geni wrote:
On 11/22/06, Tony Jacobs gtjacobs@hotmail.com wrote:
From: Puppy puppy@KillerChihuahua.com I don't want to sound misogynistic here - certainly some men were more biased, some less, some not at all, and some were feminists. But they still didn't clean the kitchen.
If a man doesn't clean the kitchen, he's not a feminist.
You failed to say when though. Men generally will clean kitchens but only when they view them as unacceptably dirty. This is I suspect the problem.
They could have been theoretical feminists, eh?
And I worked there for almost nine years. No man ever cleaned the kitchen, the entire time I was there. Every so often a woman would mention a rotating roster, so the same people would not always be cleaning the kitchen - but the men always shouted it down. Once we went on strike - didn't clean. When the kitchen got too nasty, the men started going out to lunch. One said, the refrigerator in the breakroom is starting to smell. I said, why don't you clean it then? He said, I'm not the maid. I said, we don't have a maid, who do you think has been cleaning the kitchen? And he said, That's right, why don't you clean the kitchen? No lie. He was one of the worst offenders though. He belonged to some church which believed women should subjugate themselves to men, and he had a hard time taking orders from women - not me, he didn't report to me, but he did report to a woman. The situation worsened, and everyone of the men was complaining. We kept asking, why don't you clean it then? And one of the other men said, if we wait long enough one of the women will clean it. He was an avowed feminist. Right. And four women finally cleaned the kitchen when bigwigs from corporate were coming. It seems the men were right - if they waited long enough, a woman would do it. I went to the corporate office several times, and guess who was cleaning the breakroom? A woman.
I'm not claiming my experience and observation hold true everywhere, but there was a study a few years ago - two career households, who did most of the housework - and, more tellingly, what the perception was. Men evaluated the share of the housework they did. Women almost always evaluated their share as larger than their significant others did - if the man said 50/50, the woman would say something like 20/80, or 10/90. Guess what? The men did a lot less than they thought. I cannot locate the study but this seems similar: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2445(198111)43%3A4%3C865%3ADPWHEM%3E2.... "in order not to cross identity tension lines, today's professional women are going through a process of role expansion (adding new responsibilities without relinquishing old ones), rather than a process of role redefinition "And its still true: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20060728/ai_n16635205.. Study after study bears this out. Women with careers simply do it all. This study found that women doctors devote just as much time to patients and workload as men doctors, yet devote a great deal more time to domestic duties: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1983.tb00629.x So women with careers don't get equal support on the domestic front. And this carries over to work - men simply don't realize for the most part how much housework there is. It is done, you see. They "pitch in" and feel they are supporting their wife - yet when their wife does domestic chores, they do not view it as their wife "pitching in" and helping the husband. I'm not sure how much of this is societal, how much is basic differences. We cannot neglect the fact that it is women who bear children, either - even if you take the minimum off from work, your career suffers somewhat. If you have complications it suffers even more. The average woman has gaps in her work history due to children, which a man does not have. This helps keep the wage gap wide, and I think many men - subconsciously or not - feel that if they are making 80% of the money and the woman is making 20% of the money, then a little calculator in his head, buried deep, figures that he only needs to do 20% of the housework. A woman with the same degree and experience as a man makes about 77% the salary, for the same education, experience, and hours at work. Add in lost experience due to having a family, and the gap widens. These statistics are US.
Perceptions are still off, also: a recent study shows that women are currently *under* estimating the amount of housework men do: http://www.careerjournal.com/columnists/workfamily/20050520-workfamily.html which shows that women (on average, based on this study) believe men do 33% of the housework, but the men actually do an average of 39% of the housework - but the men think they do an average of 42% of the housework, so they are still overestimating their contribution. The recent change to women underestimating the effort men put forth may be discouraging to men, however - it seems likely.
It is a complex situation, and I think a little off topic. I don't know if there is anything here which will illuminate the gender bias and/or gender gap which we have on Wikipedia, or give insight as to how to approach better balance. Does any of this cause women to value themselves less? Do they do "cleanup" because they're used to it? Do they shy away from ArbCom or B'crat because they are non-confrontational? due to gender differences, or societal expectations (Pavlovian training)? The email which started this thread talked about "women's subjects" such as blow dryers and curling irons, and that was written by a female, yes? That's horrifying to me.
I'm going off to see if Nail polish could use a "woman's touch" - heaven forfend I actually put any chemistry into the darn article. (yes this is sarcasm, I have no intention of editing Nail polish.)
-kc, who has run on enough about a social issue with no direct bearing on Wikipedia