MNHQ here: why women on Mumsnet fear we're 'going back to the 70s'

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We thought you might be interested in the results of a survey we carried out recently which has been covered in The Guardian today.

We asked 1200+ women on Mumsnet what they thought about sex equality in the UK over the past year and how it had been affected by the pandemic. 56% of them agreed that ‘when it comes to women’s place in work, the home and in society, we’re in danger of going back to the 1970s’. Even more starkly, half (49%) think gender/sex equality will regress over the next few years, while only 32% think it will improve.

69% say they are worried about the long-term impact of COVID on women’s employment and seniority at work. Of those women with caring responsibilities, 28% say their responsibilities have affected their professional reputation during the past year. 24% are considering leaving the workforce entirely, while a further 22% are considering becoming self-employed.

At home the picture is even more bleak, with the weight for almost all common domestic tasks falling squarely on women’s shoulders. Here are the %s of women living with a male partner who say they do all or most of the following common domestic tasks:

laundry: 73%
home schooling: 70%
healthcare appointments: 69%
life admin: 64%
food shopping: 62%
cleaning and tidying up: 61%
childcare outside school hours: 60%
cooking: 60%

48% said they shared children’s bath-and-bed routines equally with their partner. The only task that most (51%) said fell mostly to their male partners was emptying the bins.

There were a few positives though. 70% say their employer is now more open to working from home and flexible working than they were before. 50% say their partner would like to work from home more, or work more flexibly, in the future, and 5% say their partner is actively considering changing jobs or reducing their hours to spend more time with the children – rising to 12% in the under-35 age group.

Hope this is interesting reading on what will be back-to-school day for lots of your children. As ever do let us know what you think and please feel free to share our Tweet about this if you're so inclined (posts will be going up on Insta and FB too).

Thanks
MNHQ

[willibald]

Unsurprising when you read the Relationships board.

[grandpacificpineapole]

I do 100% of all those things but that's because I ditched the dead weight ex. No regrets. If it's not equal, get out. Unless we start really standing up against this disparity and raise our sons to be better and ensure our daughters don't accept less than an equal share, things will never change

[TheBullfinch]

I wasn't aware of the survey but the results dont surprise me in the slightest.

[Tomatobear]

Sounds accurate to me

[WorkHardPlayHard1]

Yes I do all the chores and children except the holy grail of putting the bins out once per week. I do get to empty all the other bins though!

I also work for myself for 35 hours a week too. Plus manage our social life.

Husband has a stressful job with hobbies- I get a lot of mundane tasks and no time for hobbies.

We need to start a new movement...

[LApprentiSorcier]

I wonder if the figures would be different for childfree women. This is me - childfree and living with husband of 15 years. I am the main earner.

Laundry: husband
home schooling: n/a
healthcare appointments: each do our own
life admin: mostly me
food shopping: husband
cleaning and tidying up: husband
childcare outside school hours: n/a
cooking: husband cooks most joint meals or we each do our own

Husband also feeds cats and changes their litter.

[CornishPastyDownUnder]

what she- @grandpacificpineapole said..I have2 teen DC-everythings on me24-7 as we emigrated to Oz when young&he moved back years ago&we(thankfully)havent heard a peep since. I ran my own buisness for years whilst travelling&the kids did remote learning (school of the air).The day2day living is shared in our household&has been with increasing responsibility since they were9&11. Bins/life admin/food shop all me but hoover/mop/cleaning/laudry&meal prep/chop&dishwasher is on them. The opportunity for lifeskills is how i sold it when they were younger&now its just what happens. I work long hours over4days&can always count on stuff being done when i get home.
Better than i ever had from ex-h

[dudsville]

That's sad, of course, but what a fabulous thing to have collected this data and shared it. Thank you.

[HannibalHayes]

But of course half of them voted for Brexit which is an entirely regressive (not to mention male dominated) project...

[Plumedenom]

Well done, excellent data. It tells us of course what we women already know. The trouble is, how to fix it. It starts with every woman expecting more in her own personal relationship, and I include myself in that. It's also about working equally with the bloke you live with, whatever equal might be for you. And finally we need a political party that puts equality and environment front and centre in all their policies, and that is not the conservative party.

[drspouse]

@HannibalHayes

But of course half of them voted for Brexit which is an entirely regressive (not to mention male dominated) project...

Unlikely, if most Brexit voters were over the age of having children in the house.

Anyway, this is very depressing, in my sector I know women aren't able to do things like get promoted due to things like having had large projects put on hold when doing childcare. And of course the rise in DV during lockdown.

[DemolitionBarbie]

How do we translate this into political demands? This is a ripe moment to demand change but we're all too knackered and/or busy squabbling about gender politics.

[FuckingFabulous]

Yes. I do 100% of the life admin, 100% of the laundry, 100% of the healthcare appointment arranging and attending for kids, 90% of his appointment arranging, 90% of the food shopping, 100% of all birthday and special day purchasing except my own. I do 100% of the cooking. I do probably 90% of the cleaning and tidying. I do 100% of the organising. Did 90% of the home schooling. I'm fucking exhausted.

[RowanMumsnet]

@WorkHardPlayHard1

Yes I do all the chores and children except the holy grail of putting the bins out once per week. I do get to empty all the other bins though!

I also work for myself for 35 hours a week too. Plus manage our social life.

Husband has a stressful job with hobbies- I get a lot of mundane tasks and no time for hobbies.

We need to start a new movement...

What is it about bins...

Thanks so much for all your thoughts - glad you like it. We're campaigning on this at the moment: we're asking the government to commit to having a specific Women's Strategy dedicated to addressing the intersecting pressures and demands that make things difficult for so many women. Give us a follow on your social media platform of choice and keep your eyes peeled because we're going to be asking MNers to take action on this soon.

[JasperTheHungry]

My husband left me for another woman just over a year ago. Literally the only extra household related thing I do now is put out the bins! (I always emptied them, he just put them out on bin day.)

I am no longer in charge of buying Christmas and birthday presents for his family though so I suppose it’s swings and roundabouts...

I have no idea why I put up with this for so long.

[zzizzer]

Out of interest, does the data indicate that respondents thought this was due to covid?

Or is it just that covid has highlighted continuing inequalities due to other factors? (eg stricter gender roles in society, and men's rights activists movements?)

[zzizzer]

Sorry if that doesn't make sense as a question. I guess I'm not sure the "why" is clear from the OP.

[RidingOn]

No surprises there then.

Looking on the bright side, it's only 70% or 60% now, whereas it would have been almost everyone in the 1970s.

Social change happens very slowly, but it does happen. A 30% change in 40 years is actually quite a lot!

And what @Plumedenom said.

We just need to keep on keeping on, and there are so many good signs.

[LadyMonicaBaddingham]

DH does the laundry and I do the bins!

[RidingOn]

Well I'm thinking about all the men pushing prams in our local park early on a Sunday morning, about how a young man I know won a hair-braiding competition with his mates, all of whom were taking their daughters swimming, about how another friend of mine regularly attends work zoom meetings with his baby daughter strapped to his chest, how long before Covid another colleague always had to leave afternoon meetings early in order to pick up his sons from school.

Don't want to minimise the problem - 20 years ago I left my own relationship partly because I was so tired of doing everything in the house and dealing with his tantrums when he was asked to do his share ... So of course much more needs to be done, but there are plenty of positive examples, and believe me, things are better than they used to be!

[MiniTheMinx]

I grew up in the 70s and I'd be happy to see a return to the 70s. Wages had risen from the 1950s through to the 70s. One man's wage could support a family. There was still a lot of radical political agitation over wages, working conditions, gender equality and on the whole there was a lot more social cohesion in working class communities.

My mother didn't work, despite being educated and competent she had the choice to stay at home. Something fewer women have the option on now. She campaigned as part of the wages for housework campaign, which wasn't about wages, but about how to make clear the social and economic value created in the domestic and private sphere. How women's unwaged labour creates value beyond the wage labour of work in the public sphere. It wasn't about equality between men and women on the scale of individual couples. It was about how the capitalist system exploits all labour including women's unpaid labour.

Liberals, mostly middle class women felt that equality within their own individual relationship was the route. This particular strand of feminist thinking and demands was cultivated because it suited the shift that was (and still is) taking place within the mode of production. The net result has been downward pressure upon wages. That's not to say that technology and automation, shift to affective and intellectual labour hasn't also exacted the same net result, only that the capitalist system could co-opt women's demands.

What we have now is a situation where we are shafted by the system for both waged and unwaged work whilst the little man babies still expect not to share domestic labour. The middle class feminist of course is free to outsource this to others so she doesn't have to tackle the inequality directly with her husband. The rest of us are just knackered doing it all!

So, yeah, let's go back to the 70s and this time be very specific about our demands

[RidingOn]

Yes please to one person's wage being able to support a family and buy a house! And yes to one person being able to afford to stay at home, if they want to. But no no no to it having to be the man's or woman's role - which is what it was.

[LApprentiSorcier]

Yes please to one person's wage being able to support a family and buy a house!

House prices are certainly a major factor in people being unable to support a family on one wage, though this is area-dependent of course.

I do think in general there are more things nowadays taken as necessities that wouldn't have been in the 70s. For example, my father's wage supported our family in the 70s (despite eye-watering mortgage interest rates) - but we didn't have a car (and we weren't in London). Nowadays, it's common for families to have two cars (outside London) whereas not having a car wasn't that unusual in the 70s.

We didn't have an automatic washing machine or freezer, most of our clothes and furniture were second hand, we only had self-catering holidays in the UK, and my parents never thought of replacing, e.g. the kitchen or bathroom - they just lived with the 1950s ones that were already in the house.

I'm not saying everyone now runs two cars, takes foreign holidays and has a new kitchen if theirs is 20 years old, but those kind of things are seen by more people as necessary than they were in the 70s and the general rise in lifestyle expectations possibly contributes to people needing two wages even in areas where house prices are more affordable.

[XingMing]

I outsource the labour I don't want to do, mainly garden and household routine tasks. I am the oil that keeps the family machine running smoothly. I organise and procure everything and hire the skills needed to complete tasks smoothly, like building work, using the knowhow that came from being a highly paid professional until I was 48, and run two pension funds, plus several other occasional consulting roles. Nobody but me thinks about why their lives run smoothly, because I make it happen invisibly. I buy and wrap and send family presents, deal with care homes, and book medical appointments so DH is free to run his business, which makes the money we spend. I free him to do what he does brilliantly: I completely understand his business and how it runs and where the money is made, but he has the gift that makes people want to place work with and through him. I don't. I run it all through technology and only I have the codes and passwords, so in some ways I have more control than him. We share direction and play to each other's strengths. And I put the bins out.

[XingMing]

But in days gone by, I earned a lot more than DH. I knew it would stop and quite suddenly, and it did. But I paid off the mortgage, and kickstarted the pension while his business was in its infancy. So it's always been our project; project family.