Gender Equality Starts in the Laundry Room
To help fix the pay gap, try closing the housework gap.
Never done.
Photographer: Dennis Oulds/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesAugust 26, 2019 marks the 99th anniversary of American women winning the right to vote. One of my great-grandmothers marched for suffrage, and I’ve often thought that Lucy May would be dismayed to find that, 99 years later, we’ve never had a woman president. She’d be delighted that women outpace men in getting bachelor’s degrees, irritated by the persistence of the gender wage gap — and utterly confused by the vast amounts of time modern women spend on housework.
It’s 2019! We have high-efficiency washing machines and dishwashers that connect to a magic glass rectangle in your pocket. We have $1,500 vacuum cleaners and refrigerators that tell you when you’re running out of almond milk. How is it possible that the average full-time working woman spends over 21 hours a week on housework?