Does anyone else think that gender equality is a complete farce?

Equal rights are one thing, and women in most western countries have had those for decades now. But when it comes to housework, etc, that is something for individual couples to thrash out for themselves. Ideally before you get married. If not, then hopefully you can work it out somehow.

But the fact is that generally speaking, the one who cares more ends up doing more. And more often than not it seems that the woman is the one who cares more. This is really something that couples have to work out for themselves.

However, I feel it is worth pointing out that when the modern feminist movement started in the USA, it was Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique that told everyone that housework was now so easy that a woman could knock it off in an hour or two, and therefore should have plenty of time to have a career and do the housework, and not trouble her husband to do anything in the house at all. This was originally supposed to be what feminism was about. And of course it is something that many working class wives were already doing,and had always had to do. When middle class wives started doing it, they often found they didn't like it after all.

Most articles about gender roles tend to ignore the men's perspective completely so the end up with an entirely biased angle, whereby all the women paint themselves as eternal victims (which seems to be a kind of medal to many women nowadays).

When my ex was the SAHM (older child in school and prior to her getting pregnant) she did pretty much most of the house work... I didn't complain about it because I was quite happy with her efforts to maintain the house. However, after I'd had an operation she raged on & on at me to move some furniture. As the operation involved my back, I was NOT supposed to be doing any heavy lifting at all. After several days of endless raging (I couldn't leave the home for several reasons during this time) I finally snapped and risked my health to give me some peace by moving the 7ft wall unit.

Later, she got pregnant and we moved country. Once the baby was born, it was her turn to go out to work daily and my turn to be the SAHD - with a baby, not just an older child at school during the day hours. As we had no money, I would literally be on my hands & knees scrubbing the tiled floors. She found problems with that, and the way I did the laundry, and the cooking, and just about everything I did she would nit-pick to death to find problems with..

Gender equality seems to mean something like this:

Women get special laws that favour them at the cost to men & children. Women get step-up programmes, not available to men, designed to elevate their careers. Women get support networks that aren't open to men. Women get legal assistance that very few men can take advantage of. Women get superior healthcare funding, research and suchlike. Women get custodial "rights" over children 90% of the time while men have the financial "obligations and responsibilities". etc. etc.

Yes, 'gender equality' certainly is a farce from where I'm stood.

Your theory is a fallicy in itself. I am a male who works full-time, while my partner stays home. I get the kids up for school, get them ready, make their lunches, drop them at school, and then head off to work. After I finish work I come home and cook dinner, help the kids with their homework, give them a bath, wash the dishes, tidy the house and do laundry before bed. I'm lucky if I can find 15 minutes to myself a day to read a newspaper or relax.

So, the reality is, the only thing my female partner does is pick the kids up from school every day. Women doing 90% of anything except gossiping or wasting time is a joke!

What you're saying may be true. But I can't help but throw the question back at females. Why get married then? Seriously, to all women out there. Why get married if gender equality has just resulted in more work for you? Because women complain about this subject a lot. And I can't help but tell these "hey, you married him", "you chose him as a life partner". Didn't you know it was going to be like this when you decided to get married.

Neither gender does more work, but on average, we do different work. Time use surveys show that household labor is still very divided along gender lines.

In 2009, women did about twice the childcare per day, on average, that men did, and about 3.5 times the household chores. Men, by contrast, spent almost twice as much time at their jobs as women, and did fully seven times as much vehicle repair and thrice as much outdoor repair.

90% of the housework? what a load of crock. Not sure what source you read that from, but your statistics is waaaaay off course.

More women are going to college and getting degrees. More women are out earning men.

It is too bad the men are not taking up the slack. they should be more nurturing of the kids....