Career-Family Balance and Housework
Women in science have two jobs: scientist for perhaps 60 hours per week, and houseworker for perhaps 20 hours per week. Experiments and observations can swallow up the entirety of a scientist's time, but she will love it. She won't complain. However, if she goes home to sleep and finds a sink full of dirty dishes, a load of laundry containing all of her sheets and underwear, a crabby husband, and a crying baby, she forgets sleep and carries on with housework. Performing two jobs makes it harder to succeed at either one of them. Today, men have taken up an increased share of the jobs that need to be done at home. A CNN article in 2008* cited a study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research on 8,000 American families. From six hours of housework per week in 1976, men had jumped up to 13 hours per week in 2005. That is a huge increase.
But a recently released study by Londa Schiebinger at the Clayman Institute for Gender Studies at Stanford University** showed that female scientists with partners do 54% of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry while partnered male scientists do only 28%. In their publication in Academe Online, Schiebinger and Gilmartin said, "When the call came from Stockholm early one October morning, Nobel Prize-winner Carol W. Greider was not working in her lab or sleeping. She was doing laundry. She is far from alone."
TELL US: I wonder if any of you who are women in science have experienced an increase in help from your male partners? Do you believe you are now equal, or is he still doing less than half of the work? How do you feel about this issue? Is it impeding your scientific progress?
*By Maureen Salamon, June 28, 2008; downloaded Mar 31, 2010 from: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/06/17/housework.relationships/
**By Londa Schiebinger and Shannon Gilmartin, Academe online, January-February, 2010, Downloaded Mar 31, 2010 from: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2010/JF/feat/schie.htm
PREVIEW: Coming soon, thanks to your suggestions, discussion of the new movie "Naturally Obsessed." The film is slated to appear on PBS stations later in April, 2010. It follows three graduate students studying the molecular biological regulation of fat storage/release, two male and one female. I would love you to see it, then come back here for conversation. A thread on it will be posted early next week.
Also note: Soon it will be possible to comment under a pseudonym. I have received email suggesting that some people may not be comfortable commenting under their real names, for fear of reprisals or because the situation they'd like to discuss involves other people. I will announce when this change has been made.
I think men don't even realize how much work house cleaning and child care are. They "help" but I agree with those Stanford women, they don't carry their fair share.
For my household, it comes down to a division of labor. I take care of more than my husband with the kids, schedules and food, but he takes care of house maintenance, yardwork and finances. In the end, we probably do roughly the same amount of non-career work.
I have to agree that there is definitely a difference in efficiency and technique. When he does try to step into my realm, it takes him much longer to get things done and its never done the way I want. So even if he tried to help out more with what I do, I probably wouldn't let him!
Agreed Laura! All help is appreciated and acknowledged. Same with the baby help. The diaper used to fall off sometimes when he started practicing. And the outfits he comes up with (losing his color distinctions) are not always "pretty" shall we say, but the baby is dressed and having fun which is what is important. Being grateful fills you with grace too!
I remember those days. My spouse is currently going to school again, so he's the one at home. He does a lot of laundry, dishes, shopping for food, even cooking sometimes. The microwave is our friend too. But before he changed directions, he worked two to three hours from our home and therefore, between commuting and working, I could barely expect he had the energy to carry out the garbage!
I know what you mean about efficiency differences, but I finally decided that if I criticize and complain, he won't want to do anything to help at all. All help gratefully accepted, that's my motto.
cheers,
Laura
You are definitely right about being more efficient. My spouse just commented this weekend how much I got done in the same amount of time that he was working on his chores. I finished all my cleaning, laundry, food prep (baby and snacks) and cooking in the same time he took to clean the floors...a consequence of marrying someone for whom multi-tasking is not an easy skillset:) I'm not sure how to get that to change to be honest. I can't send him to a time management class as I would one of my associates!
It's true that I do more than he does, but we actually spend the same amount of time on house work stuff. This means i am faster and more efficient at it. I think I apply the same attitude to housework that I do in the lab--get in, get out, get it done. He doesn't think this way, and generally moves slower and doesn't multitask. So in effect I do more even though we are technically giving the same amount of time out of our careers to do it. I wonder if a lot of women scientists have this problem---making up for partner's inefficiencies is something a lot of women do, and especially-efficient women seem to self select into science. Just wondering....
I certainly get help from my spouse around the house, but I'd agree it's 75% my job and 25% his. If we had the resources, getting domestic help would make a big impact, but that's not an option for us right now. I think that when possible domestic help should be utilized so that when we do have free time, we spend it how we want and not how we "should".
Does it impact my career? No, but I work in industry where the hours are reasonable compared to academe. I make time for my family and the domestic work by staying up after the baby is in bed or getting up before my family wakes up on weekends. It's not optimal but it works for us and keeps my resentment over carrying the lion's share of the load to a minimum!
There has been some trouble with the site stability, but the ITS team has fixed the problem. It's safe to post now. Coming next week will be an option for posting under a pseudonym, but you'll still need to register and sign in. If you want to say something anonymous on this topic, wait for that option to become available.
best,
Laura
