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Javier E

What Housework Has to Do With Waistlines - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The study, published this month in PLoS One, is a follow-up to an influential 2011 report which used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine that, during the past 50 years, most American workers began sitting down on the job. Physical activity at work, such as walking or lifting, almost vanished, according to the data, with workers now spending most of their time seated before a computer or talking on the phone. Consequently, the authors found, the average American worker was burning almost 150 fewer calories daily at work than his or her employed parents had, a change that had materially contributed to the rise in obesity during the same time frame, especially among men
  • Dr. Archer set out to find data about how women had once spent their hours at home and whether and how their patterns of movement had changed over the years.
  • pulled data from the diaries about how many hours the women were spending in various activities, how many calories they likely were expending in each of those tasks, and how the activities and associated energy expenditures changed over the years.
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  • Women, they found, once had been quite physically active around the house, spending, in 1965, an average of 25.7 hours a week cleaning, cooking and doing laundry. Those activities, whatever their social freight, required the expenditure of considerable energy.
  • Forty-five years later, in 2010, things had changed dramatically. By then, the time-use diaries showed, women were spending an average of 13.3 hours per week on housework.
  • In 1965, women typically had spent about eight hours a week sitting and watching television
  • By 2010, those hours had more than doubled, to 16.5 hours per week.
  • According to the authors’ calculations, American women not employed outside the home were burning about 360 fewer calories every day in 2010 than they had in 1965, with working women burning about 132 fewer calories at home each day in 2010 than in 1965.
  • we should start consciously tracking what we do when we are at home and try to reduce the amount of time spent sitting. “Walk to the mailbox,” he said. Chop vegetables in the kitchen. Play ball with your, or a neighbor’s, dog. Chivvy your spouse into helping you fold sheets.
jlessner

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant on Women Doing 'Office Housework' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • This is the sad reality in workplaces around the world: Women help more but benefit less from it. In keeping with deeply held gender stereotypes, we expect men to be ambitious and results-oriented, and women to be nurturing and communal.
  • When a man offers to help, we shower him with praise and rewards. But when a woman helps, we feel less indebted. She’s communal, right? She wants to be a team player. The reverse is also true. When a woman declines to help a colleague, people like her less and her career suffers. But when a man says no, he faces no backlash. A man who doesn’t help is “busy”; a woman is “selfish.”
  • For staying late and helping, a man was rated 14 percent more favorably than a woman. When both declined, a woman was rated 12 percent lower than a man. Over and over, after giving identical help, a man was significantly more likely to be recommended for promotions, important projects, raises and bonuses. A woman had to help just to get the same rating as a man who didn’t help.
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  • Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, finds that professional women in business, law and science are still expected to bring cupcakes, answer phones and take notes. These activities don’t just use valuable time; they also cause women to miss opportunities. The person taking diligent notes in the meeting almost never makes the killer point.
  • When men do help, they are more likely to do so in public, while women help more behind the scenes. Studies demonstrate that men are more likely to contribute with visible behaviors — like showing up at optional meetings — while women engage more privately in time-consuming activities like assisting others and mentoring colleagues. As the Simmons College management professor Joyce K. Fletcher noted, women’s communal contributions tend simply to “disappear.”
  • With an even mix of men and women in the room, we expected the office housework to fall to a woman. But the one person who took notes the entire time was the founder of the Virgin Group, Richard Branson.
Javier E

Opinion | Can Dads Have It All? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In the discourse of the upper-upper, don’t-call-us-rich middle class, an old stereotype of fatherhood — the dim, affable, useless-for-housework Pop — has lately been supplemented by a new one: The credit-hogging, pleased-with-himself Good Dad, who does just enough housework to pretend that he’s an equal partner
  • when you add up housework, paid work and child care, married fathers today are doing slightly more work than married mothers.
  • in one data set the male-female work gap has actually expanded slightly since the 1960s, from 1.5 to four hours.
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  • a more optimistic reading might be that the current division is actually a reasonable balance. Maybe it’s fair for men to work slightly longer hours overall because work outside the home really is less grueling (and certainly less so than pregnancy and childbirth). At the same time, maybe women’s longer home-hours reflect genuine female preferences, a widespread maternal desire for part-time work, and not just the dead hand of patriarchy.
  • The optimists, though, have to reckon with the fact that everyone is working longer hours, notwithstanding increased wealth and technological convenience, and the presumably related fact that parents everywhere seem harassed and exhausted, while marriage and childbearing both are falling out of fashion.
  • the sexes have fallen into two traps together. One is what I’ve called “the one-income trap” — the way that dual-earner couples establish a norm that forces everybody to work harder to keep up, leaving couples that might prefer a single breadwinner stressed or far behind.
  • The other trap is one of rising child-watching expectations, reflected in the fact that the overall parental time spent on child care has nearly doubled since the 1960s
  • reflects anxieties specific to our era — the fear of letting kids play together out of sight, the fear of giving them unsupervised hours, the fear that some well-meaning busybody will report you to child services
criscimagnael

China Moves to Overhaul Protections for Women's Rights, Sort Of - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The announcement was presented — in official news reports, on social media — as a major victory for Chinese women. The government was set to overhaul its law governing women’s rights for the first time in decades, to refine the definition of sexual harassment, affirm prohibitions on workplace discrimination and ban forms of emotional abuse.
  • The proposed revisions are the latest in a series of conflicting messages by the Chinese government about the country’s growing feminist movement. On paper, the changes, which China’s legislature reviewed for the first time last month, would seem to be a triumph for activists who have long worked to push gender equality into the Chinese mainstream.
  • At the same time, the authorities, ever leery of grass-roots organizing, have detained outspoken feminist activists and sought to control the country’s fledgling #MeToo movement. Sexual harassment lawsuits — already rare — have been dismissed.
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  • The government has also recently emphasized its dedication to women’s employment rights, especially as it urges women to have more children amid a looming demographic crisis.
  • Pickup artistry — a practice that arrived in China from the United States — commonly refers to the use of manipulative techniques, including gaslighting, to demean women and lure them into having sex. It became a booming industry in China, with thousands of companies and websites promising to teach techniques, and it has been widely condemned by both the government and social media users.
  • Women have also been increasingly pushed out of the workplace and into traditional gender roles since China’s leader, Xi Jinping, assumed power. Some fear that the campaign to encourage childbirth could turn coercive.
  • The gesture, at least, is extensive. As revised, the law would offer the most comprehensive legal definition yet of sexual harassment, to include behaviors such as sending unwanted sexually explicit images or pressuring someone into a relationship in exchange for benefits. It also instructs schools and employers to introduce anti-harassment training and channels for complaints.
  • The law would also codify women’s right to ask for compensation for housework during divorce proceedings — following the first-of-its-kind decision by a Chinese divorce court last year to award a woman more than $7,700 for her labor during her marriage.
  • When Peng Shuai, a star tennis player, recently said on social media that a top Chinese leader had pressured her into sex, she was censored within minutes, and many worry that she is under surveillance.
  • “The priority should be on bottom-up enforcement, where you empower individuals who have been harassed to use the law to protect their rights,” he said.
  • It is rare for victims of harassment to go to court. An analysis by Mr. Longarino and others found that 93 percent of sexual harassment cases decided in China between 2018 and 2020 were brought not by the alleged victim but by the alleged harasser, claiming defamation or wrongful termination. Women who have made public harassment claims have been forced to pay those they accused.
  • Nonlegal complaints can bring heavy consequences, too. In December, Alibaba, the e-commerce giant, fired a woman who had accused a superior of raping her. The company said that she had “spread falsehoods,” even though it had earlier fired the man she accused.
  • Even when women do sue their harassers, they face steep hurdles. Perhaps the most high-profile #MeToo case to go to court was brought by Zhou Xiaoxuan, a former intern at China’s state broadcaster, who asserted that Zhu Jun, a star anchor, had forcibly kissed and groped her. But the case faced years of delays. In September, a court dismissed the claim and said she had not provided enough evidence, though Ms. Zhou said the judges had rejected her efforts to introduce more.
  • several male bloggers with large followings on the social media platform Weibo denounced the provisions against degrading or harassing women online, saying they would give “radical” feminists too much power to silence their critics.
  • A woman in southern Guangdong Province who asked to use only her last name, Han, out of fears for her safety, said that she had endured years of physical and emotional abuse by her ex-husband. Even though she managed to secure a divorce last year, he continues to stalk and threaten her, she said. She obtained a restraining order, viewed by The New York Times, that cited chat logs and recordings.
  • If the law is revised, she continued, the police will be forced to recognize that she has a right to seek their help.
Javier E

Having It All-and Hating It - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Nearly 35 years ago, Helen Gurley Brown published Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even If You’re Starting With Nothing, a landmark bestseller in a pre-Oprah world about living your best life. In the ’80s, this was a go-girl message about putting on that power suit, and having great sex while doing it. Becoming a mother always complicated the equation
  • Today, it’s perhaps even more complicated: Work can no longer be left at the office; parenting is competitive and all-encompassing (one study found that working mothers today spend six hours more per week on childcare than stay-at-home mothers in the 1970s); marriage is expected to be both financially and emotionally satisfying; social media beckons its users compare every element of their lives to everyone else’s in a very public space, and then feel inadequate about not filling their feeds with smiling, well-appointed children nibbling perfectly composed, locally-sourced dinners. Having it all, as unattainable as it may have always been, is beyond the realm of possibility.
  • Of the women we interviewed for this project, our Highest Achievers (women who are C-Suite-adjacent or recognized in their fields) have ascended to that level in part because they’re cool with not having it all: For them, being a physically present parent was not their number-one priority.
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  • Instead, the women still chasing the having-it-all dream are the group we’re calling the Scale Backers—13 women who dialed down high-powered careers to simultaneously be full-time mothers and workers. And in the process of downsizing, they became, ironically, the most stressed-out of our subjects, attempting to do everything well, but feeling like they excelled at none of it.
  • Having it all has always been exhausting, but our interviewees are attempting it not because they’re aspiring to be CEO, but under the illusion of work-life balance.
  • A January 2013 study by the American Sociological Association backed the idea that flexible work environments make for happier, healthier, more productive workers. But even our subjects with flexible or work-from-home jobs, while grateful for the arrangement, still seemed to operate from a baseline of frazzled.
  • While our Opt Out group has left the primary earning to their spouses, and our High Achievers have hired the help they need to run their lives, the Scale Backers insist on having one (super-flexed) leg in every realm—leaving many of them hobbling through their days.
  • Having it all today means answering emails from the playground, abruptly ending a conference call to deliver a forgotten lunch, and giving both work and your kids short shrift.
  • And yet, when asked what might make their lives easier, most of these subjects demurred, saying they wouldn’t change a thing. Every one of them described her life, complete with compromises and chaos, as a good life. Most seemed pleased at how their lives had turned out 25 years after college, despite sacrifices for both their career and their children. And many women admitted that part of what they liked about attempting to juggle it all is the sense of engineering their own destiny in every avenue.
Javier E

Krugman vs. Brooks: The Times' columnists' amazing brawl over Charles Murray's new book... - 0 views

  • American education is not without its problems, but, as Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz masterfully demonstrated in their recent book The Race Between Education and Technology, the issue isn’t that schooling has actually gotten worse, it is that the rate of progress has slowed down.
  • That’s not ideal, but it hardly amounts to a collapse of the social fabric
  • Brooks is right that materialist explanations for social decline are unpersuasive, but if the streets are safer and kids are doing better in school than their parents, then what is it that needs explaining?
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  • what if this is a non-crisis driven by abundance? The obvious place to look for an explanation of the declining marriage rate is the vast increase in the economic opportunities available to women. Newly empowered and less dependent on male economic support, women have become somewhat choosie
  • Two related facts seem to trouble both Brooks and Krugman. Marriage rates are down, and so is male workforce participation. Brooks sees this as a cultural crisis that’s leading to declining material welfare, while Krugman sees declining male wages as driving both trends.
  • As for labor force participation, Krugman must be right that poor labor market conditions explain the trend over the past few years. But the long-term decline has been going on since as far back as we have data. Male labor force participation rates were declining in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and in the ‘80s, and now in the aughts. Maybe the value of leisure is increasing?
  • it’s a natural outgrowth of progress. On the whole, the American population has grown less desperate over time and less interested in working—an entirely typical pattern, globally and historically.
  • The short-term jobs situation is a real crisis, but the longer-term decline of work is an opportunity. If men want to tempt women back into marriage, they’ll have to use more of their free time to pitch in with housework and child care, building a more egalitarian tomorrow. If employers want to tempt people back into working, they’ll have to offer higher pay or more pleasant jobs
Javier E

SSRN-What Drives Views on Government Redistribution and Anti-Capitalism: Envy or a Desi... - 0 views

  • In debates over the roles of law and government in promoting the equality of income or in redistributing the fruits of capitalism, widely different motives are attributed to those who favor or oppose capitalism or income redistribution. According to one view, largely accepted in the academic social psychology literature (Jost et al. 2003), opposition to income redistribution and support for capitalism reflect an orientation toward social dominance, a desire to dominate other groups. According to another view that goes back at least to the nineteenth century origins of Marxism, anti-capitalism and a support for greater legal efforts to redistribute income reflect envy for the property of others and a frustration with one’s lot in a capitalist system.
  • compared to anti-redistributionists, strong redistributionists have about two to three times higher odds of reporting that in the prior seven days they were angry, mad at someone, outraged, sad, lonely, and had trouble shaking the blues. Similarly, anti-redistributionists had about two to four times higher odds of reporting being happy or at ease. Not only do redistributionists report more anger, but they report that their anger lasts longer. When asked about the last time they were angry, strong redistributionists were more than twice as likely as strong opponents of leveling to admit that they responded to their anger by plotting revenge. Last, both redistributionists and anti-capitalists expressed lower overall happiness, less happy marriages, and lower satisfaction with their financial situations and with their jobs or housework. Further, in the 2002 and 2004 General Social Surveys anti-redistributionists were generally more likely to report altruistic behavior. In particular, those who opposed more government redistribution of income were much more likely to donate money to charities, religious organizations, and political candidates. The one sort of altruistic behavior that the redistributionists were more likely to engage in was giving money to a homeless person on the street.
  • In the United States, segments of the academic community seem to have reversed the relationship between pro-capitalism and income redistribution on the one hand, and racism and intolerance on the other. Those who support capitalism and oppose greater income redistribution tend to be better educated, to have higher family incomes, to be less traditionally racist, and to be less intolerant of unpopular groups. Those who oppose greater redistribution also tend to be more generous in donating to charities and more likely to engage in some other altruistic behavior. The academic assumption that anti-capitalism and opposition to income redistribution reflect an orientation toward social dominance seems unwarranted.
Javier E

Stressed, Tired, Rushed: A Portrait of the Modern Family - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In 46 percent of all two-parent households, both parents work full-time, according to Pew, up from 31 percent in 1970.
  • The share of households with a mother who stays home has declined to 26 percent from 46 percent.
  • working parents are the new norm. Sixty percent of children now live in households where all the parents at home work at least part time, up from 40 percent in 1965,
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  • The median household income for a family in which both parents work full time is $102,400, according to Pew, compared with $84,000 when mothers work part time and $55,000 when they stay home.
  • Government time-use data show that parents over all do less housework and spend more time with their children than they used to.
krystalxu

Gender Roles of Women in Modern Japan - Japan Powered - 0 views

  • Both male and female roles influence each other.
  • Japan, like China and Korea, is heavily influenced by Confucian ideals.
  • en are the heads of the household; women are dependent on the men.
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  • Marriage was often arranged.
  • The largest shift happened after World War II.
  • Family lineage is more important than marriage.
  • (1602-1868), women did not legally exist
  • Wives could be returned to her family if she failed to produce an heir.
  • Women’s happiness is found only in marriage, according to tradition.
  • All were heads of the household. Now, should could be the head of the household (Sato, 1987)
  • Japanese men average only 30 minutes of housework, child care, and elder care each day (North, 2009).
  • Women are entitled to not much beyond motherhood; men are not entitled to much beyond work (Bae, 2010).
  • The Civil Code of 1947 granted woman every possible legal right:
  • Marriage and children are synonymous
  • women are expected to submit to male authority in three ways
  • Motherhood is adulthood in many regards.
  • Equality benefits men as much as it does women.
  • Many men want to be present fathers rather than distant father figures.
  • Increasingly, families want to have daughters rather than sons.
  • The preference for daughters points to a continuation of tradition in regards to women and a more liberal view with men.
  • Women may favor daughters because they want the daughter to help in traditional roles: care giver and companion.
  • the equality is the option to continue traditional ways if she chooses
  • Women are demure; men are assertive. These are traditional traits in both Japanese and American societies.
  • Men are able to shed the silliness of masculinity (Big boys don’t cry. Men must be strong, etc)
Javier E

Xi Jinping's Favorite Television Shows - The Bulwark - 0 views

  • After several decades of getting it “right,” why does China now seem to insist on getting it “wrong?”
  • a single-party system meets with widespread, almost universal, scorn in the United States and elsewhere. And so, from the Western point of view, because it lacks legitimacy it must be kept in power via nationalist cheerleading, government media control, and a massive repressive apparatus.
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  • What if a segment of the population actually supported, or at least tolerated, the CCP? And even if that segment involved both myth and fact, it behooves the CCP to keep the myth alive.
  • How does the CCP garner popular support in an information era? How does a dictatorship explain to its population that its unchallenged rule is wise, just, and socially beneficial?
  • All of this takes place against a backdrop of family and social developments in which we can explore household dynamics, dating habits, and professional aspirations—all within social norms for those honest party members and seemingly violated by those who are not so honest.
  • watch the television series Renmin de Mingyi (“In the Name of the People”), publicly available with English subtitles.
  • In the Name of the People is a primetime drama about a local prosecutor’s efforts to root out corruption in a modern-day, though fictional, Chinese city. Beyond the anti-corruption narrative, the series also goes into local CCP politics as some of the leaders are (you guessed it) corrupt and others are simply bureaucratic time-servers, guarding their own privileges and status without actually helping the people they purport to serve.
  • the series boasts one of Xi’s other main themes, “common prosperity,” a somewhat elastic term that usually means the benefits of prosperity should be shared throughout all segments of society.
  • The historical tools used to generate support such as mass rallies and large-scale hectoring no longer work with a more educated and communications-oriented citizenry.
  • So we see government officials pondering if they can ever find a date (being the workaholics that they are), or discussing housework with their spouses, or sharing kitchen duties, or reviewing school work with their child.
  • the central themes are quite clear: The party has brought historical prosperity to the community and there are a few bad apples who are unfairly trying to benefit from this wealth. There are also various sluggards and mediocrities who have no capacity for improvement or sense of public responsibilities.
  • The show makes clear that the vast majority of party members and government officials are dedicated souls who work to improve peoples’ lives. And in the end, virtue triumphs, the party triumphs, China triumphs, and most (not all) of the personal issues are resolved as well.
  • The show’s version of the CCP eagerly and uncynically supports Chinese culture: The same union leader from the wildcat strike also writes and publishes poetry. Calligraphy is as prized as specialty teas. And all of this is told in a lively style, similar to the Hollywood fare Americans might watch.
  • n the Name of the People was first broadcast in 2017 as a lead-up to the last Communist Party Congress, China’s most important decision-making gathering, held every five years. The show’s launch was a huge hit, achieving the highest broadcast ratings of any show in a decade.
  • Within a month, the first episode had been seen over 350 million times and just one of the streaming platforms, iQIYI, reported a total of 5.9 billion views for the show’s 55 episodes.
  • All of this must come as good news for the prosecutors featured so favorably in the series—for their real-life parent government body, the Supreme People’s Protectorate, commissioned and provided financing for the show.
  • At a minimum, these shows illustrate a stronger self-awareness in the CCP and considerable improvement in communication strategy.
  • Most important, it provides direction to current party members. Indeed, in some cities viewing was made obligatory and the basis for “study sessions” for party cadres
  • Second, the enormous public success of the series and acknowledging deficiencies of the party allows the party to control the criticism without ever addressing the fundamental question of whether a one-party system is intrinsically susceptible to corruption or poor performance.
  • As communication specialists like to say, There is already a conversation taking place about your brand—the only question is whether you will lead the conversation. The CCP is leading in its communications strategy and making it as easy as possible for Chinese citizens to support Xi.
  • it is not difficult to see that in this area, as in many others, China is breaking with tactics from the past and is playing its cards increasingly well. Whether the CCP can renew itself, reestablish that social contract, and live up to its television image is another question.
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