LIFE LESSONS|CULTURE

Why Are Women Judged So Harshly Compared To Men When It Comes To Cleaning?

We haven’t come this far to only come this far — let’s dig into this

This might seem like a trivial matter to some, but I think it’s a much bigger issue than many like to admit.

A story (a rant) I published in the first week of January made me realize what a trigger discussions about cleaning can be.

I didn’t take it that seriously when I published it, but many others did!

I learned a great deal from the discussions I had amongst the over 150 responses that people left for me, and others to whom they responded. 10 days or so after my initial story, I wrote a follow-up story that addressed a few key points that were made by readers that I thought others would find useful.

The attention that both stories received sparked some enlightening conversations with my partner.

It also made me realize just how differently I think and act from the average woman.

A recent response by Colleen to my follow up story was the catalyst for an epiphany I had in regard to this topic.

Here’s her comment:

I know you got some backlash, but I actually learned a lot from the comments on your original post, so it wasn't all bad! I was very much raised to be embarrassed by having an unclean home (always, but especially if you're having guests over) and have a lot of anxiety about attracting pests, so as a result, I cannot have mess. Particularly among the women in my family (which is a whole other conversation about gender roles...), being able to clean was a marker of womanhood. A woman who could not "keep a home" was regarded as less of a woman.

We had a few hard and fast rules growing up: Dishes don't stay in the sink overnight. EVER. (Mom would wake us up at like 2 a.m. if she went for a drink of water and found dirty dishes) Regular vacuuming/sweeping is a must to get rid of crumbs. And overall, in the words of Gretchen Rubin, outer order yields inner calm, so a clean home is a peaceful, inviting home. A dirty home, on the other hand, is not a welcoming space. We lived by those rules.

That said, I have a bit more compassion after reading those comments and understand that I'm blessed to be able to clean (which is something I never thought I'd say when I had to do chores as a kid lol). Everyone in my household when I was young was able-bodied and no one was struggling with mental illness that made it difficult/impossible to clean, and as an adulthood, it comes relatively easily to me (Now, I may not always enjoy it lol, but I don't struggle with it). I admittedly used to be quite judgmental about this but will think twice from now on.

…being able to clean was a marker of womanhood. A woman who could not “keep a home” was regarded as less of a woman.

I put that sentence in bold because it is what caused certain things to crystalize in my mind.

I have a unique background and was raised by a family that did not live by societal norms.

I think that could be said for many people who were raised by single, Black mothers in America.

However, one of the biggest things that stands out as far as my differences from many other women I’ve read about and know is that I grew up seeing a man doing the majority of household chores.

He also loved to cook and did a great job with it all!

He was my grandmother’s boyfriend and he was around 35 years younger than she was.

My biological grandfather died when I was 3 years old. I’ve no memory of him, but I remember my pop-pop telling us grandkids not to mess up his house or ruin his floor, but to try his latest and greatest new dish.

I’ll be completely honest, I never saw any of the women in my family clean anywhere close to how he cleaned.

My oldest aunt was an amazing cook, but the extent of her “deep cleaning” was doing the dishes. Later in life, other did the dishes for her.

My family couldn’t afford housekeepers or house cleaners. They dated and some married. The majority of women in my family had kids.

I never once thought or was lead to believe that having a super clean was a reflection of my worth as a woman.

I usually made sure that my place was clean enough to feel comfortable for friends that came over.

Only once did I become concerned about the amount of cat hair that had accumulated on my couch which happened after a lover of mine made a remark about it getting in his mouth.

I’ve been fortunate to have male roommates earlier in life who were pretty damn clean, especially compared to other guys I’ve known.

However, I could totally relate, as can girlfriends of mine, to something I read in an article today:

“I can see mess and it bothers me and I have to fix it, and he could see the same mess and just think ‘oh, yeah’ and just turn around, and it wouldn’t bother him,” says the 39-year-old, a full-time IT consultant who lives in Tyresö, south of Stockholm.

In fact, earlier this week, I pretty much said the same thing to a friend when she was complaining about her husband not pitching in more to help with cleaning.

She told him that she’s hiring a house cleaner and he told her that he doesn’t want a stranger in their home going through their things.

She asked him if he planned to do more cleaning, which put an end to that argument.

The following is taken from the same article that features Sweden, a country that started a program in 2007 to pay for half the costs of house cleaning:

Multiple studies suggest that even in the world’s most egalitarian countries, women still perform a larger proportion of unpaid housework. Sweden ranks top in the EU’s Gender Equality Index, with almost 80% of women in employment, but while 74% of women do housework or cook for at least one hour every day, this compares to 56% of men. The European average is 79% compared to 34%.

“I love the concept because it means that it makes these kinds of services so much more affordable,” says Fors, who is unsure if she would be using a cleaner without the tax deductions. Hourly rates for cleaning work in Sweden typically range between 250–400 kronor ($26-$42) before the subsidy.

I will say though, from the recent statistics and articles I have come across, it seems that this gap is slowly, but surely narrowing.

Although women remain more likely than men to perform most of the duties at home, this has declined in some cases over the past two decades. Since 1996, women have become less likely to be the primary partner handling grocery shopping (down 14 percentage points), laundry (down 12 points), cooking (down 12 points), dishwashing (down 11 points) and cleaning (down nine points). These shifts are accompanied by some combination of increases in the percentage of men primarily performing the tasks or sharing the work equally with their partners.

Women also have become less likely to be the main spouse to pay bills as more have said this job is now shared equally between partners.

The negative judgements of women based on the degree of cleanliness in their home needs to stop!

There’s another school of thought, of course, that women just have higher cleanliness standards. “Men are dirty pigs who don’t care!” the thinking goes.

But this too is at heart a social construction that culture inculcates in both genders. Marketing messages illustrate the point: only about 2 percent of commercials featuring men show them cooking, cleaning or running after kids, while the majority of commercials featuring women are selling home products like cleaners or furniture. The same study that produced these numbers found that men who view commercials with a male character in a nontraditional role are more likely to favor domestic goals — but few are getting that exposure.

Instead of assuming that women want cleaner homes, remember that they face higher expectations around cleanliness, a judgment that doesn’t impact their male partners.

One argument is that social expectations are different for men and women. Women may be judged more harshly for having a less-than-spotless home, and women’s awareness of these expectations may motivate them to do more.

We tested this idea by randomly telling participants that the photo they were looking at depicted either “John’s” or “Jennifer’s” living space. Then we asked them to rate Jennifer’s or John’s character — how responsible, hardworking, neglectful, considerate and likable they were — based on the cleanliness of their home.

This is where things got interesting. Participants rated the photos differently depending on whether they were told that a woman or a man lived there. Notably, respondents held higher standards of cleanliness for Jennifer than they did for John. When they were told the tidy room belonged to Jennifer, participants — regardless of gender — judged it less clean and more likely to inspire disapproving reactions from guests than when the same exact room was John’s.

One of the things I like to do for friends and family, especially those with kids, is to offer help cleaning, organizing and/or babysitting without taking any money in return.

I don’t “love” to do any of those things, not really.

However, I do love the RESULTS and inner rewards I get from cleaning, organizing and babysitting.

I’m not a “white glove mother-in-law” type, as one person said outright.

I totally understand that there are numerous circumstances that can make it really difficult for people to keep up with household chores.

Maybe we can do more to help each other out instead of doing or saying things that tear each other down.

That is how I believe we can make substantial progress that can benefit everyone — female and male, young through out.

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