when it comes to housework. She came to the conclusion that the reasons behind the gap are: “limited male time availability, unequal relative resources and conforming to traditional gender ideology.”
The traditional gender ideology part is key. Syrda hypothesized that moms who make more money than their husbands may feel like they are “deviating” from tradition. So, in turn, the couple overcorrects. “What may be happening is that, when men earn less than women, couples neutralise this by increasing traditionality through housework – in other words, wives do more and husbands do less as they try to offset this ‘abnormal’ situation by leaning into other conventional gender norms,” she wrote.
The whole thing just ends up being completely counterintuitive. Syrda came to the conclusion that the current system of higher paid moms doing more housework just doesn’t make practical sense. “If the wife is the relatively higher earner, transition to parenthood shouldn’t result in a more traditional division of domestic labour as this wouldn’t improve the household’s overall quality of life,” sheThis is just one of the many instances of studies that show inequalities