As a woman and feminist, I value “gender equality” very highly. Over time, however, I have come in and out of different definitions of what gender equality is. At first, it was “anything you can do, I can do to.” I, a girl and a woman, wanted to prove that I could do everything men did. Then, as I got older, I turned to a different sort of definition: valuing what I as a woman do and can do just as much as a man is valued for what he can do and does. I am currently at an odd crossroads, where I want women to be recognized for things like housework and making whole entire humans, like what? as well as wanting to avoid gender essentialism that would marginalize people who do not fit into either the “woman” or “man” category. Ultimately, I think, it is most important for men to do housework but for it to not matter at all.

My initial urge for men to to housework comes from disliking (the current version of) hegemonic masculinity and its effects on society. What is most valued in society still correlates with what is most masculine, and therefore what types of skill and what types of jobs are most honored and rewarded. This means people who are not as hegemonically masculine will always come up short. The worst part is that this stratification will seem like a natural outcome because the fact that the system of valuation is skewed toward masculine behaviors, attributes, etc. remains hidden. We must recognize that masculine things are not inherently more valuable. 

As part of the solution, I think that we will be much closer to having actual equality, at least between the normative sexes of male and female, when men do housework. Men in cis, heterosexual partnerships doing just as many of the daily household chores as their partners do–and on a societal level, not just individual examples here and there–would, in my mind, act as a sort of proof that housework is no longer considered below a man, and somehow inferior.* Furthermore, if it is okay for men to do chores, then the current distinction between “men’s work” and “women’s work” will go away (seeing as there is no more “men’s” or “women’s” work).

So where are we in this process? Latshaw (2015) finds that there are some men, which they term “resolute fathers” who stay at home, perform care work, and also perform housework while their wife earns money. These men do not only do household chores that are associated with masculinity, such as mowing the lawn, but also do more stereotypically feminine chores. They also contrast with other stay-at-home fathers who are not necessarily staying at home by choice. These other men might be working in the home only temporarily or may be doing so because they are in between jobs. Men who have not chosen to work in the home of their own accord often do more masculine chores and fewer feminine chores, holding onto preconceived notions that feminine labor challenges their identity or status. My takeaway from this article is that there is major potential for men to shift away from hegemonic ideas of masculinity and take on previously feminine roles, with the major caveat that this is currently happening in a very small subset of the population. The 2020 census reports that in opposite-sex households with children under 15, the ratio between women who stay at home and men who stay at home is greater than 5:1 (U.S. Census Bureau 2020). This ratio is quite low relative to previous decades, but it still speaks volumes when 81.2% of mothers with children between the ages of 6 and 17 also worked outside the home (U.S. Department of Labor 2021).

These numbers may seem depressing, but it is also necessary to step back from the details of labor division among heterosexual men and women to examine the larger gender picture. This notion of gender equality that I have, of men and women doing household chores equally, does not take into account the people who have not fit into this binary in the first place. This is dangerous because if I as a cis, straight woman were to say that we achieved gender equality when men did housework, then I and others who thought like men would be ignoring everyone other than the most gender-privileged of those who experience gender-based oppression.

At the same time, same sex couples, non-binary and non-conforming people, and trans people all have the capacity to challenge the division of labor which I personally want gone in powerful ways. They do not fit into the binary that the division originally relied upon, so any type of labor or labor division that a non-hetero/normative couple creates is by definition subversive. Whenever a same sex couple who, perhaps, does not necessarily have a more masculine partner and a more feminine one, both do household chores and both work equally, there is no way, at least that I currently see, to still enforce the old division. The same thing can be said for a couple that includes at least one non-binary person, especially someone who is neither very masculine nor very feminine. These behaviors are crucial to undermining the categories of gender and gendered behavior that we currently use to make sense of the world.

My conclusion from all of this is that while cis, hetero men doing housework could be a crucial and useful step towards gender equality, it might not be the most important step to focus on. More valuable is probably making it so that men do not have to be cis, hetero, and masculine in order to be perceived as “real men,” and of course so that women do not have to be cis, hetero, and feminine to be perceived as real women. There is also the question of whether those categories would even matter in the first place. In any case, I think gender equality might be almost within reach when sure, men do housework, but so much other gender subversion are happening that this one thing will not necessarily be noticeable. And that would be pretty cool.

 

*One potentially insidious way in which this model works is by still using what men do or do not do as the standard for what is acceptable or valuable. I honestly do not see a way around this yet; I only know that it would be a huge step for whatever women are currently stereotyped as doing to also be done by men. 

 

Latshaw, B. A. (2015). From Mopping to Mowing: Masculinity and Housework in Stay-at-Home Father Households. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 23(3), 252–270. https://doi.org/10.1177/1060826515600880

 U.S. Census Bureau (2020). Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements, 1994 to 2020. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/saipe/guidance/model-input-data/cpsasec.html 

U.S. Department of Labor (2021). Employment Characteristics of Families – 2020. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf