Women Who Do Housework Should be Paid For It.

[Forty Two]

What about henpecked men like DaveDildo?

Shouldn't they be paid as well?

No, Dave is an oppressor, so he gets nothing.

[pErvinalia]

Liveable for a single person. Civilised world.

[Hermit]

The gender roles are diminishing here in Oz at least. And not to mention that many mothers work full time too as well as the father.

Yes. Things are improving, but there is quite a long way to go yet. It seems that a lot of the time when the man of the dual income household returns from his hard day at work he takes the rubbish out once a week, mows the lawn once a fortnight, hangs a picture up once in a blue moon, changes lightbulbs as needed, then settles down in front of the teev to watch the footy. When the woman returns from her hard day at work, she is more often than not lumbered with the bulk of the cooking, cleaning and child-rearing, some of which she does before going to her place of employment as well.

There are exceptions, of course, and as I said things are improving, but at this stage the exceptions remain just that - exceptions. I regret not having been an example of such exceptions.

I find this to be nothing like reality for myself or any man I know that has a wife and kids.

You seem to live in an enlightened stratum of society. Turning from the anecdotal to the statistic view:

Later housework studies have found that women—especially employed women—are doing less housework than before and that men are doing somewhat more. Nevertheless, the average married woman in the United States did about three times as much cooking, cleaning, laundry, and other routine housework in the 1990s as the average married man. Household work continues to be divided according to gender, with women performing the vast majority of the repetitive indoor housework tasks and men performing occasional outdoor tasks (Coltrane 2000).

(Link) The article is 13 years old, but while conditions have undoubtedly improved between then and now I doubt the change is substantial.

I tried to ferret out concrete data. Unfortunately every study that looked promising is either behind a paywall or only available on paper. The closest I got to one was this study. Done in Italy, the numbers cannot be assumed to be the same as in the USA. The history and social fabric is different. However, like the USA, Italy is a modern, developed capitalist democracy. It turns out that when both partners work full time the female spends 226 minutes a day doing housework and 91 doing childcare, while the figures for the male are 87 and 50 respectively. When the male is unemployed and the female works full time the woman still does a little more of the housework (215) than the male (195), though a bit less time on childcare (41 and 70 minutes respectively).

If you can find recent statistics as they apply to the USA I would love to see them.

I've noticed in these studies that they are "self-reporting" which means that the respondent's report how much time they spend, which is not particularly reliable.

Both women as well as men are interviewed. Unless you have evidence that one sex tends to exaggerate more than the other it's reasonable to conclude that the numbers are correct.

it's not fair to say women do too much laundry without looking at who still does various other aspects of work at home.

You think such things as taking the car to the mechanic's workshop for its service or to the petrol station for refuelling is not included under the rubric of domestic work?

typically, men still "are forced by cultural norms" (to use the Progressive lingo) to work more hours outside the home than women do, so it stands to reason that if one spouse is home at 5 and the other at 7, that one of them will be in a better position to deal with dinner and laundry.

That is fair enough, but going by the figures I provided is not what happens. Look at them again please. To save you the trouble of scrolling up I'll quote them again:

It turns out that when both partners work full time the female spends 226 minutes a day doing housework and 91 doing childcare, while the figures for the male are 87 and 50 respectively. When the male is unemployed and the female works full time the woman still does a little more of the housework (215) than the male (195), though a bit less time on childcare (41 and 70 minutes respectively).

Please pay particular attention to the case where both spouses work full time. The symmetry you assume is just not there. In the case where the woman works full time and her partner is unemployed is just as telling, though not as immediately obvious.

[Forty Two]

Both women as well as men are interviewed. Unless you have evidence that one sex tends to exaggerate more than the other it's reasonable to conclude that the numbers are correct.

I only have the basic reality that "self-report" in studies is very unreliable. People tend to be inaccurate when they self report. I think there is a question as to whether men and women would answer the questions the same. Men may tend not to think of certain tasks as work, and may not report them, and women -- who may be more of the mind that the things they do at home constitute work would tend to report more tasks and time. Like on questions involving self-reporting sex -- men tend to overestimate their sex lives and women tend to underestimate it, based on perceived societal expectations.

No, I don't have "evidence" to support my suspicions, though. But, I think it's fair to question the studies, and we should really see the studies in question and examine their methodology etc.

One thing I've seen in these studies is that they narrowly define housework -- a man changing the oil in the car is not doing housework. Washing the car is not housework. Cleaning the garage is not listed. Cleaning gutters. All that.

I have no doubt that women tend to do some more of the housecleaning and laundry than men. Women tend to have tougher standards when it comes to cleanliness of the house -- guys aren't as quick to worry about stuff. Guys don't decorate as much or in the same way, so women tend to spend more time on that. But, that doesn't mean that men aren't doing their fair share -- like, I'll split the laundry, if my wife wants to spend the day pressure washing the driveway when it needs it and all the other similar tasks.

it's not fair to say women do too much laundry without looking at who still does various other aspects of work at home.

You think such things as taking the car to the mechanic's workshop for its service or to the petrol station for refuelling is not included under the rubric of domestic work?

Yes. I think that such stuff is not included.

typically, men still "are forced by cultural norms" (to use the Progressive lingo) to work more hours outside the home than women do, so it stands to reason that if one spouse is home at 5 and the other at 7, that one of them will be in a better position to deal with dinner and laundry.

That is fair enough, but going by the figures I provided is not what happens. Look at them again please. To save you the trouble of scrolling up I'll quote them again:

It turns out that when both partners work full time the female spends 226 minutes a day doing housework and 91 doing childcare, while the figures for the male are 87 and 50 respectively. When the male is unemployed and the female works full time the woman still does a little more of the housework (215) than the male (195), though a bit less time on childcare (41 and 70 minutes respectively).

That's a tad deceptive -- men who work full time tend to work more hours than women who work full time. Full time is considered anything over about 32 hours per week (in the US). Full time men work more than full time women. And, this is, again, self-reporting. I don't trust those numbers. Nobody times themselves on these tasks. So, if a woman comes home from work and spends 226 minutes on "housework" -- that's almost four hours... FOUR HOURS of housework every, single day. Four hours? Really? What's being considered housework in that analysis? It's not just cleaning the house and doing the laundry -- that doesn't take four hours. That basically is every minute from when a person walks in the door from work, say about 6pm, to 10pm in the evening. That's considering taking a shit and eating dinner to be "housework" (not even counting the additional hour and a half of "child care time" -- 5 1/2 hours of "work?" And, that's AFTER working a "full time" job outside the home?

Given that other studies show that women, like men, watch about 4 hours of TV and other "screen time" every single day -- something is getting lost in the shuffle here.

Please pay particular attention to the case where both spouses work full time. The symmetry you assume is just not there. In the case where the woman works full time and her partner is unemployed is just as telling, though not as immediately obvious.

That all depends on (a) the accuracy of the reporting and (b) the jobs/tasks around the house are considered "housework" and (c) the jobs/tasks that the persons responding to the study consider to be housework.

I am very doubtful about a study that says that people come home from a full time job and then "work" for 5 1/2 hours. If that's true, then whose watching TV for 4 hours? Do we have an 8 hour day at the office, add to that lunch and commute, and call it 10 hours. Then 9 1/2 hours of "work" at home plus TV watching and other screen time -- that's 19 1/2 hours, and we're to believe that the average family woman gets to sleep for 4 or 5 hours, and then has to get back up to work and grind it out again?

The numbers don't make much sense.

As a guy, for example, and a dad -- I don't really consider it "child care" to read my daughter a story and play games with her. But, is that part of child care? I don't know. It seems like almost everything a person does has to be considered housework or childcare if one is claiming 5 1/2 hours give or take of time spent on those activities.

[Seth]

Evidence suggests otherwise, Jim. A basic income has been trialled and used in a number of places around the world and the results are usually an increase in work and economic participation and a reduction in entrenched poverty. This idea that there is a threat of spongers is simplistic neoliberal fear rhetoric.

Where has it been trialled?

And I think the key to reducing poverty is policies which get the maximum number of people working as possible, which means governments investing heavily in job creation, infrastructure development and, in particular, well targeted training schemes... Of course, along with that, giving adequate financial support to people who simply cannot work, or are in between jobs.

The reality is that the west is facing systemic un(der)-employment due to offshoring of jobs and technological disruption. It's only going to get worse. We either accept this fact and agree that there will always be a 15-20% of the working population un(der)-employed, with that percentage growing in the future, and pay everyone a minimum living wage, or follow the current inhuman system where we treat welfare recipients as spongers and inherently flawed (i.e. Social Darwinism bollocks) and punish them for not working in jobs that don't exist.

Well, the problem with that analysis is that it is not true that jobs "don't exist." To begin with, there are about 12 million jobs that do exist that are occupied by illegal aliens rather than poor citizens of the US. Aliens are not entitled to hold jobs in the US, indeed they are prohibited by law from doing so, which means that the first thing that needs to be done is to unemploy and deport all illegal aliens occupying jobs and replace them with American citizens who ARE entitled to work here. That knocks 12 million off the number of people who are unemployed immediately.

The second problem is that there are plenty of jobs that are available that people don't particularly want to do, like harvesting fruit in Palisade, CO, where a year ago fruit growers got together to offer upwards of $25/hr for citizens willing to work in the orchards. Their experience was that citizens would show up, stay a day or two, or often less, and never come back, evidently because the work was "beneath" their dignity, which means that these people were not "unemployed" they refused employment in large part because taking welfare was less difficult and physically demanding that actually working for a living. And that is one of the secret facts of unemployment in the US: Lots of jobs which American citizens won't do because the government will pay them to do nothing.

Take away that support and they will find jobs or they will go hungry and homeless, and hunger and homelessness are the traditional, historical and perfectly appropriate and moral drivers to individual responsibility and labor.

But, if we are going to have to pay to support them, then I expect them to report for "work" each and every day at 9 am at either a vocational school, menial government job like hauling garbage, sweeping streets, patching potholes or painting lines on the highway with a brush...ANYTHING that will require them to labor for eight hours a day in return for an EBT deposit at the end of each day for the appropriate dole amount.

We have to make being unemployed and on the dole more unpleasant and undesirable than being employed in some menial but productive job that can act as a springboard to career advancement. After all, only 5% of workers get only minimum wage in this country and the vast majority of them only stay in that pay grade for a year or less before they get a raise out of that category. Minimum wage jobs are not designed or intended to be career category jobs, they are intended to be entry-level jobs where new workers can gain work experience and demonstrate their abilities as they work towards better employment. If you are in a minimum wage job for more than a year, you're frankly an incompetent individual to begin with and don't deserve to be paid more.

If we did away with the whole welfare system and just payed everyone a set minimum wage, I'd expect it wouldn't be much more expensive, and possibly less expensive in the long run. No need for reporting and enforcement measures and associated staff, and all the cross checking and auditing that goes along with that. Centrelink could be closed and go fully online. Save HEAPS of money.

What you'd get is a nation of unemployed and unemployable slackers, idlers and layabouts who, being given what they need to survive without having to do anything at all, will spend their time robbing people, burglarizing houses, smoking pot and otherwise being antisocial elements sucking off the public teat...until the OPM runs out and those tasked with creating wealth only to have it stolen from them and given to slacking idlers decide to themselves become slacking idlers or, if they are wealthy enough, decide to simply remove their wealth from that society and go somewhere else entirely where their wealth will not be taken from them.

The changes to the welfare system during the Clinton administration, with the "Welfare to Work" rules that gave people a lifetime limit of 5 years of public assistance was a huge motivator and reduced both welfare costs and improved the economic conditions of millions of former welfare recipients who under your system were slaves to the welfare state with no hope of ever escaping...on a generational basis. It was Obama who suspended those rules because as a Marxist Progressive he doesn't want the poor to be employed or self-sufficient, he wants them chained to the welfare state in perpetuity because he wants to be able to coerce their votes to advance the Marxist Progressive agenda. The two most potent tools for coercing people into voting for you are control of their income and control of their health care, both of which Obama has been intent on gaining absolute control of for 7 years now, and the Progressives before him for nearly a hundred years before that.

You can't "welfare" people into economic prosperity or even economic sufficiency, it's fiscally impossible for any society to achieve this goal. The math simply won't allow it, so people have to be given incentive to work to create wealth rather than being dependent on others for their income.

[laklak]

Average 4 hours of housework a day? Bullshit.

[JimC]

Average 4 hours of housework a day? Bullshit.

I think they may have a very broad definition of what constitutes housework...

[Hermit]

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

Both women as well as men are interviewed. Unless you have evidence that one sex tends to exaggerate more than the other it's reasonable to conclude that the numbers are correct.

I only have the basic reality that "self-report" in studies is very unreliable. People tend to be inaccurate when they self report. I think there is a question as to whether men and women would answer the questions the same. Men may tend not to think of certain tasks as work, and may not report them, and women -- who may be more of the mind that the things they do at home constitute work would tend to report more tasks and time. Like on questions involving self-reporting sex -- men tend to overestimate their sex lives and women tend to underestimate it, based on perceived societal expectations.

No, I don't have "evidence" to support my suspicions, though. But, I think it's fair to question the studies, and we should really see the studies in question and examine their methodology etc.

One thing I've seen in these studies is that they narrowly define housework -- a man changing the oil in the car is not doing housework. Washing the car is not housework. Cleaning the garage is not listed. Cleaning gutters. All that.

I have no doubt that women tend to do some more of the housecleaning and laundry than men. Women tend to have tougher standards when it comes to cleanliness of the house -- guys aren't as quick to worry about stuff. Guys don't decorate as much or in the same way, so women tend to spend more time on that. But, that doesn't mean that men aren't doing their fair share -- like, I'll split the laundry, if my wife wants to spend the day pressure washing the driveway when it needs it and all the other similar tasks.

it's not fair to say women do too much laundry without looking at who still does various other aspects of work at home.

You think such things as taking the car to the mechanic's workshop for its service or to the petrol station for refuelling is not included under the rubric of domestic work?

Yes. I think that such stuff is not included.

typically, men still "are forced by cultural norms" (to use the Progressive lingo) to work more hours outside the home than women do, so it stands to reason that if one spouse is home at 5 and the other at 7, that one of them will be in a better position to deal with dinner and laundry.

That is fair enough, but going by the figures I provided is not what happens. Look at them again please. To save you the trouble of scrolling up I'll quote them again:

It turns out that when both partners work full time the female spends 226 minutes a day doing housework and 91 doing childcare, while the figures for the male are 87 and 50 respectively. When the male is unemployed and the female works full time the woman still does a little more of the housework (215) than the male (195), though a bit less time on childcare (41 and 70 minutes respectively).

That's a tad deceptive -- men who work full time tend to work more hours than women who work full time. Full time is considered anything over about 32 hours per week (in the US). Full time men work more than full time women. And, this is, again, self-reporting. I don't trust those numbers. Nobody times themselves on these tasks. So, if a woman comes home from work and spends 226 minutes on "housework" -- that's almost four hours... FOUR HOURS of housework every, single day. Four hours? Really? What's being considered housework in that analysis? It's not just cleaning the house and doing the laundry -- that doesn't take four hours. That basically is every minute from when a person walks in the door from work, say about 6pm, to 10pm in the evening. That's considering taking a shit and eating dinner to be "housework" (not even counting the additional hour and a half of "child care time" -- 5 1/2 hours of "work?" And, that's AFTER working a "full time" job outside the home?

Given that other studies show that women, like men, watch about 4 hours of TV and other "screen time" every single day -- something is getting lost in the shuffle here.

Please pay particular attention to the case where both spouses work full time. The symmetry you assume is just not there. In the case where the woman works full time and her partner is unemployed is just as telling, though not as immediately obvious.

That all depends on (a) the accuracy of the reporting and (b) the jobs/tasks around the house are considered "housework" and (c) the jobs/tasks that the persons responding to the study consider to be housework.

I am very doubtful about a study that says that people come home from a full time job and then "work" for 5 1/2 hours. If that's true, then whose watching TV for 4 hours? Do we have an 8 hour day at the office, add to that lunch and commute, and call it 10 hours. Then 9 1/2 hours of "work" at home plus TV watching and other screen time -- that's 19 1/2 hours, and we're to believe that the average family woman gets to sleep for 4 or 5 hours, and then has to get back up to work and grind it out again?

The numbers don't make much sense.

As a guy, for example, and a dad -- I don't really consider it "child care" to read my daughter a story and play games with her. But, is that part of child care? I don't know. It seems like almost everything a person does has to be considered housework or childcare if one is claiming 5 1/2 hours give or take of time spent on those activities.

That's a lot of words to say "I disagree". Now it would be nice if you found evidence for the things you disagree about.

[pErvinalia]

Evidence suggests otherwise, Jim. A basic income has been trialled and used in a number of places around the world and the results are usually an increase in work and economic participation and a reduction in entrenched poverty. This idea that there is a threat of spongers is simplistic neoliberal fear rhetoric.

Where has it been trialled?

And I think the key to reducing poverty is policies which get the maximum number of people working as possible, which means governments investing heavily in job creation, infrastructure development and, in particular, well targeted training schemes... Of course, along with that, giving adequate financial support to people who simply cannot work, or are in between jobs.

The reality is that the west is facing systemic un(der)-employment due to offshoring of jobs and technological disruption. It's only going to get worse. We either accept this fact and agree that there will always be a 15-20% of the working population un(der)-employed, with that percentage growing in the future, and pay everyone a minimum living wage, or follow the current inhuman system where we treat welfare recipients as spongers and inherently flawed (i.e. Social Darwinism bollocks) and punish them for not working in jobs that don't exist.

Well, the problem with that analysis is that it is not true that jobs "don't exist." To begin with, there are about 12 million jobs that do exist that are occupied by illegal aliens rather than poor citizens of the US. Aliens are not entitled to hold jobs in the US, indeed they are prohibited by law from doing so, which means that the first thing that needs to be done is to unemploy and deport all illegal aliens occupying jobs and replace them with American citizens who ARE entitled to work here. That knocks 12 million off the number of people who are unemployed immediately.

I'm not sure on the US situation but in the rest of the western world it's common for the ratio of jobless to job vacancies to be something like 2x or 3x. Regarding your illegal aliens thing, they won't be working for the minimum wage. If they went away overnight, you wouldn't find there being 12 million additional job vacancies. There'd be considerably less. Your U6 unemployment numbers are 16.5 million people. And that only includes those searching for work. There's always a significant number that have dropped out of the job market altogether.

Take away that support and they will find jobs or they will go hungry and homeless, and hunger and homelessness are the traditional, historical and perfectly appropriate and moral drivers to individual responsibility and labor.

Social Darwinism has no place in a civilised society. You were born 100 years too late.

But, if we are going to have to pay to support them, then I expect them to report for "work" each and every day at 9 am at either a vocational school, menial government job like hauling garbage, sweeping streets, patching potholes or painting lines on the highway with a brush...ANYTHING that will require them to labor for eight hours a day in return for an EBT deposit at the end of each day for the appropriate dole amount.

Who cares what you think? Economic and social decisions should be made on evidence and reasoning, not backward morals.

We have to make being unemployed and on the dole more unpleasant and undesirable

No "we" don't.

If we did away with the whole welfare system and just payed everyone a set minimum wage, I'd expect it wouldn't be much more expensive, and possibly less expensive in the long run. No need for reporting and enforcement measures and associated staff, and all the cross checking and auditing that goes along with that. Centrelink could be closed and go fully online. Save HEAPS of money.

What you'd get is a nation of unemployed and unemployable slackers, idlers and layabouts who, being given what they need to survive without having to do anything at all, will spend their time robbing people, burglarizing houses, smoking pot and otherwise being antisocial elements sucking off the public teat...

Problem for you is that the direct evidence and psychological research show the exact opposite. Your conservative brain is inherently distrusting of human nature. The problem is that reality has a liberal bias. Your brain is giving you a particularly wrong view of society as you are overly scared due to an enlarged amygdala.

until the OPM runs out

Zero sum game fallacy, yet again.

and those tasked with creating wealth

"tasked" with creating wealth?!? What mythical being is 'tasking' these people?

You can't "welfare" people into economic prosperity or even economic sufficiency, it's fiscally impossible for any society to achieve this goal. The math simply won't allow it, so people have to be given incentive to work to create wealth rather than being dependent on others for their income.

Except both math and reality show it is possible.

[JimC]

The critical thing Forty Two ignores is that a solid majority of the unemployed are not relishing their idleness, but seriously want jobs, because they want a future for themselves and their families. In most cases, they keep applying and applying for work. Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many. What a civilised community should do is to organise its economy and its labour markets to give the maximum chance possible for all those who want realistic work in their own communities to achieve that goal. Whatever the initial cost in re-training or job creation schemes, there will be a pay-off in terms of happier, healthier communities with fewer health and crime problems.

[pErvinalia]

Yep. But Seth doesn't believe in society. He believes in individual economic units. So things like social and family cohesion mean nothing to him. Mental health means nothing to him.

[JimC]

Yep. But Seth doesn't believe in society. He believes in individual economic units. So things like social and family cohesion mean nothing to him. Mental health means nothing to him.

Well, it is hard to grasp something you've never had personal experience of...

[pErvinalia]

[laklak]

Average 4 hours of housework a day? Bullshit.

I think they may have a very broad definition of what constitutes housework...

Hard day watching Oprah and eating bonbons, m' dear?

[JimC]

Average 4 hours of housework a day? Bullshit.

I think they may have a very broad definition of what constitutes housework...

Hard day watching Oprah and eating bonbons, m' dear?

Eating Oprah and watching bonbons?