So wouldn't this then imply that feminists have "dirtier" houses than non-feminists? And couldn't it be stretched to imply that feminists are "dirtier" than non-feminists?

Interesting. I wonder, if asked, how "dirty" people would considers others based on their political beliefs.

The reason for the increase intrigues me. In my own life, I started doing more housework when I got married. I remember telling my husband once that if our house wasn't clean, it reflected on ME (according to society) more than it reflected on him. That was only confirmed when his sister came over for the first time recently and had a very hard time not announcing to me how unkempt our house is. (To her credit, it was only her facial expressions when she thought I wasn't looking and one question that gave it away.)

We talk sometimes about moving into his parents' house when they finally decide to move out but the thought kind of terrifies me because I know they will expect it to stay as clean as they keep it and that that expectation will likely fall on me, not him.

Where are the feminists demanding that females be harmed and killed while on the job as much as males are?

Far more males are injured and killed while performing job-related tasks.

This discrepancy MUST be altered!!!!

Or enact at least some of the precepts of the Females as Property Movement

The conclusion that our houses are dirtier now than in the sixties and seventies only makes sense if "housework" only means housecleaning. Surely housework encompasses far more tasks that have changed over the decades. In general, fewer people today will hang clothes on a clothesline (in fact, this is prohibited in some places by local codes), mend and hem their own clothes, cook elaborate meals from scratch, use cloth diapers, iron all the laundry, pack a lunchbox, etc. etc. Many of these would have been non-negotiable tasks to our parents and grandparents. Such changes don't make the house dirtier, but they do significantly decrease the hours spent on housework.

Obbop, where are your sources?

I also wonder if the finding that feminist households spend less time on housework overall coincides with liberal families making different housing choices overall. A more liberal household might choose a smaller home, have fewer children overall, or be more likely to live in urban areas where one is more likely to have a landlord responsible for fixing the pipes, etc. Also, there is a coincidence with liberal views and higher education, meaning that liberal households may have different views on exposure to germs (the knowledge that we need such exposure to build an immune system, versus the more mid-century emphasis on sanitizing everthing (not that that view is dead)).

Today I talked with some older women about laundry. One woman declared, "I used to IRON my pillowcases! What a crock!" She concluded that she just didn't know what to do with herself back then and through herself into housework whenever the children weren't bothering her.

It seems as though the lifestyle is just different, and not the need to keep the house clean. We have a lot more machines at our disposal now to do the job for us. Also, women and men still don't have equal pay and therefore it still makes sense for men to get the money and women to raise children and tend to the household because of that.

"Obbop, where are your sources?"

For the unlazy there is a Web full of sources from reputable Web sites.... for those who truly care.

A message board is not a peer-reviewed dissemination device.

I rely upon decades of non-fiction reading, self-research and life experience.

Art thou familiar with a handy-dandy device commonly known as Google?

It can be a true friend for those seeking enlightenment and self-education.

It does take minimal effort and desire so these eliminate a large percentage of the population dependent upon indoctrination and implanted knee-jerk rhetoric to interat with their environment.

It is not for NO reason that the Females as Property Movement exists.

Obbop, can you really call something a movement if it's just something you made up on your blog?

Good point, Penny. It would be interesting to see the proof that we have dirtier houses. That being said, it sounds very believable.

Why is it prohibited to hang up clothes on a clothesline? Because it looks untidy or lower-class? Here (Auckland, NZ) the prevailing attitude seems to be that if you can hang your washing up then you should, because clothes dryers use so much power. Some like my Mum frown because using the clothes dryer seems an extravagant waste of money, but I always find myself thinking of the "reduce your carbon footprint" pressure as well.

....legos, a piece of a DVD, half of a toothbrush. I am pretty sure that my dog is suicidal. He has the HAPPENING !

Yes, local restrictions on clotheslines usually focus on appearance:
http://www.realestatejournal.com/homegarden/20070919-chaker.html
Money quote:
"This bombards the senses," interior designer Joan Grundeman says of her neighbor's clothesline. "It can't possibly increase property values and make people think this is a nice neighborhood."

Ontario recently made such local restrictions illegal, on environmental grounds--why discourage people from doing something so simple to cut energy use (and their power bill)?
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/04/18/Province-to-lift-clothesline-ban/UPI-33341208528404/

"I rely upon decades of non-fiction reading, self-research and life experience."

Meaning: You're not very credible and have an obvious bias.

"It is not for NO reason that the Females as Property Movement exists."

How many "females" have actually joined? Female what? Humans? Cats? Mice? And humans as property? That reminds me of the slavery of blacks in the US a long time ago. Nobody likes being told by a fascist woman hater (and patronizing, from your comment-was it a result of my feminine name?) what to do.
Go back to the kitchen? Sounds like "Go back to the plantation". Why don't you go back to your mother, because this is not a forum to promote your so called "movement".

"Meaning: You’re not very credible and have an obvious bias."

By not credible, I meant that you probably selectively chose what you read and "learned" from your "non fiction" books/blogs. Did you read misogynist books (opinion)? Historical? Human rights news? "10 Clues That She's An Unfaithful *****" from the mainstream news (a load of hooey)? GQ (...)? Those pathetic "Man's Domination!" blogs written by men who need women to be lower than them (as much as poor whites in the South needed blacks to be slaves to be better than someone)?

would be nice to get some more recent data than 1995. That was 14 years ago.

Also, this does not compute: "Married women in the U.S. do about 70 to 80 percent of the housework"

17.5 / ( 17.5+10)*100% = 63%

According to the graph, married women did about 63% of the household work in 1995.

Estimating for 2005, since the graph's based on 10 year intervals measured in 'x5, women do about 2.2 less hours, or 15.3 hours, and men did 0.2 more hours, or 10.2.

So we can estimate that married women did:

15.3 / ( 15.3+10.2) * 100% = 60%

Married women did an estimated 60% of household work in 2005.

Much better than "70 to 80 percent"

That figure in the text just isn't supported by then numbers given.

Although modern inventions have lessened housework, standards have lowered significantly. Nobody is doing a white glove test and making hospital corners anymore. Our houses really are dirtier. And this is a good thing. Maybe our children will have less auto-immune disorders.

One reason feminists do less housework is because they often hire another woman to do it for them. In this way it perpetuates the idea that certain work remains a woman's.

The most depressing statistic which was left off this post is that when a woman has sons she does more housework than when a woman has daughters.

Also, sons whose mother makes them do housework still won't do much helping out as an adult if their fathers didn't.

And Doug Dante, there really isn't that much recent data. Certain research topics go through cycles of interest. I just wrote a paper on capitalism and housework, and there wasn't much lit after 95. And yes, the numbers don't add up. But I have seen other statistics that say 70-80%. The funny thing is, men are doing more housework, but it is often the more preferred housework. They'll run errands and cook. But women are still disproportionately doing the gross jobs like cleaning the toilets.

@tabatha: "So wouldn’t this then imply that feminists have “dirtier” houses than non-feminists? And couldn’t it be stretched to imply that feminists are “dirtier” than non-feminists?"

I assume you have reached this (retarded) conclusion because of the article's assertion that "feminist women do less housework and men married to feminist women do the same amount of housework as men married to non-feminist women."

If we were to make the assumption that this means feminists' houses are dirtier (which is a faulty assumption to make: maybe feminists have better technology to help them clean more efficiently and quickly, maybe they require that their children chip in more with the housework, maybe the hire maids etc.) but if we were to make that assumption, why would this mean that the WOMAN is dirtier (you make no mention of the husband)? What about the man who you make no mention of but is living in the same household and is actually the reason for the house being "dirtier" for not picking up his share of the work in the first place. Good job reinforcing the stereotypes this study aims to illustrate by placing the blame on her. I thought you were joking when i first read your comment, thats how moronic it is.

@Obbop when someone asks you for sources it is not an acceptable response to direct them to "a Web full of sources from reputable Web sites," idiot. 1. the internet is not a reputable source 2. direct them to the specific "reputable Web sites" so as not to seem like so grave an idiot. oh wait there are none, because nobody would hold such ignorant, degrading, misogynistic, masochistic, and downright evil views as you without reading some extremely retarded shit off the internet written by other retards such as yourself. By the way if it is true that more males are injured on the job (which i seriously doubt, taking into account sexual and emotion abuse) the answer is not that "females should be harmed and killed while on the job as much as males are." And the answer is ALSO not that because of this discrepancy women should have to do more housework. Instead steps should be taken to reduce men's injuries in the workplace (not take steps to injure more women, fucking idiot) to as little as possible and yes, men should still do half of the housework.

@ Anon "Also, women and men still don’t have equal pay and therefore it still makes sense for men to get the money and women to raise children and tend to the household because of that." Women getting paid less than men does not mean that women work less than men. It means they get paid less than men to do the SAME amount of work that men are doing. It does not mean they have more time to raise children, actually they probably have less since they have to work more than men to get the same amount of money. So by this logic actually MEN should be the one raising the children since it's apparently not an option to try and correct this gross injustice, but only to try to work around it under the farce of some kind of retard wanna-be economic theory from the (lack of) depths of your dumb-ass mind.

It's amazing what moronic bullshit people will come up with in order to cling to that sacred concept of patriarchy. To all you "free-thinking" patriarchy worshipers: you are in actuality some of the most brainwashed individuals in human history.

Sorry to all the rest of you who seemed to actually have some interesting stories/points to make.

Thank dog for you, seriously??!

Commenters get really bent out of shape re: sociological inquiry and analysis because it threatens their various privileges.
Most people just want to accept that the world is the way it is (white supremacist, patriarchal, classist, etc.) and it's never going to change so there's no point in trying and omigod omigod stop examining society because recognizing oppression is the first step in dismantling it, ahhh!

Typical emotion-laden blathering by females chock-full of knee-jerk rhetoric.

Ample proof for me of the necessity for the Females as Property Movement to save society and the females from themselves.

I pity the female simpletons while admiring the few females capable of operating within adult society.

Seriously??!, I might take you, uh, seriously, if you didn't use "retard/retarded" three times in that comment (plus idiot more than once, plus moronic). Really not cool. People with cognitive disabilities have been marginalized by those labels in living memory; they have repeatedly expressed strong objection to those words, especially when used as insults. When you write like this, you are disregarding that history of pain, and inflicting more of the same.

"Feminists have dirtier houses"> Well, in my Limited Experience this is pretty true really. I think that women (especially women of, say, my mother's generation) were/are brought up to think that a Clean, Tidy home is a Very Important Thing - my Mum devotes many hours to ensuring that her home is tidy and clean at all times, and it's clear that she thinks this is A Virtue.

Personally I don't really see a perfectly clean and tidy house as A Virtue, largely I view it as A Waste Of Time. Naturally I (and my, male, SO) do clean from time to time (otherwise there would be no clean plates to eat off) to ensure the place doesn't get horrid mould or pest infestations or something; but the average state of our home is "mess" with craft projects, books and computer equipment left on whatever horizontal surface was convenient. We don't really have more house-keeping gadgets than Mum does, although I'm sure we have many more than my grandparents had; we just are less fanatical about cleanliness.

To my mind the social pressure to have a perfectly clean/neat home is similar to the social pressure to conform to the beauty norms of society - it makes things "look nice" at the cost of a great deal of time and energy (largely women's time and energy) for little real gain.

I found an article on the topic which included this paragraph...

"A 2002 University of Michigan Institute for Social Research survey found that women do 11 more hours of work in the home per week than men, but men work at their jobs 14 hours per week more than women. According to the BLS, men's total time at leisure, sleeping, doing personal care activities, or socializing is a statistically meaningless 1% higher than women's."

I suppose this doesn't contradict the post in that if women do 14 hours of housework and men do three, then women do perform 80% more housework than men (per the post) and 11 hours more (per the article I read).

I just wanted to point out that:

1) listing percentages instead of hours worked can be misleading

2) the post doesn't mention that men spend a higher percentage of time working outside the home than women.

3) the post doesn't say whether that statistic takes into account women who stop working after marriage. From what I understand, instances in which women give up work outside the home after marriage is still far more common than men; and it is not unreasonable to expect that in these cases the women would perform far more housework than men.

While looking up the actual University of Michigan report, I found this chart from a study completed in 2005, which clearly disagrees with the 80% statistic:

http://umich.edu/news/Releases/2008/Apr08/cleaning.html

What I found interesting was that the article, while making statements like, "Marriage is no longer a man's path to less housework," is titled; "Exactly how much housework does a husband create?"

Even though the statistics within the same article show that men do more housework than ever, and disparity between the amount men and women do can at least in part be explained by the amount of time men spend working outside the home, the title suggests that not only do men not help, but the create extra work.

The article can be found here:

http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6452

Grizzly, would you mind linking to that article you found?

This is the original article I was quoting:

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?page_id=3438

Suspicions: confirmed.

Of course I realized that Glen Sacks might be considered biased material, which is why I linked to an actual Univ of Mich study as well.

Seriously??!, just brilliant.

What constitutes "housework"? In my house I do the laundry, dishes, vacuuming, cleaning, and "fixing". My wife and I are on drastically different diets so we even cook separately.

How can I get her to chip in a little more?

Sorry I can't trust Glenn Sacks interpretation of research anymore than I can trust Killemeade's whacked interpretation of research in Scandinavia.

But you are correct about the amount of hours worked is generally the same. And that is one of the reasons this continues. Many women don't get upset by doing more housework unless they think their partner is sitting on their ass.

Men also spend a higher percentage of time working outside the home than women. But that is a problem. It isn't necessarily chosen by men or women. There are many men who would rather spend more time with their families, and many women that would like to be doing something more intellectually stimulating than cleaning the toilet. And it is the major reason there was a first feminist movement at all. We look back on the fifties with nostalgia, but alcoholism and drug abuse were at a peak. Neither men or women were happy with the set up.

The unfortunate thing is that when people start families, women are under pressure to work less. And men are under pressure to work more. The workplace is set up for all or nothing. So you are expected to work 50+ hours a week or you are not successful. More work would be done if both men and women could work 35-40 hours a week and take care of the family together.

It isn't unreasonable to expect that the person working less does more around the house, as long as both people have consciously chosen that because it is what they really want, not because that is the way society is set up.

Interestingly, part of the problem is how little we value house & care work. In heterosexual and gay relationships the partner who makes less gets to do the housework regardless of how many hours each works. In other words the one who makes less money is feminized. Lesbian relationships are the most egalitarian.

So it really isn't as simple as Glenn Sacks would like to think. That's a man that needs to clean his own toilet for a while.

@seriously??! -- I meant my comment to be taken sarcastically, as perhaps someone who would intend to damage the feminist movement would perceive this study. I'm not by any means intending to perpetuate patriarchal stereotypes, though I find it interesting how you assume that it's all the man's fault that a house is unclean and of course a woman could never be at blame for anything less than perfection. And obviously feminists are more technologically advanced than non-feminists because, again, they're perfect.

Listen, I'm a feminist. And OMG, obviously I'm not a thousand percent devout to the movement because I married a man who does the majority of our housework because simply, he cares more than I do. Yours is a stereotypically-gendered response as well, playing into the fact that all feminists are men-haters and that the world would just be better off without males completely, because that, my dear, is how you come across. And the slurs and swearing don't attest to your credibility or intelligence, either.

And just a personal pet peeve, if you want to tear other people down, at least have the common courtesy to list your name instead of a condescending statement. I apologize for making the mistake of assuming some sort of intelligent discourse could be gleaned from the comment section of this post, and for taking an interest in such a discourse.

PS -- I like to engage in sociological inquiry and analysis because that's what my entire education is based in. Thanks for assuming that I'm just trying to reinforce the norms of current society because I'm a brainless drone. Obviously, that's why I read a blog about sociology, to deny its validity at every turn.

Isn't that why Duran reads this blog?

Don't worry obbop, I won't call you any names. I will just say that your (rather amusing, in its paranoia and bizarre logic) comment likely won't hang around too long, a fact that I doubt many here will lose much sleep over. Cheers!

Calm down Matt K :),
Soon you'll be living in a one bedroom basement while your ex-wife takes monthly trips to the Caribbean to shag 20 year old waiters.

And a few decades later your daughter, or at least her daughter will have to deal with the raving rape gangs that were a fact of life in european cities in the middle ages (and come to think of it, current day femi-topia Sweden)

Every dog has its day.

No data on male feminists?

Oobop = Dwight Schrute?

"Women do twice the house work as men."

Did anyone look into the yard work?

The conclusion that our houses are dirtier now than in the sixties and seventies only makes sense if “housework” only means housecleaning. Surely housework encompasses far more tasks that have changed over the decades.
I stumbled onto your blog and read a few post. I like your style of writing.

Oh those silly little girls.

Inane and so emotion-laden that so often their feeble attempts at logical thinking then attempting to communicate that convoluted illogic results in guffaw-inducing outbursts among many males I know.

But, it is okay girls.

Various statistics indicate a growing percentage of USA males are deciding to live their lives without a female in their abode and even to the point of omitting females from their social lives and generally avoiding and evading females as practical.

No loss to you girls, right?

You do not need males.

You should be giddy with glee that at least some males are doing a self-selecting process for you; weeding ourselves out to remove ourselves from the pool of eligible males thus easing the selection process so you daffy dames can attain all that you desire within your "dream guy," your prince who will fulfill all those many female fantasies of your "perfect man."

Yeah, right.

After the likely eventuality that your fantasies are dashed upon the rocks of despair may I suggest procuring a cat from your local pet adoption center and settling for kitty company as you age and wither in the dwelling you infest while lamenting about the lack of males who were driven from associating with today's "modern" "liberated" "empowered" females whose heads were filled with tripe and propaganda and were unable to grasp the realities of human male/female interactions.

Good luck, little girls.

You have no one to blame but yourselves for what may likely be a bleak future for who knows how many of you.

Now, it's time to cluck and squawk and lambaste the male for not fitting your demands and expectations of how a male should compose himself to meet your desires and needs with nary a thought of ourselves.

Cluck away.

I could use a few chortles and guffaws and perhaps a giggle or two.

Oh, please, I do expect the anticipated obvious referral to some aspect of "gayness" due to my mention of shunning females even though "gay" has no impact or aspect of my life in the least.

You see, it is simply that female thought processes and communications are very predictable, mainly being the product of spewing implanted knee-jerk rhetoric.

Cluck away!!!!!!

Here's an idea. When women do as much paid work as men do and therefore contribute to the household as much as men then they can complain.

Obbop, do us a favor: shun us.

Kisses,
Simone

Number of Google search results for "Women as Property Movement": 3
Number of Google search results for "Feminist Movement": 673,000

Okay, not a real movement. But damn, I was worried there for a second...

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Society had excellent reasons for denying females the vote. A horrid mistake occurred in 1920 when the 19th-amendment allowed the female vote. And thus began the downfall of the Founder's Great Experiment.