I have a running joke with myself in the lunchroom at work: if a colleague expresses envy over my delicious home-prepared lunch, I tell them, "the wife made it". It’s a joke with myself because as a bisexual woman I know only too well what it’s like to be "the wife" of a breadwinning spouse, and all around me I see the evidence of gendered division of labour and how it plagues my heterosexual peers.
The 2016 census confirmed this; most Australian households suffer under an unequal division of labour. Whatever gains feminism has made, the reality is that unpaid work at home is still largely left to women, even when both members of a heterosexual couple are in paid work. showing that women do five-to-14 hours per week of unpaid domestic labour; men do less than five. This is in spite of the work of feminism, and the gains women have made in the workplace.
There is a largely unspoken understanding of this injustice that ripples between women in all kinds of settings. At my workplace, which is majority female, it often manifests itself as an under-the-breath grumble from a colleague loading someone else’s dishes into the communal help-yourself dishwasher—dishes she invariably assumes were left by a man used to having others pick up after him. When my daughter was an infant, playground discussions consisted of murmured complaints about taking on an unexpectedly large share of the housework after giving up full time employment. But there is a taboo about appearing too outraged about household injustices, as if these are personal, and not systemic issues. Too often, the mothers I knew would retreat from their venting, praising their husbands for their ‘help’ with bath time or for ‘allowing’ them a weekend sleep in.
Feminist writer Naomi Wolf sums up the way in which women can be blindsided by disappointment when they find themselves having to cajole their partners into fulfilling their previously-expressed egalitarian ideals: "many women told me dispiritedly about how their husbands waited for them to ask—or to make a list—and how demoralising that was for them. [These were] nice men, good, playful dads, full of initiative and motivation at work, who 'waited to be asked' to do the more tedious work at home." Perhaps nothing sums up this collective female dispiritedness more than the satirical twitter account , whose hilarious meme-style content . The men in the role-reversed world of Man Who Has It All must juggle housework, paid work, child care, skin hydration and the careful application of Ph-balanced penis cleanser all with a smile and endless gratitude for any help their wives offer. It’s an Instagram-filtered, cucumber-scented dystopia that is all-too-close to reality for many straight women.
But there is a social force with the potential to revolutionise the sharing of unpaid labour. Marriage equality is finally a reality in Australia, and queer couples have a lot to teach our straight siblings. . In fact, close to 60% of same-sex partnerships have a completely equal division of household labour. This means that LGBTIQ couples are leading the way in building equitable households, and those of us raising children are instilling in them a greater sense of fairness. Chores are necessarily unhinged from gender roles in same-gender relationships. This frees couples up to divide labour along the lines of preference, ability, and time in a far more logical way.
This is why a new script for married life, created by queers and their families, is so sorely needed. I asked a group of queer friends about how they divided work at home, and their answers were as diverse as their families. One woman, who lives in a polyamorous adult household, described how they divide tasks according to ability, preference, and time. She cooks more often because she’s home earlier. Another household member does more outdoor work because he uses the backyard the most. Other sensible solutions from queer couples I know included taking it in turns to do the most hated tasks, or drawing up household rosters based on availability and preference, involving the children in the process. Another bisexual woman I know related how her daughter’s father does much of the cleaning and cooking in her home, even though they’re separated, because she has far longer working hours and he prepares meals while he’s at her place looking after their child. This means that her daughter is already seeing that domestic labour can be “mens’ work”, and that men can multitask when it comes to juggling childcare and other jobs. It’s impossible to underestimate the power of this kind of modelling—especially when . I certainly applaud the straight men I know who’ve taken time away from paid employment to experience the work of child-rearing and house-wrangling full time. The public discussion of work-life balance needs to focus on creating greater access to leave for fathers, and more emphasis on shared responsibility. This would be good news for partnerships too: marriages where each partner has an almost polar-opposite experience of life, work and responsibilities can be plagued by a lack of empathy and understanding. Conversely, a fairer - or dare I say, queerer - division of labour can engender closeness and trust and is no doubt partially responsible for the .
Marriage equality will affect straight marriage, but not in the way that Lyle Shelton was concerned about. Queer relationships have the capacity to revolutionise how we understand the day-to-day running of households. Straight people should take heed; throw out the script and divide caring and domestic labour according to needs and abilities, not gender roles. See how much freer you feel, and how much your kids benefit.
