Equality Starts at Home
We can't have an egalitarian society without addressing patriarchy at home.
We have a patriarchy problem, and it’s not only at the societal level. Even in relationships with the best intentions of equality, patriarchal norms find their way in. In order to create a truly equal partnership or a fair and balanced home environment, we have to address the “p word” and how it shows up in our daily lives.
But first, what is a society?
Let’s start with the basics. There are several ways to define a society, but I like the Cambridge definition: a large group of people who live together in an organized way, making decisions about how to do things and sharing the work that needs to be done.
In every society, there are things we agree to make public goods and services. Then, we pool our resources (money) to fund them because it’s more efficient and/or equitable than privatizing them or leaving them up to individuals. Some examples include: roads, schools, parks, utilities, law enforcement, national security, and libraries.
Public policy is how we decide to collect and use those resources. Who should get what? How much should people contribute? What rules, standards, and norms should we follow? What should we spend our resources on? What’s not worth funding? What’s fair?
In America, we choose to publicly fund things like public education, NASA, the military, libraries, scientific research, and the judicial system, to name a few. There are other things (like paid parental leave, daycare, healthcare, college tuition, broadband internet, reparations, elder care, etc.) that many people wish we would spend more resources on, but for now, we don’t.
We have to make these kinds of decisions because resources are limited. Public goods and services require labor and capital.
It’s hard to find two people who agree on everything when it comes to public policy (to the extent we even understand the things we’re making policies for). And we can think about how to answer those questions of resource allocation and fairness, but even if we agree on an answer, it’s really hard to change a whole society. Whatever changes we want to make are constrained by the systems we live in (patriarchy, capitalism, etc.).
A family operates like a mini-society.
We can also think about these same questions in terms of how we collect and allocate our resources, what we value, and how we contribute to our family (and specifically, our household). But even when we agree on these things, we’re still constrained by the world around us.
For example, over the past several decades, women have steadily increased their participation in the paid labor force, but there hasn’t been a corresponding, proportional increase in men’s participation in unpaid labor at home.
A few statistics:
Women manage 71% of family tasks like planning, organizing and scheduling.
Mothers shoulder two-thirds of caregiving work in dual-income households, even when both partners work full-time.
Husbands spend more time on paid work and leisure, while wives spend more time on caregiving and housework, even when their earnings are similar or when the wife is the higher earner.
On average, working mothers do nearly double the physical and emotional labor at home compared to their male partners.
When asked, many men overestimate their contributions, while many women undervalue their own exhaustion.
Women are doing more than their share when it comes to domestic work and childcare, and we’re disproportionately carrying the mental load.
That’s in part because, as a society, we place different expectations on men and women. It takes intention and even courage to resist those gendered expectations, but our lives (and our children’s lives) are better when we do.
Equality Starts at Home
Most of us who have moved in with a partner (whether you got married or not) never actually decided who would be responsible for what at home.
We tend to fall into routines and habits based on what we think is expected. For a lot of couples, this eventually leads to an imbalance, typically with women doing more of the domestic labor, taking on more childcare responsibilities, and carrying more of the mental load for the whole family. That leads to cycles of frustration, overwhelm, and resentment.
But even in relationships where both people want an equal partnership, we can’t fully escape some patriarchal norms. It isn’t a personal issue or a relationship issue, it’s a systemic one.
We don’t have to accept that that’s just the way it is, but in order to create a truly equal partnership or a fair and balanced home environment, we have to honestly address why things are the way they are. Then we can decide how we want them to be and make it a reality.
What You Can Do
We can’t have true equality out in the world if we don’t have it at home.
I’ve been researching and writing about these issues, and I believe there are some couples who will never come close to equal partnership.
There are also many who can, but there are a few prerequisites. First, there has to be mutual respect and care. If you don’t truly care about your partner’s experiences or their reality, it’s not going to work. And if you don’t respect them as an equal (their opinions and experience, their time, and their inherent worth as a human), it’s also not going to work.
There also has to be a mutual agreement that you’re on the same team. People have lots of feelings about using the term “partner” to describe heterosexual relationships, but I like the word because it underscores the sense of having a shared purpose and goal. You’re partners in everything.
Finally, there has to be a willingness to change, then change again and again. Life changes constantly, so we have to do the same. As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” It’s not about blaming and shaming anyone. It’s about doing better for each other and yourself.
If you recognize that we live in a patriarchal society, and you want to start addressing how inequality can show up at home, I’m in the process of creating a course called Equality at Home. It’s going to be nine modules, each with lessons and exercises, meant to be taken over the course of several weeks. (Because real change takes time.)
I’m doing my best to complete and release it in May, and you can join the waitlist here.
I plan to give waitlist joiners a discounted price, but if you want to take the course and it’s not in your budget, please send me a message. I will get you access for free, no questions asked.
Lately, I’ve been working hard to deconstruct patriarchy in my own life, home, and relationships, and I hope you’ll join me in doing the same.
Support My Work
I spend most of my free time reading and writing about current events and how they impact women because I believe it’s important. This kind of work takes time, energy, and care, and it’s work I choose to make free because I think access matters.
If you find value in my writing, becoming a paid subscriber is the most direct way to support it. Paid subscriptions make it possible for me to keep doing deep work like this and keep these posts accessible to everyone.
Yes. My soon to be ex husband told me recently that he’d put away the folded towels if I would just tell him where they go. We’d lived in the same house for 15 years at that point. Towels have always been in the same place. I just got up and put them away.
My mission is to do something about this: https://www.modernhusbands.com/