At a time when women have gained ever more standing in politics and society, they tend to carry additional burdens in terms of family. Some of this is biological. Women are typically pregnant for 40 weeks and then – depending on personal preferences toward breastfeeding – serve as a primary food source for any number of weeks, months or years.
They take on more domestic chores, including such things as meal preparation, school runs, PTA meetings and doctor’s appointments
According to the Department of Labor Statistics, the division of domestic duties in American households is far from equal. On an average day, 83% of women and 65% of men spend some time doing activities such as housework, cooking, lawn care or financial and other household management. Women spend an average of 2.6 hours on such activities a day, while men spend 2.1 hours.
Monica McGrath, adjunct professor of management at Wharton and a consultant who specializes in women’s leadership development, says that even women who are in supportive partnerships experience continual strain.
“Many of the women I coach – women who know they want a career and who were groomed to have one – are in very supportive relationships, where there is co-parenting. But there are compromises all around,” she says. “It’s not simple, and there is often tension. There is a constant negotiation in their marriage about who’s going to do what and how much.
“I ask the same question of almost every woman I coach: How much of the home front – the cooking, the cleaning and the household management – can you pay someone else to do? There’s a service that can do everything,” says McGrath. “It costs a lot of money to outsource, but for most of these women, it is worth it. They need to take a long-term view of their career challenges. Every phase of their career and their family’s life is different.”
Outsourcing domestic tasks is one solution, but so is dividing them equally between both partners. Interestingly, many professional women struggle with this as well, according to Donald Unger, a lecturer at MIT in writing and humanistic studies, and the author of Men Can: The Changing Image & Reality Г¤r Г¶steuropeisk brudar lagliga of Fatherhood in America . “Many women are emotionally split about what they want,” he says. “Women have long been dissatisfied that men don’t do their share in the domestic sphere. [But when men do take charge], there is often a sharp and reflexive: ‘You’re not doing that right!’”
Women in powerful jobs feel this intensely because they tend to have very high standards for themselves and for their families, according to Unger. “They are Type A personalities. They move in circles where appearance and image are very important. These are people who do not find it easy to let things go.”
But in a marriage where it is the woman who has the higher-powered, higher-paying job – or at least a job that’s as high-profile as her husband’s – the dynamic changes
Putting aside the drudgery of housework, there is the simple fact that many women want, and need, to be a regular presence at home in order to be emotionally attentive to their kids and spouses. But the intensity of top-level jobs – which involve travel, round-the-clock meetings and the expectation from colleagues and employees of near-constant online availability – make balancing work, children and spousal obligations very difficult.
It is one of the issues that Anne-Marie Slaughter documented in her recent essay titled, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” which ran in The Atlantic. The article describes the frustration she felt as her husband served as primary caregiver for their two school-age boys while she worked long hours at the State Department. She left her job in Washington, D.C., after two years and returned to her tenured position at Princeton. “What shifted were my own feelings about what I wanted,” Slaughter said during a recent speech at Harvard Business School. “I wanted to be at home.”
