Isn't it interesting that women complained about their traditional household duties, but men didn't?

Not only does it make women look selfish, which they are, it also makes them look irrational and illogical. The answers for the women who answered are delusional and/or ignorant of the past. They have crafted some fantasy world where women were slaves and all the men went to work in mythical and wonderful 9-5 jobs, which is not the case. Men were forced to work any job they could get, where many of them were manual labor and the hours much longer than "banker's hours." Women weren't "forced" to "slave" away in the house, most women also worked, unless they were rich. How can a ditch digger afford to pay someone to do his household duties, I would like to know? Using their irrational line of BS, women could have hired a maid! Oh, but a poor working class man didn't make enough money to hire a gardener or a maid...

They claim all sorts of things without any reference as to a specific time, to laws that never existed, and in fact, their delusions fly in the face of laws of the past. These imbeciles need to study history, and not the history of man-hating where teh wimminz be slavez!!!

Women didn't "complain." When people are being done an injustice, we don't say that they "complain" about it. We say that they object, protest, etc. The word "complain" silences and marginalizes the concerns of people that need to be heard.

You have a good point when you mention that assigning specific household tasks to males reinforces gender roles, but you throw that insight away when you try to use it to claim that gender roles are fine, and men just don't complain as much.

The feminist agenda was never to make men keep following gender norms while women broke free. The idea is for everyone to be free of gender roles. People can decide on their own terms what household tasks get done by whom, whose responsibility it is to earn money (if it isn't the responsibility of both people), etc.

The objections to the sexed division of household labor has nothing to do with what is easy and what isn't. It has to do with the fact that because women were not expected to hold jobs in years past, it became expected that women could and should do the majority of the housework (how often does one need to fix the roof, and how often does one need to clean the house?).

As liberal feminism gains ground in this country, and an increasing number of women enter the paid workforce, there has been concern that while women have started to work full time, many women are still expected to do an amount of housework that is not manageable alongside a career.

What comes out of this? Women and men need to share housework in a way that is proportional. It doesn't matter who does which tasks. It only matters how much time each person works every day.

If a woman in a household does 8 hours of paid work a day, and then works for another 4 hours afterward, she is working 12 hours a day!

What I'm writing is not unrealistic:

Let's say she leaves work, buys a few groceries on the way home, gets home, does the dishes, wipes the counters, sweeps, straightens up, does laundry, makes dinner, cleans up after dinner, and makes tomorrow's lunches. That is easily 4 hours of work if not more.

So the objection here is that the amount of unpaid work that men have traditionally done corresponds to having a stay-at-home woman doing the vast majority of the housework and childcare.

In order for women to be free to truly pursue their careers, the distribution of housework must change so that each person works for a roughly equal amount of time. The point is not to clock in and out while doing housework, but just to avoid ridiculously disproportionate work assignment.

To those who think that gender roles are harmless:

Gender roles are inherently oppressive. Putting all people that identify as women (or men) in a category, and forcing them to conform to a specific set of standards is oppressive because forcing people to do what they don't want to do is oppressive.

You have an excellent point. However, as others have answered, the jobs you listed are only done for a few hours at a time every once in awhile, whereas the woman's job is done daily, day in and day out.

I think if both partners work outside of the home, then the household duties (both "man" jobs and "woman" jobs) should be divided evenly. But if one partner stays home, then s/he should be doing the household chores. There are always special projects, like painting the living room or building a deck, that they might need to negotiate, but if one partner doesn't work, then that partner should be taking care of the home and the yard.

As a single homeowner, I find it hard to sympathize too much with either group, since I have to do it all myself while working outside of the home and fighting a chronic illness. Cook, clean, mow the grass, paint the living room, change the furnace filters, take the car for an oil change, plant the flowers in the spring... You name it, I do it myself, or it doesn't get done. Luckily, I have a friend from church who does the handyman jobs for me that I can't do myself (like fixing my leaky kitchen sink). But otherwise, I do it all myself.

In actual fact, the modern wave of feminism was based on the notion, put forward by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique, that things like cooking and cleaning etc were not so much demeaning, but simply too easy. Modern conveniences meant that these things did not occupy enough of a woman's time, so she was bored, and therefore had a baleful influence on her husband and family, bu fussing over them too much and interfering in their lives. Ms Friedan thought that all the ills that beset modern society - divorce, child abuse, wife beating, juvenile delinquency and homosexuality - were due to women not having enough to do.

She believed that women could easily have a career (just a job was not good enough) and whisk through the housework in an hour or so when she came home.

However, things did not work out as she had planned, and women who tried it appeared to be disatsfied with the arrangement. Hence the follow up book, The Second Stage, in which Ms Friedan changed her mind and announced that men should be sharing the housework (a complete volte face from her earlier book).

Frankly, I think if both the man and the woman are working, there should be some sharing of household duties. The things you mention doing, while no doubt very useful, are things that only need doing occasionally, whereas the business of cooking, cleaning, tidying etc is pretty much ongoing, and hardly ever stops, especially if you have children at home. Children make a lot of mess.

Sshingling the roof is an important job, I am sure, but how often does it actually need doing, compared to the number of times meals have to be cooked and cleared up after?

All I care about is if she's two things ,1;A Nymphomaniac ,2; The owner of a liqueur store. I will do the rest.

So...women do all the day to day drudgery of cleaning up after people, doing their laundry, and cooking,

while men were only required to "fix" things occassionally, and for special construction projects.

You really shouldn't use example sets which prove women's POINT...

I've never heard "go mow the lawn" used as an insult against men. Or "go fix the roof," or "go work on the car." The household tasks that a majority of men do aren't ever used against them to insult them. However, "go make me a sammich," "get back to the kitchen," etc...are meant to be insulting to women. So why are the things that women do always used against them to degrade them, but the things that men do aren't?

And don't act like men never complain about it. I've never heard someone b*tch about something as much as my dad does when he has to take out the trash, or mow the lawn.

Keep in mind that only those women who have, still do, complain about cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry, will find it oppressive. Complaining in itself can be oppressive.

Each of us did our job; it seems that so many have lost pride in their jobs; when you lose pride in what you do, this is where the complaining comes in; to be followed by oppression.

Men's 'traditional' duties were done after being told daily until it was done. Their so called traditional duties were not feeding and caring 24/7. "A woman's work is never done."

Cleaning products, were crude chemicals and gasoline. The irons would either burn their hands, or the modern electric irons would catch fire. carpets had to be beaten outside, clothes washed by hand on a washboard with lye soap that burned their hands. Later the wringer washer injured women who's hands were caught in the rollers while pulling the clothes and linen through.

Now women have to help support the family and do all household chores, with no thanks from anyone. However the tide is turning. men are not, by their own choice and doing, educated and therefore not competitive in the job market. Women are. So the less dependent women are on men the less power an man has over her.

Isn't that the way it happened to women when people were no longer hunter gatherers? The woman lost her power when she no longer had the responsibility of growing and cultivating grain and foods for the community. Ha talk about what goes around comes around!

Let me enlighten you, since I've read through all the answers, and none of them touched on the reason feminism existed:

Women were "oppressed" because they were dependent on either their family for survival, or their husband.

Women weren't allowed to own property, or take credit for their own ideas or inventions...their father's name was credited, or their husband's name was credited.

Women were oppressed because they didn't have any say in government issues...not having the right to vote.

Most women DO the household chores, plus they have a full time career, and raise their children. They have to, because having a home, children and bills...usually takes more than one income.

Do ya feel a little more enlightened...?