Reducing gender inequality in housework means rethinking some deeply held social truths.
This is the print edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter where our editors recommend a series of stories to spark your curiosity and delight you. Sign up here to receive it every Saturday morning.
In 2019, Sophie Knight reflected on the unusual way she and her husband tried to deal with the imbalance in time spent on housework. That is, he paid her for housework. “It made sense to us,” she wrote, “that even though our goal was to split the work equally, I ended up making more because he worked in the office. And I work from home as a freelancer. Take breaks to cook, vacuum, and do laundry.”
Ultimately, the pair found that communicating about imbalances and finding compromises was more sustainable than the invoice method. But it is not easy to deal with this type of discrepancy. Heterosexual couples who do so are fighting an entire cultural history: “Maintenance is the primary way women conduct themselves according to their gender,” my colleague Annie Lowrey wrote recently on Getting Equal Preferences. More means reconsidering some deeply held social truths. But the other side of this endeavor might be a world in which women are comfortable giving up the vacuum and saying, “It’s clean enough.”
Today’s newsletter features stories about the gender gap in housework. Including human thoughts about housework and cleaning.
About cleaning
My husband pays me to do housework.
By Sophie Knight
We want to address the systemic gender imbalance. It doesn’t really work.
Read the article
Put the vacuum cleaner down.
By Annie Lowry
Americans need to get off the orderly treadmill.
Read the article
Why do people wait 10 days to do something that takes 10 minutes?
By Amanda Mall
Housework is the worst.
Read the article
Still want to know?
Other deviations
P.S.
I recently asked readers to share photos of something that sparks awe in the world. Joe Brennan, 73, submitted this photo “Taken at low tide in San Felipe Baja California.”
I will continue to present your answers in the coming weeks.
— Isabel
