‘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).

@ErrolTheDragon

With women in the domestic sphere and men in the public sphere. We’ve inherited that from prehistory.

Have we? Is there actually any evidence from prehistory of the public sphere being an exclusively male domain? Is there even evidence of distinct 'domestic' and 'public' spheres?

In doing some historical research for my PhD reading Horrible Histories version of the King Arthur myths it suggested that Celtic societies and earlier were matrilineal etc, hence Boudicca et al, so hoovering etc have only had 1600 years to evolve

I LOVE keeping the house I own on my own lovely, clean, well decorated.

I HATE cleaning up after a man, wiping his paw prints off everything, constantly washing his spunk off my sheets, picking up his skid marked underpants and socks off the floor.

This is why I live alone. I don't hate cleaning, I hate cleaning up after other people. My cat is an exception to this.

I think the issue is not only about the nature of the split of work between men and women, but the amount of work. Many women work full-time in paid employment (because their family needs the income, or because they just want to), but still take on the majority of unpaid domestic and care work.

Is your friend suggesting that, for example, where you have a man and a woman living together, and they both work full-time, it's fair enough that the woman does all the cleaning because it gives her some kind of pleasure? Because that seems palpably untrue to me! (I mean, there are things that we have evolved to find pleasurable, like having sex, or eating sweet and fatty foods.....yeeeeeah, I know which I'd choose given the choice between those and cleaning!)

Spinning and weaving are women's work across Europe even in later times.

I think in some places it was men’s work and more highly valued, particularly once it started to become mechanised.

But agree the farming revolution was a weird one. Yuval Harari argues that it was very, very labour intensive and not very efficient in terms of safely feeding humans - hard work, crop failures and not nutrient dense.

@BlueBrush

I think the issue is not only about the nature of the split of work between men and women, but the amount of work. Many women work full-time in paid employment (because their family needs the income, or because they just want to), but still take on the majority of unpaid domestic and care work.

Is your friend suggesting that, for example, where you have a man and a woman living together, and they both work full-time, it's fair enough that the woman does all the cleaning because it gives her some kind of pleasure? Because that seems palpably untrue to me! (I mean, there are things that we have evolved to find pleasurable, like having sex, or eating sweet and fatty foods.....yeeeeeah, I know which I'd choose given the choice between those and cleaning!)

Are you saying that men have evolved to be lazy and watch tv/pay video games whilst women hoover around their feet?

I'm not sure sloth is progressive.

I'd ask him what men have evolved to do in the eye link of time that has elapsed since the invention of the hoover. Let him talk himself into a long list of masculine jobs. Then ask him to rate how much joy he derives from doing the ones that crop up relentlessly. And don't fail to point out the ones that women are equally involved in, like breadwinning!

My perception of much domestic maintenance is that women often end up responsible for the urgent, time-sensitive and repetitive tasks (producing meals, changing nappies, laundry, keeping the kitchen hygienic) while men favour the more occasional and flexible ones like lawnmowing, DIY, etc which can comfortably wait a week or two without anyone being too inconvenienced.

In our house, DH is i/c cooking, hoovering and grocery shopping. We each do our own laundry because I struk after being accused of losing his socks and he was banned from putting my delicates in the dryer and destroying them.

I only do the kitchen hygiene stuff because his standards are so low we'd have collywobbles on a weekly basis. He won't put his reading glasses on to wash up or wipe round because "That's not reading." I did suggest he re-name them washing up glasses but it was not well received. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Or, you know, you could skip all the hard work and just show him Troy Kinne? Sorry if this has already been suggested!

RedToothBrush
*Are you saying that men have evolved to be lazy and watch tv/pay video games whilst women hoover around their feet?

I'm not sure sloth is progressive.*

Not sure if your question is directed to me? But no, I don't think that. I think what's happened is that we're in a position where women are expected to do paid work and the majority of unpaid domestic/care work and with less value placed on "women's" work and I agree with the point made by PP that it has become more acceptable for "man" work to be outsourced, but not "woman" work. I don't know exactly what the drivers for this are, but I would say definitely socioeconomic, not evolution.

And I am entirely happy with sloth, as long as it is distributed equally!

My husband and I have a 50/50 split... in fact he probably does more than me at home. We have no children (by choice) and where possible hire help (housekeeper, gardener etc).

If you’re taking on the brunt of the housework and childcare it’s you that’s messed up somewhere along the line.

My comment is very firmly tongue in cheek.

My point is more that if this dickhead think we like to hoover and are better at it, why by his logic, is labour workload so unevenly distributed? If women have evolved one way, what does that men about men's evolulation.

You could explain how patriarchy assigns the important roles to men and the less important roles to women as a means of subordinating the female sex,...

But why do you say that caring for the home, keeping the home functioning and regulated, is less important that, say, going to some office to do help keep someone else's company running?

I'm not a fan of housework. But I also didn't like the work I did when I was an employee. When I had children, I decided what I wanted was to stay home and do the domestic work because I would rather clean 100 floors than dictate 100 more letters about matters that basically didn't interest me. I chose the domestic work and I was glad that, having given birth to my children and breastfeeding them, I was already closer to home in order to do it.
We had a clear split of duties. My husband did ALL of the finances, taxes, paperwork etc because I loathed that. I did most of the DIY at home. He did all of the gardening, as he had green thumbs and I didn't. I did all of the childcare, because I enjoyed that. I cooked, he washed up.
I think we should stop thinking like men, which is exactly what that first sentence does, by designating certain jobs to more and less important.

Domestic work IS important, very much so. Raising children well IS important.

Men in office jobs today like to tut tut about women's dereliction of duty, but they've shirked nearly every scutwork responsibility imaginable. Many of them moan and cry if you so much as ask them to take out the trash.

This, however, is very true. I much prefer the old-fashioned kind of man (like my late dh) who pottered around in the garage and cleaned the gutters and chopped trees for the wood-burning stove and taught the kids how to split wood. It was a clear division of duties and we each respected what the other did, and didn't want to swap.

But why do you say that caring for the home, keeping the home functioning and regulated, is less important that, say, going to some office to do help keep someone else's company running?

I didn't and if you see my later post, you'll see I said I should have said 'important'. I was being somewhat flippant tbh - this 'friend' doesn't seem much worth bothering with.

“ women have evolved to love hoovering”

I tried that once, please send cards to ward 2

If you’re taking on the brunt of the housework and childcare it’s you that’s messed up somewhere along the line.

There are 2.9 million lone parent families in the U.K. can’t find the stats but most will be headed by women. So they’ve all messed up?

You could have just patted his head and said “ Bless you”. That way you’d both be patronising gits

What did I miss? I feel I let myself down a bit

I don't think you let yourself down - unless your goal was to persuade him to change his views.
You can't, and unless you are in a relationship with him, his ignorance is not your problem. Make your point, mark him as a misogynist for future interactions, and move on. Don't let him in your head space!

Brilliant - I’ve just got out of bed (ahem, exhausted by hoovering marathon yesterday of course) to find so much interesting & funny & thought provoking discussion.
Yes, this guy is (as far as I know) no good at DIY at all. He’d run if asked to put up a shelf...and he has one of those immersive oculus things to wear while his poor wife hoovers round his feet!

@RedToothBrush

My comment is very firmly tongue in cheek.

My point is more that if this dickhead think we like to hoover and are better at it, why by his logic, is labour workload so unevenly distributed? If women have evolved one way, what does that men about men's evolulation.

Aha! Got you! Yes, you'd think that evolution would have had some jobs to divvy out to men too!

@BewilderedDoughnut

My husband and I have a 50/50 split... in fact he probably does more than me at home. We have no children (by choice) and where possible hire help (housekeeper, gardener etc).

If you’re taking on the brunt of the housework and childcare it’s you that’s messed up somewhere along the line.

I also have a 50/50 split, but I don't think it's straightforward to say that it's in all women's power to make that happen. I think the way society is structured stacks things against women in this respect. And I'm also not just talking about women in the UK. I just had a dip into "Invisible Women" and it mentions that women in Uganda work 15 hours a day on average, compared to 9 hours for men.

Now, I'm not saying that women in Uganda aren't able to stand up for themselves! But I'm also think it's a bit presumptuous to assume that they have all "messed up", and can just employ a housekeeper.

I would tell him to look up studies of how hunter-gatherer people actually live. It's embarassing to project some kind of western 1950's idea on stone age people. When you live like that, every healthy adult is constantly doing work outside, foraging, gathering materials, making tools, etc. because you simply have to. A healthy woman can't sit inside and polish the cave floor (why would you do that) all day when there is fish to catch and herbs to be collected.

Yet archeologists keep finding more and more female Viking warriors buried with weapons and armor, and more recently, male skeletal remains dressed in what we would classify as traditionally female outfits.
It's almost as humans exist on a spectrum and you use everyone's abilities to their fullest potential. In the vast majority of cases, without reliable birth control, you will have women tied to the home since they're always either pregnant, nursing or carrying babies around. It's an easy leap then to come to the conclusion that women were somehow biologically "pre-destined" for these role.

This is why right wing loons, like Jordan Peterson, love to rail against 'the pill.' They realize very well that in order to keep women subjugated, they must keep them reproducing without a way out of that misery.

I do get a little antsy about women denigrating domestic work. My mother was a very outspoken and activist feminist back in the 50's and she didn't do any of that, and basically led by her example, teaching me that domestic work is beneath any self-respecting woman. She always worked outside the home. Never even cooked a meal for me.
We lived with my grandmother and aunt and aunt did all the domestic work. My mother earned the money. She was basically like the "husband" in the household (she'd divorced my dad) and aunty was the "housewife". I never had to lift a finger. But I observed this and felt for my aunt. Since then I've always been on the side of overlooked and under-respected women who hold the world together.

Anyway, I just saw this on FB and thought I'd post it here:

"My wife doesn't do anything; she is just at home," a father of a student from Kerala, India, always used to introduce his wife to others like this. But this boy always saw his mother busy with so much house work, so he painted her while doing so much work and titled it, 'My Mother and Mothers in the Neighbourhood'. The school teacher was so amazed to see this painting done by a class 9 student, Anujath Vinayal, from Thrissur, that he sent it to the Government office. In this painting he has depicted the unpaid work of women working at home. The painting has been selected as the cover of the Gender Budget document of the government of Kerala for the year 2020-2021.

@Gwynfluff There are 2.9 million lone parent families in the U.K. can’t find the stats but most will be headed by women. So they’ve all messed up?

Probably most of them have. The choice not to have children guarantees you don’t end up in this position.