A little something to start your week
Ladies? This one's for you and you know who you are.
One thing discussions about equitable distribution of labor rarely addresses — other than to point it out with a kind of “whaddya-gonna-do?” attitude — is how much unpaid labor is performed by women.
A new study published in The Lancet says that the more a woman takes on housework, family care, and the other unpaid labor, the greater the toll on their mental health.
(Here’s the summary of that study.)
Researchers say the pandemic hasn’t helped and has — in some cases — actually eroded some gains made for gender equality. From the linked New York Times story:
“In many ways, Covid has stalled or in some instances reversed some of the hard-won gains in gender equality,” said Jennifer Ervin, an author of the study and a Ph.D. candidate at the Center for Health Equity at the University of Melbourne in Australia. But, she added, the results show that “reducing the disproportionate unpaid labor burden on women, by enabling men to take on their equal share, has the potential to improve women’s mental health.”
This is not new, of course. The cost of paying women for their unpaid labor would break the bank — to the tune of something like $1.5 trillion in 2020. Surely that’s worth a no or two.
This is my song.
The male resistance routines are strong and so habituated that they are Outraged, Outraged, I tell you, to have them called out.
And at a public discourse level, that a great deal of work is almost entirely institutionally unpaid, and that nearly all of that is assigned to women, is swiftly brushed off with a scoffing, But Surely Of Course. It is the Reparations Debate of the household and the nation. "Well, it would cost far too much, so we'll just keep screwing you."
Pardon me while I spontaneously combust.
Dr. King: " Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
(I notice he did not say "demanded in a quiet, melodious voice, inflection rising at the ends of sentences, vocabulary moderated to ensure the oppressor is not threatened or made uncomfortable, accompanied by a smile and acquiescence if the oppressor continues to oppress.")