Housekeeping is an arena that houses gendered behavior even today, despite the increasing trend where both the man and the woman of the household work and ‘bring home the bread’. The common myth that men just cannot see the dirt has been busted by a study published in Sociological Methods and Research. This new study attempts to understand the interplay between individual preferences and gender expectations in housework.
Researchers showed hundreds of participants random photos of a cluttered living space. Both men and women found a messy room just as messy and a tidy room just as tidy. On average, men tidy up for 10 minutes every day, but cleaning consumes a third of women’s 1 hour 20 minutes of household chores daily. Why, then, do women clean more? Respondents participating in the study were randomly told whether the messy photo depicted either “John’s” or “Jennifer’s” room. Participants – regardless of gender – held “Jennifer’s” room, even the ‘tidy’ version, to a much higher standard and were more likely to judge “Jennifer” negatively. This suggests that women bear the burden of cleanliness more intensely than men.
Because women and men appear to see the same mess, one hypothesis for the observed difference in cleaning times is that women may more strongly anticipate being judged by their peers, especially by other women. This could cause a cycle of prejudice. Alternatively, women may find cleaning less unpleasant, or perhaps use cleaning as a means of procrastination, where men might not do so. Hopefully future studies will further investigate these questions, as well as confounding factors like work, family, and economic class.
Managing Correspondent: Rhea Grover
Popular News Article: Men do see the mess – they just aren’t judged for it the way women are – Phys.org
Original Scientific Article: Good Housekeeping, Great Expectations: Gender and Housework Norms – SAGE Journals
Image Credit: “Cleaning” by John Paul Goguen is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
I clean my house but am not fastidious. I don’t see imaginary dirt everywhere like some of my female friends and I am not perpetually terrified of germs. I am outside gardening much of the day and it’s full of dirt, lol! I do appreciate a neat, tidy, clean indoor living space but have so many things I would rather do with my life than spend it perpetually cleaning and worrying about germs. Learning a language, reading a great book, gardening, exercising at the gym, travel, movies, so many amazing things to do in life! I am also a person with a science background. There are bacteria and viruses in the air, we eat billions of bacteria every day, like it or not. We need to take reasonable precautions against the bad bugs like e-coli, salmonella, COVID, but we have evolved with other organisms and this idea that our environment should be completely sterile is more than a little overboard to me. Some of my female and some male friends have an almost pathological fear of germs. I call myself a centrist in most things in life, look for a happy ‘middle’!
The study that will never happen is the value and expectation of cleanliness. This comes close with men suggesting they value other tasks more but doesn’t accout for habitational upkeep practice. Following the guidelines of this experiment I would have included a flat fee incetivized to cleaning the room up and then identified gender patterns if they existed. There is a much broader saying that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself yet we never research it’s motivational validity
My take is “woman want to live in a clean, orderly house so they can enjoy their surroundings and not feel put off and disgusted”. My father was exceptionally clean and orderly; every American man i have met has been slovenly save the gay men. Maybe American men have been trained to wait for the women to clean their mess?
“women may more strongly anticipate being judged by their peers, especially by other women. This could cause a cycle of prejudice. Alternatively, women may find cleaning less unpleasant, or perhaps use cleaning as a means of procrastination, where men might not do so. Hopefully future studies will further investigate these questions, as well as confounding factors like work, family, and economic class.”
Look forward to hearing which of these is more common. I suspect the first one. Mainly because I can’t relate to the others. I don’t find cleaning unpleasant. I just often have more important things to do. Like comment on random internet blogs 😉 Seriously though, cleaning is just not at the top of my priority list.