I nodded. I see this every day in my coaching practice where I help women find balance and fairness at work and at home. How, in this age of supposed growing gender equality, has unfairness become the silent wedge in marriages and relationships?
Despite increases in equality, in educational and career opportunities, inequity in the home persists. Research in 2019 showed that women in Ireland do 20 hours of weekly housework compared to nine carried out by men.
A University of Limerick study published in 2021 found that gender disparity in domestic chores starts early, occurring at age nine and is even greater by 13 with children tending to do “gender-typical” chores, and girls doing more housework overall.
This is why women in midlife are usually the busiest, and least supported cohort of society. A recent survey revealed that a third of people in Ireland claim to feel always or often stressed on a daily basis. And the biggest cohort? People aged 45-54, with twice as many women as men.
No country has yet fully transitioned, although Denmark and Norway currently top the UN Gender Inequality Index as the most equitable to date.
This means that most men, especially the ones from their 30s and 40s onwards, grew up in a much deeper patriarchy than they are married in.
In this transition, each couple is working it out as they go along, trying to improve what has gone before. Because the lag in equity over equality is more prominent in the traditionally unseen, unpaid and unrecognised “women’s” work, there has been some progress in the practical chores, leaving a more subtle burden that weighs far more heavily on women, often called the invisible work. Invisible only to some. Just ask any woman who leaves piles of ‘stuff’ on the stairs in the wild hope that someone else will see it and bring it upstairs.
The entire world is focused on execution, and men are stepping up. But women are still doing most of the cognitive labour
Research published by the US Fair Play Institute this year looked at how mothers and their partners divvied up 30 common household tasks, such as laundry, groceries and helping with homework.
Crucially, the study separated the responsibility of thinking about the task from the responsibility of doing the task. So when it came to the chore of groceries, for example, they differentiated between checking the fridge for what is low and making a list (the planning), versus doing the actual shopping and bringing the groceries back in the house (the execution).
What the report found was that mothers took on greater responsibility for the cognitive labour of 29 out of 30 tasks. A typically “male” job like taking out the rubbish was the only task for which male partners were responsible for both the cognitive and physical labour.
“The entire world is focused on execution, and men are stepping up. But women are still doing most of the cognitive labour,” says the report. “It is not men’s fault, but they have an inaccurate perception of what a task involves, so they are over-reporting what they do.”
So while there has been some progress on the balance of fairness in executing jobs, there is still a gaping hole in terms of the cognitive responsibility for household and family tasks. This unseen burden is causing the resentment that seethes underneath the surface of many a marriage.
I hear this distinction repeatedly with my clients – even if their partner does help, they are still the ones thinking about what needs to be done and organising it.
Conversations versus conflict
My clients often tell me how they scream for more help because they feel so overwhelmed, but nothing changes.
I encourage them to really articulate what that help looks like. And crucially, to ask that their partner takes full ownership for the task. If that doesn’t happen, it will always revert back to the prime person, contributing to that resentment that it’s all on her rather than a team effort.
As we role-model to the younger generations, we have to make the invisible work visible.
One way is to make a list of all jobs and responsibilities that the home requires. Each task requires one column for who is mentally responsible and one column for who executes the tasks. Here is where the conversation happens, rather than having constant conflict because he thinks he’s doing his fair share but can’t see the rest of the responsibility.
This can be reviewed each year, and as children grow older, they can take on a greater quota. This way, everyone sees that running a home is a team sport.
What often happens is the man does the last, visible task in what is actually a long list of unseen tasks.
On a weekend, for example, children may have sports and birthday party commitments. A couple may divvy up the lifts, but the work of making sure sports gear is clean, liaising with parent WhatsApp groups and buying the birthday present is all done, invisibly, beforehand.
One of my clients, a senior executive, was getting the bin company’s notification each week, even when out of the country, meaning she still had to “take responsibility” for passing it on so her partner could put them out.
Good intentions
Couples often start off with good intentions of having a fair relationship, but as children arrive and the mother naturally takes on a greater responsibility of childcare early on, the groove can persist. Unless regularly reviewed and updated to changing circumstances, this can lead to unfairness, resentment and conflict.
Everyone knows she is the one who remembers what sports gear needs to be washed, the one who thinks about the half-term cover and buys the Christmas presents – then nothing changes at home, despite her taking on more work responsibility.
I had a client recently who was resentful and exhausted. She and her husband worked full-time, and she got up early to fit a gym session in before coming back home to get the children ready for school with her husband.
But he played sport three evenings a week, which resulted in unfairness and lots of resentment.
Through conversation rather than conflict, she was able to suggest she do the evening shift and he do the morning shift, so she can go straight to work from the gym.
Running a family is like running a business and no business would last without regular reviews to update on what’s working, what’s changed and what course correction is needed.
Equity might not look like a 50/50 split of jobs. The key is to have an ongoing, course-correcting model – not a rigid clipboard to beat each other over the head with.
Equity can feel and look different to every family depending on the stage and circumstances, and fairness will make it a happier place for everyone.
Alana Kirk is The Midlife Coach and author of Midlife, redefined: Better, Bolder. Brighter. For more information, visit themidlifecoach.org
