Growing up as a girl we are well trained to be the perfect marriage material. We are taught to cook, to do laundry, to clean the house, to buy groceries and to be able to manage the whole house single handily. While boys play cricket in the society lane, girls are at home playing with their doll house. This is the story of every girl in every household.
From a very young age we are made known that girls are the one who work at home where as boys are the one who get money. During the olden times, women were not allowed to go to work. They were responsible to take care of the household chores, children, field and their husband. Men would go to work, come home, eat, sleep and repeat.
This can still be seen in some of our houses. Our mom’s are the ones doing all or most of the house work. Most of our dad’s are not that helpful in housework.
But times have changed now. Women and men are treated equally in the society. But the case at home still remains the same. We still see gender inequality in our houses. Researchers found that women spent three times as long on domestic chores, such as cooking, cleaning and washing, as compared to their husbands or partners.
Some female breadwinners, however, have to shoulder the burden of all the housework as most of men have admitted to doing nothing at all around the home. Why so? Why should women alone be burdened with all the house work? Are household chores only a woman’s job?
Most households are of the collective opinion that doing any household chore, especially laundry, is a woman’s job. Children usually ask their mothers to do all their work like washing clothes, cleaning etc. Most of the children are under the assumption that household chores are only their mothers’ job.
But now it’s high time to think of a long term solution to this problem by eliminating the discrimination at the very core. We need to set a good example for the future generation. Ariel has come up with a wonderful initiative to eradicate the imbalance in our household chores.
Men should take initiative to do little household chores like laundry. Doing laundry is not a very difficult task. When you do the little things, you unknowingly take away a lot of load from your mother’s or wife’s shoulder.
Our sons and daughters need to see their fathers as good role models and our daughters must not think that by becoming a mother means becoming a caretaker. The support for equality and care-taking needs to start at home, the best place to effect change.
If both partners work full time, then clearly both partners should equally share the chores at home too. That’s where the heart is, after all. Let’s change the future.