Why women, on the whole, are left to do more housework

In a lot of communities among peoples across the globe, women or females are assigned different roles to men. In some regions, women get to lead the highest word, but in the majority of countries, it is the man who usually gets to lead.

Cambridge philosophers investigated why women, on the whole, are left to do more housework than men and why men fail to see this imbalance.

The issue, they believe, is that men and women perceive what they see in different ways. They have dubbed this phenomenon the “affordance theory”.

“For any given domestic task, that task can afford acting on for an agent,”

the philosophers wrote in their paper.

“A floor can afford sweeping, dishes can afford cleaning, mess can afford tidying, a crying infant can afford nappy-changing, and so on.

“We suggest that for many domestic tasks, women are more likely to perceive the corresponding domestic task affordance.”

Prof Paulina Sliwa, a philosopher at the University of Vienna, who worked on the topic while at the University of Cambridge, said this mechanism is backed up by science.

“Neuroscience has shown that perceiving an affordance can trigger neural processes preparing you for physical action,”

she said.

“This can range from a slight urge to overwhelming compulsion, but it often takes mental effort not to act on an affordance.”

Every person sees a specific thing and perceives it differently. For example, one person might see a gap between two objects as jumpable, or a tree as climbable, while another might think both things are impossible.

In our society, we still often find different roles designated for men and women.

Women do most of the chores around the home because men do not see mess in the same way, University of Cambridge academics believe.

While men will look at a pile of dishes in the sink or crumbs on the counter as a mess, women view it as a job in need of doing and feel an urge to do so.

This comes from a deep-rooted social training which wires the brains of men and women differently from a young age, it is thought.

Read more about it: The real reason men don’t do the housework

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Preceding

First man’s task still counting today

Silencing Women – Of God or Men ?

The Things We Carry, by Penny

Parenting, self-interest and some ugly choices!

Refresh

Winter and Spring wonders of nature showing the Master’s Hand

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Additional reading

1. 2015 Health and Welfare
2. Poverty and conservative role patterns
3. Milestones for women ordered
4. Today’s thought “It is shameful for a woman to …” (March 1)
5. Synod of Bishops concerning minors

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