Equality takes work: a process to understand why women still do most of the household labor

Abstract

In the United States, widespread support for gender egalitarianism in the household contrasts with the pattern that women continue to do more household labor than men in different-sex relationships. Existing scholarship has revealed the ways in which different-sex couples justify these unequal arrangements. However, we know little about why women do more labor even when they have egalitarian goals and few structural constraints. I address this question by examining whether and how couples attempt to achieve equality and why they so often fail. Data from 40 in-depth interviews with members of 20 cisgender, different-sex, college-educated couples show that, because unequal household labor patterns are so entrenched, having an egalitarian division of labor itself requires work. I theorize and provide evidence for a process I call “equality work,” the work of creating an egalitarian division of labor, which often falls on women. Equality work includes anticipating inequality, strategizing to avoid it, monitoring equality, speaking up about inequality, fixing unequal outcomes, and withholding work. When men don’t strive for equality, women preserve the relationship by doing the labor their partners do not and revising their ideals. Equality work helps us better understand why women do most of the household labor; paradoxically, doing less requires that women work as well. These findings suggest that women are not passively accepting unequal household arrangements but striving to change them.