Housework and the Division of Labour

After reading Jill's thoughtful post on the subject, there may, at some point be a post about marriage (it is wedding season, after all). This isn't it. This is a post about housework, prompted largely by Thomas' thoughtful comment (#32, if the link doesn't work properly).

The division of housework is one of those feminist person-is-political issues that it seems we should have resolved already. It seems so obvious: assuming both members of a heterosexual couple are working outside the home (and thus have similar out-of-house responsibilities), they should each do 50% of the housework. Easy, right? Especially if both partners have good intentions are are committed to an ideology of equality.

Not so much, as it turns out. Women still, consistently, end up doing more. It's been confirmed in poll after study after anecdote. Why?

For starters, there's the "she has a higher standard of cleanliness/she notices the dirt more" argument. I don't think I need to spend much time on this, since it strikes me as a pretty obvious cop-out. Bachelor pads to the contrary, most adult men don't want to live in pig-stys, and thus benefit from women's supposed "higher standard". Of course, culturally, women know they're the ones who are going to be criticized if the in-laws come by and see a less than pristine environment. And as long as men "don't notice" the dirt, they can get away without cleaning it -- it's all very passive-aggressive, although I'll grant that for many men it's probably at least partially uncounscious.

But the big thing, for me, is what Thomas mentions: the keeping track. It doesn't "count" as a chore if you're the one who constantly "notices" that cleaning needs doing -- it only counts when he responds to your request/nagging.

This turns the woman into the primary cleanliness monitor, and the man into the "helper". It becomes her responsibility to stay on top of the housework, and if she's not paying attention, asking him to "pitch in", it doesn't get done. And that's exhausting. It's a constant monitor-layer, over and above a woman's "fair share". And, of course, the woman's the one who has to ensure "fairness" is maintained in the "equitable" division of the "actual work" (odanu has a great comment at pandagon to this effect).

My, that's a lot of scare quotes in that paragraph. I fear my sarcasm is showing.

The other effect of the monitor-role is to turn the woman into Mom -- after all, it's Mom who assigns chores and asks for help around the house. And you can't be an equal partner when you're being Mommy.

Bitch PhD's suggestion for dealing with the housework issue is to "be a bitch about it" (and that's reductive, so go read her entire post -- it's a good one) -- effectively, to draw attention to the amount of work being done so that the male partner can't pretend not to notice. It forces the man to untimately internalize the workload in the way women are socialized to from childhood. It's good advice for a certain kind of person, but I have a hard time separating "being a bitch" in this way from "nagging", and, for me, it's psychologically and emotionally exhausting, even if it pays off in the long run. Nagging also puts the woman in a kind of Mommy role that I'd prefer to stay well out of. But I don't have a better suggestion.

Is true domestic equality impossible, even with an egalitarian-minded partner? Surely not. But it does take a lot of work, and a lot of goodwill, especially on the part of the man (who, after all, is being asked to give a privilege that's pretty deeply ingrained).

So -- ideas, comments, suggestions? How do you get a male partner to really truly pull his weight? Without mind games? Assume good intent and a desire for equality on his part, because we've got to get this kind of thing straight with our allies before we can hope to do any good to the more traditionally-minded folks.