Why do lesbians get paid more than straight women?
Melinda Gates, the philanthropist and mother of three, gathered from listening to her kids and their friends that the next generation of American spouses expects to evenly split the household chores.
“I’m sorry to say this, but if you think that, you’re wrong,” she wrote to high schoolers Monday in her annual open letter, co-penned with her husband Bill Gates. “Unless things change, girls today will spend hundreds of thousands more hours than boys doing unpaid work simply because society assumes it’s their responsibility.”
She backed her case with global data. Women worldwide devote an average of 4.5 hours each day to unpaid work — cooking, cleaning, changing the baby’s diaper. Men contribute less than half that much time, according to the OECD.
The domestic division of labor remains staggeringly unbalanced in the United States, where female breadwinners now support 40 percent of homes. Women here typically spend two hours and 12 minutes daily on housework, while men spend one hour and 21 minutes.
A 2015 survey by Working Mom, furthermore, found that female breadwinners who lived with male partners still reported handling the bulk of grocery shopping, meal preparation, bill-paying and cleaning.
“This isn’t a global plot by men to oppress women,” Melinda wrote. “It’s more subtle than that. The division of work depends on cultural norms, and we call them norms because they seem normal — so normal that many of us don’t notice the assumptions we’re making. But your generation can notice them — and keep pointing them out until the world pays attention.”
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