When you want to see what a culture thinks about something, a great place to start is the cultural artifacts it produces–its literature, music, art, and movies. After all, these were all created by people living in it, so it will naturally reflect, at least to some degree, their beliefs about the world. Over winter break, I watched the film “It’s a Wonderful Life” with my family. For anyone who has not heard of it, it is a classic film from the 1940s focused around the life of George Bailey (James Stewart) and the importance of the often unnoticed good acts we do each day, and recognizing the value of simply living life, even when one’s plans and aspirations may not pan out as hoped. Older movies reflect a culture that is quite different from the one we live in today. One aspect of the 1940s culture that I noticed is embodied in the lead female character of the movie, Mary Hatch (Donna Reed), who mainly just played the part of a domestic housewife and love interest to Georgy Bailey. The character of Mary does not have much identity outside of her marriage and familial role, ultimately serving as “the object of a domesticated form of desire” (Beuka, 41). Once she is married, her main roles are shown to be almost exclusively working in the house and engaging in child-rearing, and the few times she is shown to have any unique skills or abilities of her own (financial in making business deals, or social in negotiating with others), these skills are always used on behalf of George and for his benefit. This idea of women as being the one in charge of things like housework, child rearing, and other such roles, is worth discussing, both as far as the continued prevalence and impact of this idea, and how we should move forward. What should be the role of men and women in the house?
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2019, roughly 57% of US women were in the civilian labor force, compared to 69% of men. This is a significant difference, and while this is much more equal than in 1948, where 33% of women were in the labor force and 87% of men were, the massive discrepancy is still clearly present. And yet, the difference in the way men and women are still thought of as far as societal roles becomes more clear when one considers marital status. In 2019, if one compares men and women between those who were never married and those who are, 59% of married women with a present spouse work, while 65% of women who never married work. As women married, they tended to work less outside the home. Compare this to how 73% of married men with a present spouse work, while 68% of men who have never married work, so, contrastingly, married men tended to work more than unmarried men. The difference is even more significant when considering the presence of children. While 94% of men with children under 18 years old are in the labor force, only 72% of women in the same position are. The real bias for men to be in the workforce while women do more domestic work still very much exists today, even if it has decreased.
The discrepancy in the number of men and women in the workforce still remains, and while some small improvements have occurred in the workplace, there is still a large gap in the amount of housework done in married couples between wives and husbands. Even considering those without children, while women typically do 17 hours of housework per week, men only do 10. Then, in families with 3 or more kids, the amount of housework done by women jumped up to 28 hours per week; for men, it was still only about 10 per week.
This difference in both kinds of work as far as one’s profession and in the home, demonstrates just how large the difference in expectations is for men and women. We are all raised with certain ideas about what men and women ought to do in life, which shape both our own behaviors, and our expectations for both ourselves and our partners in marriage. But when there are differences in what is expected between men and women, this can sometimes lead to people being forced into roles that they don’t want, or being treated as unusual when they go against the expectations. It shouldn’t be strange to think of the possibility of a wife who is the primary breadwinner for the family, and a husband who might do most of the child rearing and housework. Why should that be considered unusual? I think back to where I live, and one of my neighbor families has a mother who works in information technology, and the father is a househusband. In my own family, when I was younger, my mother was the one who stayed home to care for my siblings and I, but now my father actually does the vast majority of the housework as my mother is focusing on her career. There are other ways for a family to split up the work than our culture often seems to expect. However, for many, social stigma and discrimination can get in the way other options. For example, according to a study conducted in Germany, because women are more likely to be expected to be in charge of childcare, women who were married and had young children, or were seen as likely to have children, were at a disadvantage during the hiring process for part-time jobs when compared to those who either had adult children or were unmarried. And men don’t escape problems when they try to break social norms either – stay at home fathers often struggle to find support and form social connections with other stay at home parents (usually mothers), as often support and education groups are targeted at new mothers.
In many areas, it is becoming more common for couples to evenly split things like housework, and it is becoming more acceptable for women to be the primary breadwinner, with their spouse being a househusband, but the social stigma sometimes associated with this counter-cultural approach still exists. There are many other influences that are further enforcing this inequality in gender expectations, such as the continued problem of unequal pay between genders, among the many other forms of workplace discrimination that women face. Because men have on average higher pay than women, it is often better financially for a married couple to decide that the wife will stay home, while the husband works. Additionally, men don’t face the same types of harassment and discrimination that women face in the workplace, and will have greater motivation to continue working. All of these are problems that would take too long to discuss in themselves here, but it is clear that they contribute to perpetuating the bias toward the working husband and housewife, which then feeds the idea that women should be the ones doing housework. Moving toward a culture where it is considered normal for either a woman or man to decide to focus on their profession, for both a man and woman to stay at home and focus on caring for their home, for both genders to have equal responsibility and expectations for things as basic for living as cooking and doing laundry, will be a shift for many out there. However, it isn’t the 1940s anymore; it is about time our ideas about who and what people can and should be moved beyond gender to what they personally want to be and do with their life.
References:
Beuka, Robert. “Imagining the Postwar Small Town: Gender and the Politics of Landscape in It’s a Wonderful Life.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 51, no. 3/4, University of Illinois Press, 1999, pp. 36–47, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688219.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.