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

House prices are hugely relevant. Despite everything I wrote in the previous two posts, these days we could NOT afford the house we live in at today's prices. When we leave here, the people who buy our house will almost certainly be buying it with money earned in a London job. They won't be locals.

Thanks for the thread and campaign. Just reading all the posts.

My workload decreased when I threw my ex out when DS was small. DS did not notice he had left.

What @LApprentiSorcier said. Yes, we bring some of our troubles on ourselves by demanding a certain standard of living. The more we own the more time we need to spend looking after it. We have to decide - do we want time or money? Not many of us are lucky enough to get both.

@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?)

Yes I would like to know whether the respondents are attributing their perception of life becoming worse for women to covid, or if they think society is generally becoming more misogynist.

Thank you for collecting this data, MNHQ. Will it be anonymised and released?

I second what RidingOn said:

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

Can I point out something bizarre?

I have more than once seen floated, a claim that house prices have risen because of two-wage households.

Only house prices.

Meanwhile the price of travel has gone down massively compared to wages; prices of consumer goods have gone down compared to wages. And house prices haven't risen in proportion to increase in household income but have far outstripped it.

So the evidence doesn't support a theory that two-wage households cause prices to rise.

The claim is obviously flimflam and probably many of those trotting it out have an interest in or responsibility for house prices being high, and would like to divert from the real causes; but it's an informative piece of flimflam.

"Two-wage households" is a neutral expression, but whenever I've seen the idea floated, it has immediately been expanded to: "Therefore house prices rises are being caused by women earning a decent wage."

It looks to me like a case of: "Women are in the wrong for daring to work outside the home and demand a decent wage; erm, let's try to come up with a reason why."

So just a heads up that when there's a discussion (in general, not specifically on MN) of whether house prices should be within reach of a single wage, we can expect to see attempts to weaponise this against women.

Can't wait to hear more about this! 😀