Ask me what I do to relax, and I’ll say I love to clean and cook. Ask me about a splurge purchase, and I’ll say it was the expensive Dyson vacuum I bought two years ago. I get excited to take a break during the workday to fold laundry.

I joke that I unfortunately love domestic tasks. Whether it’s cooking, cleaning, planning, or grocery shopping, I find simple pleasure in them.

So why do I use the word “unfortunately?”

Because I know the gendered expectations attached to domestic tasks. I think of myself as someone with feminist values, and I like to believe I don’t live my life overly ruled by gender roles. Now, I don’t think it’s un-feminist to do domestic tasks (as I said I love them!) I’m not personally bothered by the stereotype itself. To me, part of feminism is letting a woman choose the lifestyle she wants, even if that means being a traditional stay-at-home wife. What irritates me is that these gendered tasks are placed on me because of the combination of my gender and the fact that I happen to like them. Mostly, I’m frustrated by the disparate impacts these gender roles around tasks and time have on women, and therefore on me.

Gendered Tasks and Time

For this writing, I’m going to critique the hegemonies of gender, labor, and time. When I refer to masculine, that generally maps onto men in society today. When I refer to feminine, that generally maps onto women. This writing will be quite heteronormative because this conversation about gendered divisions of labor is most pertinent to heterosexual relationships. Same-sex relationships don’t always fall into these gender roles, and therefore don’t always experience unequal divisions of labor in the same way.

The unfortunate thing is that this unequal distribution of labor still happens in “progressive” heterosexual relationships. Mangino writes that “so many relationships who ostensibly believe in the ideals of feminism (some queer, but mostly straight) almost always defaulted to an unequal distribution of labor — one that got significantly worse once kids entered the picture.”[1] Sigh. Depressing for me to read.

I’m looking at household labor and leisure together because the two are inseparable: the more time someone spends on recurring domestic tasks, the less protected time they have for rest and hobbies. Time is our most valuable and finite resource. It is what makes up a life, and “to steal someone’s time is to steal their life.”[2]

Gender-coded Household Tasks

I didn’t really understand the impact of this gender inequality, and I didn’t think it would touch me because I felt very far from marriage and children. But when I moved in with my ex, the unequal division of tasks and time became very apparent. I took on most of the domestic tasks: cooking, cleaning, plant care, getting groceries, scheduling social activities, planning dates, paying bills and tracking the shared expenses, feeding the dogs, and doing laundry. On paper, it seemed manageable, especially because I’m a Type A person who likes that kind of stuff and already feels pretty efficient at it. But I realized that I was now cooking for two, doing laundry for two, and buying groceries for two, all on top of working full time.

Meanwhile, my ex worked part time and handled mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, walking the dogs, and the occasional household repairs. He spent a lot of time golfing, watching sports with his friends, cycling, watching tv shows, playing video games, and hiking with the dogs. By comparison, I had very little time for hobbies that I normally did like going to the movies, hanging out with friends, going to the gym, or reading. After weeks of keeping that pace, I was on the brink of burning out.

When I realized my share of the household tasks was lopsided in that old relationship, I found a worksheet for couples that tracked how long each task took and how much pleasure each person got from it. I asked my ex if we could use it to reassess our division of labor. It started off fine, but when he saw that many of my tasks recurred throughout the week or day and took more time overall, he reacted badly. It’s hard to know in hindsight what was going on in his brain. Was he reacting to the idea that my feminine-coded tasks required more work and mattered more to our daily life than his masculine-coded tasks? Was he resisting the idea that fairness would require him to give up some of his leisure time? I am not sure, but I suspect I am not the only woman in a heterosexual partnership who has faced that kind of reaction.

Masculine-coded tasks today usually involve outdoor labor and intermittent tasks. You can think of fix-it projects, yard work, heavy lifting, car maintenance, and so on. As we can see, these are not usually daily tasks. You don’t need to work on your car every day, and most people don’t have some large repair project every day. Also note that lots of these tasks don’t apply to urban men who are living in apartments and therefore don’t have a house or land to take care of.

On the flip side, feminine-coded tasks tend to be domestic labor. These are the labors of living such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, caregiving, taking out the trash, and planning. As you can see, many of these are much more frequent tasks, sometimes occurring daily. There is a term called cognitive labor, which refers to the invisible mental work that happens before any actual work begins. For example, one could be folding laundry while making a mental checklist of what they need to buy at the grocery store later. This kind of cognitive labor is especially necessary for people with families because domestic labor is unrelenting: any prolonged pause in keeping up with these tasks means they start piling onto each other pretty quickly.

Here is the thing, everyone has to do these feminine-coded domestic tasks at some point as an adult, especially single adults living alone. That is how essential these tasks are to a functioning home. By contrast, many people today can get by without doing masculine-coded tasks regularly. I have not had to mow a lawn, rake leaves, or shovel snow in years. I live in an apartment, so I can call maintenance when my sink breaks. It is easy to take a car to an auto shop. I do not need to paint the outside of my home, I rarely need to lift anything so heavy that I cannot manage it myself, and taking out the trash once a week is simple.

Across the board, women spend twice as much time on housework as men.[3] That holds true regardless of age, marital status, employment status, or level of education. Marriage heightens this inequality. Studies show that married women do much more household work than single women. The same is not true for men. Married men spend only a few minutes more per day on household work than single men.[4] Even without children, married women tend to spend 2.4 times more time on household work than their husbands.[5] Things get worse when kids are in the picture. Mothers, whether single or married, spend nearly twice as much time on childcare as fathers.[6] Married women with more than three children average 28 hours a week on housework, while married men log only 10 hours.[7] Sociologist Arlie Hochschild called this the infamous “Second Shift”: the extra work mothers do when she gets home from paid work, which cuts directly into their leisure time. Hochschild argues that this can stem from working mothers’ guilt that they may be seen as penalizing their children by having careers, so they invest even more time in caregiving than fathers do.[8]

Women also take on the cognitive labor of reminding men to do household chores. When men do issue reminders, it’s likely because the chore will benefit them personally, not necessarily their partner. Depressingly, even if the woman is the breadwinner in the household, she still ends up doing more housework than the man.

A book (that I have been meaning to read) called Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home by Kate Mangino, uses the terms Noticers and Non-Noticers. Mangino says that noticing is a female-coded task because it has such strong ties to social bonds and care, both of which girls are socialized to prioritize from a young age. A household Noticer takes on that cognitive labor. They notice when something needs to be added to the shopping list because it’s almost gone, when the dishwasher is clean and needs emptying, and when a spot in the house is getting extra dirty. Mangino also writes that the Noticer is often the one doing the nice touches around the house. They might put up family photos, add homey decorations, and plan social events with friends and family. Mangino says Non-Noticers may disregard these as trivial touches, but they probably add more to life than the Non-Noticer cares to admit. These little acts can make a house more comfortable and personalized, maintain important social bonds, and improve emotional health. In that way, the Noticer is simply caring for others and using their ability to notice to demonstrate love.

What are the men doing in all this? Men generally seem to think that housework and care work are being split equally. Men are twice as likely as women to say that housework and care work are shared equally, but the actual time spent by each person shows that this is not true.[9]

Are the men just stupid? Can they not clearly see that the woman is doing more of the work? Well, it might be because not all chores are created equal. Some chores take much more time or require leaving the house, like going to the grocery store. Others only take a few minutes and can be done at home, such as loading the dishwasher. Some chores are challenging, like putting together furniture. These more challenging chores provide mental stimulation and autonomy, so the person doing them usually feels better when they’re completed. By contrast, mundane routine chores, which are often feminine-coded, tend to make people feel more depressed.[10] Household tasks can be divided evenly by number and still be unequal in time, effort, flexibility, and emotional impact.

Gender-coded Leisure Time

When it comes to hobbies, masculine-coded hobbies tend to happen away from the home. These include hunting, fishing, sports leagues, woodworking, golf, cycling, and watching sports. It’s also significant that many of these hobbies take up a substantial amount of time. They can involve an entire weekend, as with hunting or fishing, or take up hours of a day, as with golf and sports. Importantly, they also usually don’t provide something directly back to the family. They are often for the sole enjoyment of the man.

Feminine-coded hobbies usually take place in the home. In fact, many feminine-coded hobbies contribute to domestic homemaking such as baking, cooking, reading, gardening, knitting, and organizing. They are also tasks that can be interrupted or can be done while multitasking. A mother can bake while watching the kids or cook while a load of laundry is going.

For women, leisure time is often constrained, meaning there is a time limit or pressure to get back to other household responsibilities. This pressure lessens the quality of the leisure and any relaxing effect those activities should have. That is partly why so many feminine-coded hobbies take place in the home: the woman can get back to the household tasks that need to be done, or do them concurrently with her hobbies. The constraints of feminine-coded leisure tighten when children enter the picture. Many mothers tend to include children in their leisure activities, much more so than fathers. They also are shown to adjust their leisure to the needs and preferences of their partner instead of their own preferences. This “contaminates” the mother’s leisure time because it limits the amount of full restoration that time can provide.[11] The luxuries of time and flexibility aren’t trivial when it comes to leisure.

All of this assumes that women even have time to dedicate to leisure or hobbies. Many mothers “feel like there is room for absolutely nothing other than care and work in their lives, even things they feel really passionate about.”[12] A 2015 UK study from the Office of National Statistics found that on average, men have five more hours of leisure time per week than women.[13] Mangino writes, “Imagine all the extra hours men in this study can invest in other activities… he can devote this time to hobbies, relaxation, exercise, hanging out with friends, sleeping, work and/or continued education. Essentially, he has the opportunity to do so much more with his life than she does.”[14]

Systemic Forces

We can’t talk about labor inequality without mentioning the systemic forces that shape it. A lot has changed in the last century. Women have the right to vote, can work, and are increasingly breaking the glass ceiling in the workplace. Seventy-eight percent of prime-age American women are in the labor force now[15], but our parental policies and social infrastructure still function as though women will stay home with children.

One often-discussed social system is paid parental leave. The United States is the only high-income nation in the world that does not provide paid leave for new parents[16]; it is up to states and employers to grant it. As the saying goes, if you want to know what people value, look at the budget. In the U.S., family benefits make up only 0.6% of GDP, compared with 2.6% in Germany and 3.3% in Sweden.[17] Most other countries also provide extensive policies for childcare and preschool support. The U.S. does not.[18] In fact, in the States, a year of childcare can sometimes cost as much as a year of college, something most families would struggle to afford.[19]

Because of this lack of support for starting families, some couples decide that it is more financially reasonable for one parent to stay home than to pay for childcare. That parent tends to be the woman, because her lower earnings are often harder to justify keeping in the workforce compared with the higher-earning man’s.

These policies did not emerge in a vacuum. They reflect a much older belief that women naturally belong in the home and that their unpaid labor should be available to support family and society. One of the clearest examples of that belief is the Cult of Domesticity.

Cult of Domesticity

To understand why domestic labor is still so strongly associated with women, it helps to look at one of the historical frameworks that helped make that association: the Cult of Domesticity, also called True Womanhood.

The Cult of Domesticity matters because it helped make unpaid domestic labor seem natural for women while hiding the racialized and classed labor exploitation that made that ideal possible. It was a 19th-century belief that restricted women to the private sphere of the home and defined femininity through submissiveness, piety, and household labor. It barred women from public and professional life. Under this ideal, she was supposed to be the spiritual cornerstone of the family: teaching her children Christianity, reading and studying the Bible from home, and not pursuing intellectual interests except religion.[20]

This belief developed as a new market economy grew and the middle class was created. A middle-class family didn’t need everyone to earn wages in order to survive, so men could work while women stayed at home. As paid work increasingly moved outside the home, men became associated with the public, exploitative workplace while women became associated with the private, quiet household. This created a distinction between the “safe home” and the “dangerous workplace.” For white upper- and middle-class women, staying out of the workplace was considered moral and respectable.[21] This framed the unpaid domestic labor white women did at home as honorable, but it also made that work invisible to the actual economy and to power. At the same time, paid domestic labor was coded as a racialized role, mostly done by enslaved and formerly enslaved Black women and later by immigrants and migrants of color. This made the work white women did at home morally superior, while the paid labor that actually supported domestic life was devalued and rendered even more invisible than their white counterparts’ labor.[22]

This was a belief perpetuated by both white men and women of Protestant backgrounds. True Womanhood came with protections and luxuries, so it was something many women did want to achieve. But this “True Womanhood” was not achievable for many women, particularly women of color. Black and immigrant women were excluded from even being seen as human, let alone as women, no matter how pious they were. They were never allowed full access to the ideal of “True Womanhood.”[23]

White women didn’t achieve True Womanhood without the labor of women of color and poor women. During this time, and even today, the luxuries used to curate the image of a perfectly domestic household relied on products and services that women of color and poor women made possible.

We can see this clearly with enslaved and formerly enslaved women during the century when the Cult of Domesticity rose. Black women still had to bear the hard labor of planting, harvesting, and building the infrastructure that industrialized the U.S. Frederick Douglass captured this distinction when he argued to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a white suffragist, that womanhood did not shield enslaved women from labor, violence, family separation, or death.[24]

BIPOC women during this period didn’t have the luxury of not working. They needed to work because many Black families required dual incomes to meet their needs.[25] The structures of government and society also sought to maintain the racial hierarchy once slavery ended. They enacted barriers and funnels so that the only work available to Black women was the low-wage domestic labor serving white families.[26] Indigenous women were also often forced to do unpaid domestic and agricultural labor for white families.[27] The Fair Labor Standards Act during the New Deal era excluded domestic labor, work that at that time was mostly done by Black women and later Latinas, so they were excluded from protections that white workers had.[28]

Domestic work was denigrated not only because it was feminized, but because it was racialized. Chinese men were often forced into feminized labor in this racialized labor system. Because of the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, most of the Chinese immigrants that came to the U.S. were men. They originally came to work on railroad construction and mining fields, but eventually they were forced out of those work sectors because of white antagonism. That forced many of them into low-wage service roles like laundry work, cooking, gardening, and working as “houseboys” for white families.[29]

As with a lot of things in life, the Cult of Domesticity has to do with patriarchy and racism. In all aspects of life, white men held power, supremacy, and domination. That included control over the labor of people of color and poor white women. Racism already had a strong grip on society and enabled labor exploitation. To extract unpaid or underpaid labor, society defined domestic work as women’s natural role, racialized that work as servile, and then devalued the very labor it depended on.

As history tends to do, things come in waves. There have been waves of feminism, and we’re seeing a new wave of this Cult of Domesticity today. This can be seen in the rise of Trad Wives content, homesteading and homeschooling, more young people seeking religion, conspiracies about birth control, the ending of Roe v. Wade, and lots of online influencers telling people to “embrace their divine feminine” and seek a “soft life.” I won’t dive into all of these right now, but just know they are part of a larger cycle of conservative values and expectations around how a woman should be.

Impacts of this Inequality

Unhappy Marriages

As with many things related to the patriarchy, this unequal domestic labor distribution to women creates negative impacts for people, couples, and families.

According to a University of Michigan study, having a husband creates an extra seven hours of household work for the woman, a phenomenon researchers coined the “Husband Effect.” For men, having a wife saves them an average of one hour of household work per week.[30] Wives who take on the role of household manager, making sure tasks are getting done or checking in on kids, feel more personal strain and are less satisfied with their marriages than couples who share that role more equally.[31] And when husbands discount their wives’ household contributions, the risk of divorce increases.[32]

Couples can feel this unequal labor as strain in the relationship. Both the husband and wife find the inequality distressing. In fact, couples who value equality and a fair division of labor may feel the impact more sharply when their expectations are not met than couples with more traditional ideas about household work.[33] However, the husbands tended to be more disturbed when the inequality meant they were personally benefiting less from their chores, while the wives were distressed when the inequality meant that they were personally benefitting more than their partner.[34] Dartmouth sociologist Dr.  Kathryn Lively says this is because “if women believed they were doing less than their fair share; they were significantly more likely to feel fear or self-reproach.” Whereas “men who thought they were doing more than their fair share were more likely to experience rage or anger in comparison to women.”[35] This is dangerous territory for wives and may help explain why women initiate roughly 69% of divorces.[36]

Parenthood is hard on both parents. Both end up working longer hours and devoting more time to children, but women tend to take on more of that work. This demanding and exhausting labor leaves parents with little time to rest or enjoy time together. It also puts their mental health at risk, especially mothers, who are more vulnerable to burnout. As one can imagine, that does not bode well for a marriage.

This inequality is unfair to the women in these dynamics, and it denies them the fuller life they deserve. With all this information about marriage and the burden it can place on women, it’s understandable that some women would reject marriage or resist tying themselves to what might feel like an inevitable life of labor.

Giving Up on Dating, Marriage, and Children

Understandably, this is a part of what makes women wary of marriage. Already women tend not to get many positive benefits from marriage in the same way men do. For men, marriage can result in longer lifespan and fewer health problems.[37] For women, that is only true if they have high satisfaction in their marriage. If the marriage is unsatisfying to the woman, those health benefits disappear.[38]

In studies comparing women of all ages and marital statuses, the women who did the least amount of housework were single women in their 20s and 30s. They spent on average about 12 hours a week while married women in their 60s and 70s spent the most, at 21 hours a week. The pattern is reversed for men. Young single men tend to do the most housework, and as they age and marry, they do less and less.[39]

Modern women aren’t naïve to this dynamic. They are aware of the consequences marriage can have for their freedom, financial independence, egalitarian values, and time. There are now multiple movements of women rejecting dating, marriage, and children across the world. In a Forbes study, one in three women said they were concerned that marrying a man could hurt their career.[40] The 4B movement, which stands for the “Four No’s” in South Korea, has grown in popularity among women who reject dating men, marrying men, having sex with men, or having children with men.[41] Bihon (meaning no-marriage in Korean) refers to communities of young feminists who reject traditional family structures and instead focus on female friendships and lifelong singledom.[42] And there is a new term coined “heteropessimism” that is described as the pervasive feeling of dread and regret about heterosexual dating and relationships. This is largely been adopted by heterosexual women of late.[43]

This pessimism shows up a study from 2024 that found that nearly 70% of college-educated singles feel negative about the possibility of finding a partner who’s right for them.[44] Women are now 23% less likely than men to say they want to date, with 61% of single men say they are currently looking for a relationship or dates compared with only 38% of single women.[45] A Pew Research poll found that 12th-grade girls are sharply deprioritizing marriage, with 61% of girls in 2023 saying they expected to get married compared with 83% of girls in 1993.[46] We all also probably know the near hysteria about the declining global fertility rate. According to the U.S. Census, childless American women (ages 30-34) have increased from 28.9% in 2014 to 40.3% in 2024.[47]

There are some positives to take away from this data, which is that more women can choose when and how they want to start a family or get married. More women have autonomy and rights in society to live the life they want. Women don’t want to be property, they are increasingly aware of and resistant to capitalistic machines like the wedding industrial complex, and they are more educated about pregnancy and birth, so they can make informed choices.

But I am concerned with the anti-social dynamics this rejection of dating, relationships, and the opposite sex may deepen.

Now, you know I’m not a conservative who cares about issues like the fertility rate that much. I understand if we have less kids we’re going to be left with a geriatric society with not enough young people to take care of the old people. I’m also not a person that puts marriage on a morality pedestal and thinks everyone needs to get married for it to be a moral, committed relationship. I can also understand the rejection of men. Many women have been subject to domestic violence, abusive relationships, and sexual assault. Then when even the “good” relationships are unequal and unfair to the woman in them, I can see why women would move away from getting in relationships with men.

But I fear some of these movements may add to polarization and ostracization that can lead us to view one another as sub-human.

Let’s examine heteropessimism as that’s something that’s big in US pop culture. It’s largely categorized as an online lifestyle, inflamed by both online and in-person rhetoric from women who sometimes proudly call themselves man-hating women. They operate from the idea that heterosexual dating and relationships are essentially immutable and irredeemable, almost entirely flawed because of men. There was a big trend this year of women saying having a boyfriend is embarrassing or that having a boyfriend feels Republican.[48] In their online circles, they tend to highlight men like Andrew Tate and generalize the behaviors of all men as similar to Tate’s. This kind of discourse, where women walk through the world as though they are surrounded by Andrew Tates, is just not actually representative of the daily life and people that surround most women. In a 2025 YouGov survey, 71% of young men had a negative opinion of Andrew Tate, and only 6% of the young men had a negative opinion of women.[49]

A common conversation that comes up in these spaces is when a woman enters this community sharing a story about how her partner cheated on her or did something else immoral, and the other women respond with something along the lines of “she should have known better,” “you don’t know what’s good for you,” or “of course this happened to her because she dated a man.” Critics see this as a more palatable way for women to be misogynistic by encouraging shame and self-hatred. Instead of viewing the problems women commonly face in relationships with men as cultural, systemic, or collective, they view them as individual and personal. Instead of critiquing tech companies for monopolizing a specific kind of dating culture, systemic policies for devaluing women, or patriarchal teachings, these circles say the person to blame is the individual. That she should have known better. That it her is fault for even trying. It essentially dismisses and ridicules heterosexual women who pursue romantic relationships with men, something quite intrinsic to human nature and something heterosexual woman can’t change.

I know a few women like this. In circles of all women, they shit talk the men they know, pulling physical attributes or features and citing that as the reason why that man is worthless. They are quick to jump on an opportunity to drag down a friend’s male partner and tell them to dump them or divorce them. They justify their words by labeling themselves as feminist and a girls’ girl. They seem to believe men are the cause of all problems, that a society run entirely by women would be a utopia, and that getting rid of men would solve everything. What I hear in that is bitterness that I can only imagine comes from pain, caused by men that they have not been able to move through.

I’m not naïve. I know that a large reason why this anti-man movement has sprung up lately is because of the much more violent and harmful men’s right movement and manosphere that has been raging for years. The hateful rhetoric, nasty politics, dark rabbit holes some men are engaged in, and actual assaults and murders attributed to incels are much-discussed topics of concern. It’s not something I’ll get into with this blog post; there’s already a lot out there on this. But I bring it up to acknowledge that these bubbles of rejecting men are, I believe, largely reactionary and far less threatening or violent than the men’s side of this gender war. Nevertheless, I don’t believe it’s healthy or good for the future of our society.

There is a time and place for healthy conflict that produces growth and necessary change, or at least the understanding of oneself. I think there is a lot of good that comes from healthy love and relationships, and that good is essential to human nature. I know there is a lot of harm with isolation, loneliness and becoming more inflexible to who you let in. And in my journey of life so far, I know that resisting vulnerability and the full force of emotions has negative consequences. Asa Seresin in her article on heteropessimism, says that it is an anesthetic feeling. It’s meant to “preemptively anesthetize the heart against the pervasive awfulness of heterosexual culture as well as the sharp plunge of quotidian romantic pain.”[50] We lose a lot of the human experience if we shield ourselves from life’s biggest pains, like heartbreak and disappointment.

So, it’s clear that something has to change. Marriage and dating are much bigger topics than I am tackling here, but domestic labor is a place to begin. If this unequal domestic labor is a part of what makes heterosexual relationships undesirable to women, then we must collectively build more equal homes and relationship dynamics.

What’s the Solution?

Recognize the Inequality

It may sound simple, but the first step to solving this is you must recognize and see it when it happens. As Mangino said, “If people doing male-coded tasks think they’re doing half the work, and if people doing female-coded tasks think that this is as good as it gets… we’re probably not going to change.”[51] We need men to recognize that if they are dividing the chores between outdoor vs. indoor, it’s not equality. We need men to be open to the idea that they may be perpetuating an unequal and misogynistic dynamic in their own house even if their values might oppose that concept.

The great thing is that simply sharing the value of household equality can be an indicator of a happier couple. A 2014 study by Brian G. Ogolsky, a professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, found that for women, agreeing that household labor should be divided equally positively affected how they felt about the quality of their marriages. In fact, the agreement itself sometimes mattered more than whether tasks were actually shared equally. This suggests that women want their partners to believe in equality, not just perform equality when asked.[52]

They also need to be aware of “re-framing” tactics that couples tend to use when it comes to household work so that the inequality doesn’t seem like a gender issue. Dr. Allison Daminger says that when couples are faced with the possibility that they are using gender to divide up their household work, they have three choices to make. They either change their values, change their behavior, or “de-gender” their behavior. She says no one wants to change their values since they deem those are integral to who they are as a person. They also resist changing behavior because its hard and requires time. So many couples enact the third option, “de-gender” their behavior.

This can look a couple of ways. They are essentially tactics that the couple uses on their gendered behavior to make it look like it’s not about gender. Mangino says “I think these are critical to recognize, because these reframing tactics are part of why we perpetuate sexist traditions. And we can’t stop doing them if we don’t recognize them.”

A popular reframe is the Supervisor and Employee dynamic. Usually, the wife takes on the Supervisor or Manager role in the house. She assigns tasks, oversees their quality, and takes on the cognitive labor. The husband is her Employee, following her orders. The problem is that the Supervisor sometimes can’t keep her husband accountable if he doesn’t end up doing the task or constantly needs reminding. And the husband can build resentment at being an Employee where he is expected to listen and follow instructions in this structure that assumes she has authority over him.

Another reframing tactic that is the base of many sitcoms is the Bossy Wife Decoy. This is a reframe where it makes the house look like the opposite of the stereotypical gender division by asserting that the woman is the one actually in charge.

We’ve heard these lines before:

• “She wears the pants in our family.”
• “Don’t ask me – go ask The Boss.”
• “I don’t make the rules, I just live here.”
• “Happy wife, happy life.”

Mangino says this is a hard reframe to confront though because it is often used as humor and among friends or associates. The women who push back on this can be gaslighted, dismissed that they are being too sensitive or can’t take a joke, or used as proof of their overcontrolling behavior. She says, “these are common ways that structural misogyny polices our actions, putting non-compliant women back in their place.”[53]

At this point, hearing these makes me cringe because of the number of old men and sitcoms I’ve heard say these lines that have a clear element of sexism in them. It reinforces the idea that women and wives are bossy, pushy, nagging, and over-controlling. It suggests he is taking a backseat in the home and avoids responsibility for household labor. Mangino says the couples who pivot to this Bossy Wife Decoy are very likely still participating in a traditional gendered household balance. The wife is likely doing all the work, likely operationalizing and enforcing the chores, and letting the husband do very little.[54]

Talk About It

Once you can acknowledge that there is some disparity happening here, you need to talk about it. Researchers and authors who study the gender divide in leisure and domestic labor point out that the equality gap between countries like Norway and the United States is not as large as you might expect. In other words, even though Norway provides much better social support and parental support, inequality still persists. That suggests policy support matters, but it does not automatically undo the gendered expectations people keep performing in their own homes. Ultimately, people decide to keep performing gender the way it traditionally has been performed. People, and especially couples, need to talk much more honestly with each other about why they act the way they do and how they feel about it if change is going to start happening in families.[55] Mangino says that our everyday conversations “can be the greatest drivers of change.”[56]

One of the simpler conversations that can take place is acknowledging the tasks that are done. Going back to the concept of Noticers and Non-Noticers, Mangino says that Non-Noticers could take the time to say thank you and appreciate the acts their partner does to make their life better. In turn, they could start to become Noticers themselves. She says that one of the reasons cognitive labor is so burdensome is because it tends to be thankless. Because it is rarely noticed and often taken for granted, there is rarely any recognition for it. She likens it to that old saying about logistics: “When they’re done well, no one says a word. When you make the tiniest mistake, everyone complains.” [57]

Boy, can I relate to that! Very recently, I did a lot of planning for a group trip, and I actually got a lot of appreciation and gratitude for the planning work I did. Almost entirely from the men on the trip, which is meaningful clue about the kind of male friends I keep around. But the one time I got a detail slightly wrong, we ended up walking 15 minutes instead of 4, and the other woman on the trip kept complaining and bringing my mistake up. She tried to get another friend to join in the belaboring, but he did not. Thing is, she didn’t plan a single thing! I said she could go ahead and start planning the trip if she had that many thoughts on it and she stopped bringing it up.

Act on Your Beliefs

Those obsessed with glory attach their well-being to the regard of others, those who love pleasure tie it to feelings, but the one with true understanding seeks it only in their own actions.”

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Of course, it’s not enough to be aware of the inequality or even talk about it if you don’t act on what you see and change your behaviors and habits. The good news is that we can change if we want to. Many of these roles are gender constructs we’ve been conditioned to accept, and we can start to unlearn them. It seems like Americans do want to change. Recent public polling found that 77% of Americans believe women and men should share childcare and household work.[58] Mangino says, “if we are truly committed to gender equality, then we need to push ourselves to actually do something about it.” [59]

There’s not one simple solution. Each couple will have different systems, abilities, and constraints. Professionals suggest a few starting points for couples who want to act on this issue. They note that this gendered system of labor exists partly because it is practical: it provides clear organization, expectations, and structure around household work. Removing that gendered framework without replacing it with a more equitable one can set a couple up to fail.

To start, a couple needs to be intentional about how they divide the chores from the beginning. If stress or habit kicks in, chances are they will revert to gendered roles. Time diaries can help couples become more aware of who is doing what and how much time they actually spend on those tasks. This includes the tasks that end, like taking out the trash, and the tasks that get noticed, like adding milk to the shopping list. Couples can also create lists of the tasks they prefer and estimate how long each one takes.[60] This was essentially the worksheet I brought up with my ex. Then the couple needs to talk about what they find. Do they like the outcome shown on paper? What changes can they make, and how can the division become more equitable?

Non-Noticers, usually the men in these heterosexual relationships can work on becoming Noticers. Mangino says in order for a truly equal partnership to exist, both people must be Noticers. [61] Men can acknowledge the tasks or skills they lack, like cooking or laundry, and put effort into learning them instead of falling back on weaponized incompetence. After all, these are simply essential skills to being a functioning adult. I have a friend whose husband of over a decade still doesn’t know how to cook. They are a progressive, alternative, child-free couple, and they get along great in most regards, except that she has to cook for them every single night. We’ve gone out to happy hour, and she will have to leave at a certain point to get back to her husband and cook for him. She doesn’t trust him to boil water or even fry an egg. She doesn’t seem to mind it a whole lot, but it also doesn’t sound like a skill he has any real interest in learning and makes him dependent on her. He could do a lot to share the work just by taking the time to learn more cooking skills, practice on his own, and take initiative in a skill he knows he lacks.

But that gets to the other factor here, which is how women can sometimes block men from participating in domestic tasks. This is called “gatekeeping,” where a woman may limit what tasks the man can take on, over-manage how they are done, or eventually take back the tasks assigned to him because they aren’t being done to her standards.[62] She may gatekeep in the name of efficiency, believing the tasks will get done faster and with less struggle if she just does them herself instead of coaching him through them or enduring his resistance. I’ve been that woman this before. Mangino says women need to do less and recognize when they are going overboard. One thing women can tell themselves is that 60% is good enough. Often, they feel compelled to do 99%, and Mangino advocates that they use some of that time for their own interests and pleasures. Mangino says, “it might be worth sacrificing your own household efficiency for the sake of greater social change… I am not advocating parity because it is just better for women. I’m advocating for parity because it is better for everyone… including men.” [63]

Meditations

I want to end on a meditation of what is possible for equal partnerships and gender equity. Specifically, meditation from the Stoic philosophy perspective, which is an askesis, or self-reflection, essentially an active mental exercise examining your thoughts and aligning your actions with your virtue. It starts with purpose and a commitment to following through, valuing the discipline of action.[64]

Mangino writes that she started her research by studying men who were already equal partners. She called them “EPs.” This was a diverse group of 40 men from 15 U.S. states and Canadian provinces: rural, suburban, and urban; some in same-sex relationships and most in heterosexual relationships; some with only a high school diploma and one with a PhD; some salaried and some hourly. The group also spanned religious, racial, and ethnic backgrounds, including Black, Afro-Caribbean, Latino, Asian American, African, Native American, and White men, as well as Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Bahai, and non-religious men. About her findings, she writes:

They didn’t necessarily find parity on their own – and I think that is also important to note. They were each influenced by someone along the way, but they all came to the same conclusion – they wanted to be an equal partner in their relationship.

The EP40 are not giving anything up; they gain from being an equal partner. The men I interviewed rejected the idea that they were sacrificing, or giving anything up. Being an equal partner was their choice, and they wouldn’t want a life any other way. They were also very clear on the benefits to being an equal partner, which included a great relationship with their spouse, meaningful relationships with their kids, and a feeling of success for being fully competent in their home.

Ah, before I forget – you asked what their partners thought of them. Well, their partners loved them! I mean, relationships are still tough. They told me about hard times and the usual arguments. The EP40 are not saints. They’re human, and often said or did the wrong thing. But overall – the partners deeply appreciated their own household parity. They knew they had a different kind of relationship than most people. And they were glad. They might get mad at their partner for this or that, but they didn’t resent them. There wasn’t any bitterness. There was always still a lot to do – but they felt like a team. They worked hard together, and felt exhausted together.”[65]

The way Mangino talks about this study and these men makes it clear that they gave her hope. They are modern examples of men who are doing the work, believing in equality, and seeing the results in their partnerships. They are not experts or exceptional people in any particular way, which is part of what makes them useful examples. They show that equal partnership is possible when men want it enough to practice it. For a lot of women, this is the goal of a modern equal partnership: not perfection, but a relationship where both people are invested, capable, and mutually responsible.

This reflects a modern definition of feminism: “Everyone, regardless of gender, should have equal rights and opportunities. And in today’s intersectional feminism, we mean equality for everyone, regardless of gender identity, sexuality, race, class, or ethnicity.”[66] It is a bell hooks kind of feminism, one that argues equality is good not only because it gives women the freedoms, rights, and liberties usually afforded to men, but also because it encourages men to develop feminine-coded skills and embrace parts of themselves that patriarchy has constrained.

This movement of women turning away from men is small, but I do see versions of it in my own circles. I believe it is reactionary and built from painful past experiences. A more productive, pro-social response to these gender inequities is to turn toward hope, believe in progress, and act on that belief. That does not mean ignoring the realities and the harms that many women face in dating and relationships. But it is a rejection of letting that reality dominate our expectations and visions of partnership.

There is a term that emerged in response to heteropessimism: hetero-optimism. It is not necessarily a term I will adopt, because to me, hetero-optimism is already embedded in a true feminist view of modern relationships. It is not a rejection of men, relationships, or love. It is a turn toward agency, toward the belief that men can change, and toward the cultivation of love, respect, and understanding in our most intimate connections. It’s about balancing a realistic view of people and the need to maintain self-respect, your values, and dignity. It’s the ability to sometimes let something go, not with pessimism and nihilism but as an action step to a better partnership. We should try to solve them and seek growth within the relationships that mean the most to us.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

References

[1] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[2] https://zawn.substack.com/p/its-time-to-stop-lying-about-household

[3] https://thegepi.org/free-time-gender-gap/

[4] https://thegepi.org/free-time-gender-gap/

[5] https://thegepi.org/free-time-gender-gap/

[6] https://thegepi.org/free-time-gender-gap/

[7] https://news.umich.edu/exactly-how-much-housework-does-a-husband-create/

[8] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_an_unfair_division_of_labor_hurts_your_relationship

[9] https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/YouGov_-_Housework_splits.pdf

[10] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Priscilla_Blanton/publication/254372846_Husbands_and_Wives_in_Dual-Earner_Marriages_Decision-Making_Gender_Role_Attitudes_Division_of_Household_Labor_and_Equity/links/5629110008ae518e347c7a8c.pdf

[11] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/who-gets-quality-leisure

[12] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[13] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/menenjoyfivehoursmoreleisuretimeperweekthanwomen/2018-01-09

[14] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[15] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/women-workers-are-a-lifeline-for-the-economy/

[16] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/12/16/u-s-lacks-mandated-paid-parental-leave/

[17] https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/family-benefits-public-spending.html

[18] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/upshot/child-care-biden.html

[19] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2025-08-29/college-working-parents-child-care-tax-credit

[20] https://www.thoughtco.com/cult-of-domesticity-4694493

[21] https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/not-for-ourselves-alone/cult-of-true-womanhood

[22] https://americainclass.org/the-cult-of-domesticity/

[23] https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/not-for-ourselves-alone/cult-of-true-womanhood

[24] https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/not-for-ourselves-alone/cult-of-true-womanhood

[25] https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated-race-and-gender-discrimination/

[26] https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated-race-and-gender-discrimination/

[27] https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyfacpub/49/

[28] https://nationalpartnership.org/domestic-workers-rights-are-part-of-black-history-trump-wants-them-gone/

[29] https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/v692t9773

[30] https://news.umich.edu/exactly-how-much-housework-does-a-husband-create/

[31] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-018-1001-x

[32] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_an_unfair_division_of_labor_hurts_your_relationship

[33] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_an_unfair_division_of_labor_hurts_your_relationship

[34] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_an_unfair_division_of_labor_hurts_your_relationship

[35] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_an_unfair_division_of_labor_hurts_your_relationship

[36] https://www.asanet.org/women-more-likely-men-initiate-divorces-not-non-marital-breakups/

[37] https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens-health

[38] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2003/09/marital-benefit

[39] https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/study-husbands-create-hours-of-extra-housework-each-week/

[40] https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2026/08/23/1-in-3-women-fear-marriage-could-hurt-their-careers-they-may-be-right/

[41] https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/blogs/how-the-4b-feminist-rebellion-is-taking-on-patriarchy

[42] https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/south-koreas-willfully-unmarried-movement/

[43] https://thenewinquiry.com/on-heteropessimism/

[44] https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-american-romance-how-politics-and-pessimism-influence-dating-experiences/

[45] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profile-of-single-americans/

[46] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/11/14/12th-grade-girls-are-less-likely-than-boys-to-say-they-want-to-get-married-someday/

[47] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/09/older-mothers.html

[48] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/opinion/heteropessimism-straight-dating-love.html

[49] yougov.co.uk/society/articles/52863-young-men-masculinity-and-misogyny

[50] https://thenewinquiry.com/on-heteropessimism/

[51] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[52] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_an_unfair_division_of_labor_hurts_your_relationship

[53] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[54] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[55] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/who-gets-quality-leisure

[56] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[57] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[58] https://thegepi.org/free-time-gender-gap/

[59] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[60] https://behavioralscientist.org/gendered-division-of-labor-served-a-purpose-to-make-progress-dont-erase-it-replace-it/

[61] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[62] https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/womens-studies-and-feminism/gender-and-domestic-responsibilities

[63] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[64] https://modernstoicism.com/meditation-for-stoics-by-caleb-ontiveros/

[65] https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal

[66] https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/what-is-feminism