The division of labour between women and men is still unequal today and the COVID-19 crisis strongly highlighted this issue. In the first lockdown, women did two-thirds of the extra childcare in the UK, and were more likely to be furloughed.
However, even when household chores are equally distributed, women are often also responsible for overseeing the different tasks.
Examples
- Ask their partners for help : “Can you empty the dish washer?”
- Give reminders : “Don’t forget the appointment with the GP”
- Keep track : “We will run out of toilet rolls tomorrow”
All these invisible, non-tangible tasks refer to the problem of mental load, or cognitive labour.
This mental load has consequences on women’s professional lives and mental health.
With this guide, we want to help couples, families and households to recognise women’s mental load and the consequences on gender inequalities. By creating a task board personalised to their needs, household members will equally distribute the household tasks according to everyone’s abilities.
STEP 1: Collect information
For adults:
For children:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hc0kZh6CnM
You can also make additional research
STEP 2: Identify how the problem affects your household
Some questions you might want to discuss:
Who is running the household? Is the housework equally shared? What do you do to help at home? How do you feel about it? Could you do more? Do you need to do less?
STEP 3: List all the visible household chores
Each member take the time to write (or draw) all the household tasks that need to be done. For each task, try to list all the sub-tasks. For example: Under doing the laundry, you might find ‘folding clothes’, ‘ironing’, ‘picking up dirty clothes’, etc.
STEP 4: Equally share the household chores
Equally distribute the household tasks according to everyone’s abilities and available time.
STEP 5: List all the INVISIBLE household chores
Write or draw them underneath each visible task. For example, under doing the laundry you might want to add: ‘check if children have enough clean clothes’, ‘clean the washing machine’, ‘repair washing machine when broken’, etc.
STEP 6: Create a board with the final distribution
The board can be digital or on paper. To make it easily readable for children, you can include personal drawings or icons.
STEP 7: Stay vigilant and updates the board if necessary
In the first weeks after the board creation, some tasks initially forgotten will need to be distributed. During this period, every member needs to be vigilant, so that these tasks are equally shared too.
In the long term, all the tasks should figure on the board and every member should be able to perform them independently without the help of the initial ‘house manager’.
To be successful this project requires the consistent involvement of every household member.
- Refer to the board to execute ALL the tasks that were assigned to them
- Regularly self-assess whether the mental load is still equally shared
- Communicate and make changes in the board if necessary
Good luck on your fight for gender equality!
References
Invisible Labor, Revealed: How To Balance Household Tasks With Trello Retrieved from: https://blog.trello.com/invisible-labor-family
The gender wars of household chores: a feminist comic
Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic
