Just to clarify, since doreen has already done a good job of debunking the claim and I won’t further belabor it: I meant it sounded like someone took the “on call 24 hours a day” and combined with the standard 8 hour workday = 40 hour work week to multiply out to a 120 hour work week.
What’s your point catsix? If we include these things as housework, then where are we?
What happens if the woman is expected to do a lot of the things you mentioned as well?
Oh, and my point about the apartment was the same as yours: not everyone lives in a house. The number of apartment-dwellers is quite high, and I don’t think of all that stuff as “housework”, as do many other apartment-dwellers - as we just don’t do it.
Not to mention condos, townhouses, etc.
Doubtless you are right. Thanks for the clarification. Again, I really wish I hadn’t posted that comment - after taking the time to think about it (beyond my original reaction which was defensiveness (and I’m really glad I didn’t post while entirely on the defensive)), I can see that the figure was probably significantly inflated.
What’s your point catsix? If we include these things as housework, then where are we?
[/quote]
That perhaps the assumptions of the older generation that ‘housework is a woman’s job’ were based upon a false premise that only things traditionally seen as ‘women’s work’ were housework?
People can make whatever trades/deals they want to have a balance, but I think the old premise of housework being a woman’s job was based on the false premise that housework includes things traditionally considered to be ‘women’s work’ and that attitudes would’ve been a lot different had the ‘men jobs’ been counted also.
[QUOTE=catsix]
Well, I’m standing by my observation that it’s really odd that the same things keep coming up as housework, and that they’re certainly not inclusive of everything that is ‘house work.’
[quote]
It’s not “odd” at all. The word “housework” has a specific meaning.
From dictionary.com
house·work ( P ) Pronunciation Key (houswûrk)
n.
The tasks, such as cleaning and cooking, that are performed in housekeeping
To use the word’s correct meaning is to now way exclude those who do repair work and yardwork, those words have their own specific meanings.
The word housework does not designate which sex does it. Nor has anyone here said that only women do it. Quite the opposite, women in THIS thread have supported both SAHDs and brought up the fact that their husbands and SOs share in the housework.
It’s odd to us that that is what you gleaned from this thread, when exactly the opposite of what you somehow oddly invented is what is actually happening instead.
The OP is about a specific man (and a few others further on in the thread, INCLUDING women) who has assigned a sexist meaning to the term housework. The rest of the posters in this thread are fighting that oldfashioned ignorance and saying “No…men AND women both share in housework…and in fact MY man does…etc”.
Whether or not repair work is done and by who is not in question, nor does it have anything to do with the OP, or what anyone here has said on the topic of the OP.
Ummm. DERRRRRRR! That is EXACTLY what the OP and the rest of the women here are saying, that saying 'housework" is women’s work is false, and that NONE of the tasks done around a house are gender-based tasks.
Where is your disconnect here?
What? The archaic attitudes from 40s, 50s, and 60s weren’t in place because women somehow weren’t doing “enough” and including “real” men’s work. They were in place back then because of society’s ignorance as a whole. Individuals however, have always believed differently and allowed for capabilities based on a person, not their gender.
Despite the fact that women had proven themselves to be perfectly capable of “men’s work” doing such things as throwing down their aprons and staffing the factories for the production of planes and other war equpment should have proved that they were capable.
It didn’t, the old attitude remained AT THAT TIME, that women belonged at home and that there was “women’s work” and "men’s work. When Rosie the Riveter appeared on the scene, that did however help to start the ball rolling (though it was a long time coming) for changing archaic and useless gender bias in our society.
And no one is arguing that we’re all the way there yet, but THIS thread is FOR changing gender biases, not against, so you’re fighting something here, that simply does not exist iin this thread.