Working Women Burdened With More Housework Despite Being Breadwinners: Report

Working women have to handle a lot more responsibilities than working men as they have domestic duties to fulfil. They are supposed to look after the house and children along with their work while men are not subjected to such expectations. A recent survey revealed that it is the case even when women are the breadwinners.

There have been many surveys and reports on the life of working women that have shown how they are burdened with extra responsibility for home and children instead of dividing it equally with their working husbands. No matter how much they earn, no matter how difficult their work is, household duties are expected to be handled by women only.

This is not what we are saying, it is a fact highlighted by a recent study on working women by Deloitte Women@Work. The report reveals that even when women are breadwinners of the family, they still handle a major part of domestic responsibilities. Here's what the survey says.

Household Duties Of Working Women

The survey was conducted on working women belonging to different levels of seniority and found that only 15% working women shared equal household load as their husbands. The remaining 85% took up a major part of domestic work along with their office job. In fact, about 42% of working women claimed that their husbands did not contribute to domestic work and they managed household and work responsibilities alone.

This is a disappointing result but this is actually what society expects from women, to work their arms off in the office and then come back home to look after the kids and household work, all on their own. Men are excused from such expectations by saying that it is not a man's job to cook and clean.

Different Expectations From Working Men And Women

The survey shows that even when women are primary or equal contributors to family income, they still take up a major part of household work. We have often heard people saying that men earn more and hence work harder than their wives in office so they should be exempted from household responsibilities. It seems that even when women earn more than men, they still have to manage house work more. When it comes to raising children, men who actually want to contribute find it difficult to do so because of lack of provisions for new fathers at workplaces like paternal leaves.

A large part of women voluntarily don't try for promotion or raise because taking more responsibilities at work would mean less time for house work for them. That eventually leads to men becoming primary earners. We need to get rid of this assumed responsibility of women to look after house and children along with managing office work and focus on dividing the duties equally between the man and woman. That's how families should work and not how one person sacrifices their personal life while the other gets away with being an absent parent.

The views expressed by the author are their own.

Suggested Reading: 67% Working Women Contribute Towards Family's Budget: Survey