Who does the dishes in your house? Is it the invisible woman?

Ever feel like you are stuck in Groundhog Day? Chores. Day after day, no-one noticing your efforts or sparing your workload by chipping in; living with frustration and a feeling of being invisible? If this resonates with you, chances are you’re a woman. Controversial? Maybe, maybe not - read on and make your mind up at the end of this article.

I’m very fortunate that I live in an enlightened household, my husband and I, we share the chores based on our professional commitments. He will get up in the night with a sick child, he does most of the food shopping and he takes his share of the cooking and cleaning; he is a truly modern man, a great husband and an invested parent. That doesn’t mean it’s a bed of roses in our house. There is constant pressure within our home, who is going to do what, when and how, an ever present accusation bubbling under the surface that one of us might just be slacking at the expense of the other.  At its worst, it can feel like a competition for down time. It’s a modern day pressure cooker and I’ll be honest, sometimes it can be very uncomfortable.

Generally in the UK we believe we live in society where men are taking on a greater proportion of the unpaid work traditionally done by women in the home. And whilst this may be true on an individual basis, Caroline Criado Perez makes the point in her book “Invisible Women” that at a population level, that is simply not true. Globally, “75% of unpaid work is done by women” and these women spend between 3 and 6 hours per day on it compared to men’s average of 30 minutes to 2 hours.

As if that is not shocking enough, an Australian study suggests even when men do increase their share of the unpaid work involved in running a home they “cream off” the more enjoyable aspects of the role, things like childcare or running low level errands. Men are rarely engaged in bathing, dressing, using the toilet or managing incontinence, this falls to women, with 70% of unpaid dementia carers in the UK being women.

Even in wealthier families, where the decision is made to get paid help, Perez offers up studies which show women still do the majority of the work that’s left. So whilst women’s commitment to paid work has certainly increased, the same cannot be said for men’s contribution to the unpaid work that comes from running a home, having children and caring for elderly relatives.

Whilst the size of the gap may vary from country to country, the truth Perez tells us is that around the world, without exception, women work longer hours than men when you consider both paid and unpaid work. This imbalance, Perez reminds us, starts when children are very young - girls as young as 5 do significantly more household chores than their brothers and this only increases as they get older. So let’s be clear about it – in homes across the UK right now, we’re re-enforcing this bias from a very early age, setting our young women up for a life where unpaid work is both expected and undervalued, setting their expectations too low, embedding behaviours which put them at a disadvantage at home, at work and in their relationships. And we're telling our sons, expressly or implicitly, that they can do less and it's OK that their work counts for more because it is paid and unencumbered by domesticity.

Perez’s book is a must read for us all, it raises the question “is women’s unpaid work undervalued because we don’t see it - or is it invisible because we don’t value it”? 

With this question hanging in the air, I ask you again, “Who's doing the dishes in your house tonight?”