Feb. 19, 2021
Brigid Schulte wrote for Forge about how the pandemic has worsened gender inequality within the home:
Of course, this unfair division of labor at home isn’t new: Research shows that pre-Covid, women in partnerships with men spent about twice as much time as their male partners doing the unpaid housework, child care, and invisible labor of household management, even when working full time. That dynamic nearly put an end to my own marriage and helped spark Better Life Lab Experiments, an initiative I now run to help couples rethink their divisions of labor.
The good news: Right now, even as gender equity is at such a low ebb, can actually be a prime opportunity for just that. The pandemic may have exacerbated the problem, but with everyone stuck at home much more than they used to be, it’s also the perfect context for figuring out a solution. I talked to psychologists, family therapists, and sociologists who study the gendered division of labor about how couples can use this crisis to reset to a fairer balance of power.