from married people (esp. women) who seemed afraid that any attention given to single faculty would detract from their own sense of victimhood. Damnit, they were the ones who had it hardest and no one else ought to get any attention until they got childcare, their tenure clocks stopped, bigger graduate stipends, etc.But as others have said (only to have it dismissed) single people, esp. as they get older and stay single) do everything (housework, stay home to wait for the plumber, etc) and they do it on only one salary. The assumption that they do it “only” for themselves is one that is common but often not entirely true. Married people like to think that if they were single they’d spend their whole day in their lab or at their desk because, freed from the bonds of matrimony or parenthood, they’d have nothing else to do but work. But it actually isn’t like that. Single people have lives to live that don’t just involve work. Single faculty of any age might be looking to change that status, so finding and nourishing relationships is part of the mix. Single people are still embedded in family and other emotional relationships that need attending too. I won’t even start into how having two paychecks (as most married female academics do) in the household priveleges married faculty to live better because of a greater likelihood of having more financial security. Why don’t these women just budget for household help if they need it?I’m in my 60s, getting ready to retire and I’m with #4 goxewu. I came into academe in the first generation of feminism. Thirty years later, presumably women going into any profession and contemplating marriage ought to have some notion of what kind of marital relationship contributes to their success and they ought to seek out relationships that contribute to that. To say “he’s a great husband” but then go on to say but he doesn’t do shit around the house (as one commentator said the other day) isn’t the university’s fault.
procrustes - January 21, 2010 at 9:29 am
Enough with the whining of the privileged. People who work in factories or convenience stores need help a lot more than academics who already have pretty good pay and benefits, not to mention much more flexible schedules than most. And I agree with no. 5; there is already far too much drivel being published.Your domestic arrangements are your responsibility, as mine are mine. Just because people are single doesn’t mean that they don’t have domestic responsibilities (ever heard of aging parents).
greentara - January 21, 2010 at 10:06 am
What about single mothers who are responsible not only for doing all the chores that a single person has to do but also has to take care of the children and their needs? And let me add that one does not end up a single mother automatically out of choice: widowhood, divorce ( one spouse choosing to leave the other..), and other life events can end a relationship leaving one person to shoulder all the responsibilities? This should not be a debate about single versus married and who is going to get more help. It is also not helpful to think of people as making “choices” in a vacuum. These “choices” are conditioned by powerful societal/cultural structures. So the women who “choose” to do the housework and to cater to their husbands may feel that they have to do so in order to remain married and since single motherhood is usually harder than married motherhood, the choice becomes simple. My point here is that we as a society should support everyone to have a balanced life whether the person is single, married, childless, or with children. They do it in most countries in continental Europe where everyone regardless of their marital status gets five weeks vacation, help with caring for dependents ( mother/father/child…), health care.In my view, one of the major reasons why as a society we do not move forward in terms of providing a kinder and more supportive structures is because people are so busy pointing fingers and concerned with “their category.” This is quite absurd especially since most of us will move from the category of married to not married to married again. In addition, people who care for their children presently will probably be caring for their aging parents.How about we move to demanding better societal structures for everyone and by that I am definitely including people outside of academia. The key word here is solidarity!!!
goxewu - January 21, 2010 at 10:43 am
“These ‘choices’ are conditioned by powerful societal/cultural structures. So the women who “choose” to do the housework and to cater to their husbands may feel that they have to do so in order to remain married and since single motherhood is usually harder than married motherhood, the choice becomes simple.”At what point, pray tell, does somebody’s choice become, well, a choice, and not some helpless reaction to “powerful societal/cultural forces”? All the way up to and including, say Bernard Madoff’s ponzi scheme, or what Ann Coulter says in her books? Aren’t they, too, the victims of “powerful societal/cultural forces”? Why are the stupidities and kowtowing of presumably intelligent and educated women treated, more or less, like the material for an insanity defense in a murder trial? But, I suppose, greentara isn’t really “choosing” to raise such vacuuous, sentimental arguments about “providing a kinder and more supportive structures” for practically everybody regarding practically everything–even the housework they find themselves doing. greentara is, after all, being forced to raise them by “powerful societal/cultural forces.” And so it goes.
mkaranja - January 21, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Does anyone remember being in love and dating? Did you spend a lot of time discussing the housework and diaper changes that were sure to crop up in your future if things got serious? The reality for most of us – intelligent and not-so intelligent – is that we do not necessarily make great decisions during courtship. I received an online joke that said that dating is like installing an entertainment system on your computer, while marriage is like installing an operating system. The operating system is not much fun, and it can come as a huge disappointment to both individuals who are then forced to take off their rose-colored glasses.I’m a big proponent of encouraging singles who are dating and getting serious with someone to go through some form of marriage counseling. Most marriage counselors will bring up the tedious topics of child care and housework, which can be a great wake-up call for the lovers.Whether they choose to ignore it and hope that “love conquers all” or take it seriously is another matter entirely….One last thing – for those singles out there, it’s not just a matter of divorcing your spouse if you discover they are lazy and your choices are to live like a pig, clean up, or divorce. Indeed, it’s often just easier to swallow your frustration and take care of it yourself, especially when you consider your multiple mortgages, the fact that though your husband isn’t great at cleaning up he’s a great dad, friend, and provider, the fact that divorce means that you would most likely miss out on half of your kids lives if you share custody, the fact that overall being married with kids and overworked is still tons easier than being single with kids, and the fact that you would rather die than to rip a hole in your kid’s heart if you tear your family apart.Goxewu is right – it is a choice and for most women, it’s a decision and a sacrifice that we consciously make, because for most of us, though hard, it’s the best choice.
11161452 - January 21, 2010 at 10:32 pm
from mkaranja:”One last thing – for those singles out there, it’s not just a matter of divorcing your spouse if you discover they are lazy and your choices are to live like a pig, clean up, or divorce. Indeed, it’s often just easier to swallow your frustration and take care of it yourself, especially when you consider your multiple mortgages, the fact that though your husband isn’t great at cleaning up he’s a great dad, friend, and provider, the fact that divorce means that you would most likely miss out on half of your kids lives if you share custody, the fact that overall being married with kids and overworked is still tons easier than being single with kids, and the fact that you would rather die than to rip a hole in your kid’s heart if you tear your family apart.”Whew. Even as a lifelong single, I know marriage is no bed of roses, but reading this, I wonder that anyone goes there at all.
boiler - January 23, 2010 at 11:58 pm
A quick reply to the comment above: “Another interesting statistic I have seen more than once is that married male academics have the highest rate of publication of any class of scholar.Combine that with research that shows that the only time that men spend as much time on housework as women is when they are single and it starts to add up to a picture of one group of people – women – providing another – men – with services that benefit the latter while disadvantaging the former.”I’m a married male academic, and I do in fact have a high publication rate. Why? Because my spouse does more of the housework than I do (which she undoubtedly does, being a homemaker)? I’m prepared to believe that that’s part of it, but much more of it is that I have a family to support. My income is what our large family lives on, and more publications lead to things my family needs — tenure and raises, as well as dribs and drabs of royalties. I do summer teaching, administrative assignments, paid lectures, and anything else that will help us to get by. I resent the implication that my work productivity is a personal perk that I receive by sponging off the household efforts of others. My wife and I both contribute to the project of building a family, in different ways, and I think we both see our work as motivated by family concerns.I don’t know how far my own experience can be generalized. But I do think that discussions like this tend to caricature men, and to give them very little credit for the things they do in family life — including, very often although certainly not always, serving as an economic anchor.
amnirov - January 27, 2010 at 6:48 am
Uhhh…. how can 54% of household tasks be twice as much as the remainder?ha ha ha ha math fail!