‘But women have evolved to love hoovering’

[Gladysthesphinx]

I was chatting to a male friend the other day about ‘wife work’- the emotional practical & organisational burden that falls on women in terms of managing domestic & family life (see thread about women in lockdown for instance).

His response was: but women have evolved to be more nurturing; to care about the home (in early days, the cave). This is their role. They have higher domestic standards because that’s their nature! Basically, we’ve evolved to wield the hoover.

The points I made to him were roughly as below. What did I miss? I was so astonished by his suddenly turning into Fred Flintstone that I was rather thinking on my feet.

1. We can’t realistically tell what results from nature & what from nurture, in complex modern societies.

1. Even if in the Stone Age women took on primary responsibility for sweeping the cave, gutting the mammoth, whatever, the burden of modern domestic life is very different. Stone Age women had to worry about starving to death, not about organising parents evening & paying bills & doing laundry & overseeing homework & caring for the elderly relatives while also working full time & commuting. It’s completely different.

1. The fact that so many women are clearly discontented with wife work seems to militate strongly against this ‘evolved to hoover’ line of thought. Look at the number of divorces initiated by women. Listen to women talking about their lives. They’re fed up. Where we’ve genuinely evolved in ways that promote certain behaviours - for instance loving our children, wanting to have sex- those behaviours are generally valued and wanted. Wife work however is not. Women generally hate it.

1. In any event, it’s a fallacy to conclude that ‘natural’ is good. It’s not natural to clean our teeth.

1. This line of argument is of no practical use whatsoever. It’s not going to convince unhappy women that they love hoovering. It’s not going to keep a marriage together where the wife is discontented & resentful because of her domestic burden. So what’s the use of it? It’s a cop out, not a useful argument or tool.

I feel I let myself down a bit- would appreciate further thoughts (apart from anything else because I’m going to revive this discussion).

Also the hoover has been around about a century.

Humans have too long a life span to evolve to use hoovers since its been invented.

Obviously there's a division of labour by, well, labour - pregnancy, childbirth and nursing, for the whole of human evolution and before.
But that doesn't preclude the presence of women in the 'public' sphere. Evidence in religious rituals, 'priestesses' for instance, is pretty ubiquitous.

Thanks for the Jacky Fleming tip off Cara, hilarious.

I haven't switched on a hoover in over 30 years. We got our first cleaner when our son was born and always had cleaners up to a couple of years ago. We didn't replace the rather unreliable one who left around the same time my husband started part time working a couple of years ago. He does the hoovering and cleaning. He's not terribly good at it but I'm not inclined to take it on. If the world ever goes back to normal a new cleaner must be found.

I was chatting to a male friend the other day about ‘wife work’- the emotional practical & organisational burden that falls on women in terms of managing domestic & family life

Falls on ‘some’ women. It certainly doesn’t fall on me. I wouldn’t allow it.

Why have I not come across Jacky Fleming before?



Well if this is true I sure as hell didn't get the memo as I haven't picked up a hoover in years

Aww I need to meet him, will he brush my fur bikini and carry me around on a palanquin...He might even get to crawl up my leg whilst wafting me with an olive branch. By this point he will be sufficiently under my sexy woman spell that he will have paid for help and he will swat me on the bottom whilst I skip up to bed. Just so you know I really don’t mind the hoovering...it’s the piss stains under the bog that really get my bastard goat.

The really peculiar thing is that women have evolved to hoover and cook and care for children at home, but the minute the pay is good or there's status attached, apparently it's men who've evolved to do it better!

Chefs, Ministers of Health, school Heads, you name it and suddenly men can do the job. So interesting. And so convenient!

I am not saying that this is your friend, but sometimes men enjoy the power trip of the argument. It is like they are thinking in their heads -
"Not only am I going to wow you with my analytical arguments, but I am going to put you in your place at the same time".

This is leftie beardy men's speciality.

Sometimes it is better to walk away thinking, "twat".

Ha, ha - my father's domestic standards are much, much higher than mine are!

I too have evolved into Quentin Crisp.

He needs a copy of the Feminine Mystique - which still remains the best critique of the ‘fulfilment’ women feel in their domestic role and she wrote it in 1963.

I liked the phases above about it being. societal evolution

I think historically men may have been more involved in hunting and women in gathering , there is some evidence that male and female eyesight is slightly different . And women caring for small children would be more home bound then men

This would make differences in how society developed , which would explain why the majority of societies have developed the same way

But as others have observed, we no longer live in the Stone Age and the modern housewife functions likely have little relationship to the Stone Age ones and we are increasingly finding that the assumptions about men and women in the past are not as clear cut as some would like

Also we do find that in some older civilisations there is often a strong sex based split in roles but a much greater respect for the females and their roles than in modern western society, I well remover one quote along the lines of " well we all love meat but we'd have starved long ago if it wasn't for the food the women collect " You would never hear a western man say something so strong about vacuuming

A dear friend dated an asthmatic, it was fantastic, he did loads of cleaning when he came to stay.

Is there much evidence for a marked divide into 'public' and 'domestic' spheres in isolated 'Stone Age' tribes?

The actual skills involved in managing a household versus managing a farm aren't vastly different.

Actually in the Stone Age there weren’t gender roles. It was all hands on deck women and men did all the jobs together

Men have evolved to be annoying.

@MrsWooster

I have evolved to watch roomba, albeit with a fond, maternal gaze.

Same here

I’m not sure there is any point in arguing with someone who has not evolved their thinking past the Neolithic era.

But if you must. The SEX based differences meant that pregnant and breastfeeding women were likely to be safer nearer the caves than on hunting trips. Small children also safer nearer shelter. I’d expect it also included the infirm and elderly of both sexes.

No one is now fleeing from animal predators. Men aren’t hunting. So why have men not evolved to pull an equal share of the current domestic load?

Unless he's very young I'd conclude he's both sexist and stupid and he wouldn't be a friend any longer as I wouldn't be wasting my time on him

@ErrolTheDragon

Why have I not come across Jacky Fleming before?



One of my favourite JF cartoons is the scientist (male, in white coat, microscope at elbow) pointing to two indistinguishable black dots on the lab bench in front of him, saying "as you can see, the male has evolved to be almost all brain, while the female is shaped like a pram."

I read somewhere ages ago that in hunter gatherer societies women produce something like 70% of the food. Nuff said really.

Turn the tables, he has essentially made a claim and has you running around arguing the opposite. As if his position is the default established position (it isn’t). If he’s making the claim the onus is on him to support it.

His claim: women haven’t only evolved to perform domestic work they have evolved to love it. That’s an extraordinary claim and he needs to support it with evidence.

Much of his argument will disintegrate under sustained questioning, and if he’s made to justify his position.

I thought prehistoric European art have barely any representation of human figures. If we take them literally we could say men had fox tails and antlers as their main domestic/public role. Furries are clearly not a new thing.

Strength in hunting? Depends on what you're hunting and how. It doesn't take a lot of strength to chase prey off a cliff edge. It does take a group and co-ordination. It's likely young women without children could as easily join a hunting group as young men.

Most studies of hunter gatherers have shown that women with their children bring in more calories by foraging than hunting groups but it's not as prized.

The Neolithic farming revolution is a shitty idea from pretty much every aspect, I think evidence has shown women did get lumbered with jobs like labouriously grinding grains by hand and weaving. Spinning and weaving are women's work across Europe even in later times. Both of those jobs would have taken up time but they are producing food/ objects not housework.

Housework is going to be minimal even in the middle ages. What is there to do work on in most hovels?

A big shift over time is the change from communal life, with women and men working in groups, to the contraction of most women's lives to a far narrower domestic sphere. Communal life shrunk with additional non-productive labour of housework increasing for women.