Home is where the inequality is, a new survey has revealed.
A new poll for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour found that 75 percent of women feel most unequal in their own homes due to the unfair division of housework.
Two in five say they’ve had arguments with a partner when asking for greater equality at home.
Karen Dalziel, editor of the BBC’s Woman’s Hour, said the poll aimed to find out where women feel they’ve achieved equality since the first episode of the programme aired 75 years ago and to identify what should be next in the fight for equal rights.
“The three areas that stood out were experiences of sexual abuse and exploitation, unfairness around pay and benefits and frustrations around the unfair division of labour in the home,” says Dalziel. “This poll suggests that while progress has undoubtedly been made, there is still work to be done.”
According to the poll, 68 percent of women feel they do not have equality due to experiences of sexual exploitation and abuse.
The labour divide in the home is a topic that is gaining more attention, particularly due to the rise in women’s invisible labour during the pandemic. As Mashable’s Natasha Piñon wrote, “in recent years, ‘invisible labour‘ has become shorthand for the household maintenance and child-rearing activities that women, primarily in cisgender, heterosexual relationships, find themselves bearing the brunt of.”
“These tasks are work — they require time and effort — but you don’t get paid, or, in many cases, even recognized for them,” Piñon continues. So basically, if you find that the majority share of household chores and childcare duties is falling on your shoulders, that’s invisible labour.
It’s a problem faced by cisgender women in heterosexual relationships and this labour is referred to as invisible as it’s all too often unpaid and unseen. Housework and chores are a form of unpaid labour that largely falls on the shoulders of women. In America, married mothers spend almost double the amount of time on housework and childcare that American dads do.
The Women’s Hour survey also revealed that 48 percent of women feel they are expected to perform certain roles at work like remembering birthdays and organising social events. 70 percent of women say they feel pay and benefits are still not equal.
Equality, it seems, begins at home. And there’s quite a bit of work still to be done.
