By Erica and Karen

We were most interested to read a recent article—called Why Women Do The Household Worrying—that described the work of Allison Daminger, a graduate student who breaks down the instinct for staying alive into four stages: anticipate, identify, decide and monitor.

The key insight—women and men both engage in identifying and deciding how to undertake tasks, but women do much more of the anticipate and monitor parts. That is—we figure out ahead of time what needs to be done, then we discuss it with our male partners who help decide how to get it done, then we get it done.

This scholarly analysis was echoed in another article—The Myth That Gets Men Out Of Doing Chores. The author pointed out that men who were able to do lots of chores in the work context likely were actually intellectually able to do chores at home—they just didn’t think they had to. The myth that they just can’t figure it out because women are smarter than they are is just… a myth.

We suppose every one of us has been in a situation where our male partner remarks how surprising it is that the soap in the dispenser, or the wine in the closet, or the toilet paper, never runs out. Just like another situation we found amusing—the one where the man says he’ll make dinner because his wife is working late, and when she gets home asks what in the fridge he can use to make dinner. The husband apparently anticipated he would need food but perhaps thought that the fridge was self-replenishing—as indeed it likely seemed to be, from his perspective. He did apparently get that dinner did not cook itself, though, so there’s that.

So why is it that men engage less in anticipation and monitoring? We have no academic basis for suggesting an answer, but we have lived and worked (happily) with men for many decades. We think the reason is—men don’t have to anticipate or monitor, because we will. We just can’t stand to let something on the to-do list stay undone for long, and our partners depend upon that. Why can’t we wait? Because if there’s no sign a man will do what he’s supposed to do, we just can’t help ourselves.

What can we do to change this dynamic? Well, Lysistrata took one approach—withholding sex from men until they ended the Peloponnesian War. Would the same thing work for chores? Maybe. And the women in Iceland almost fifty years ago set a fine example. Ninety per cent of them went on strike for a day, forcing men to figure out what to do and then to do it. The exercise allowed women to feel the power of uniting across social or political backgrounds, and the end result was the election of a woman president—among other things.

Are we suggesting that it would be productive if we were all go on strike for a day? Well, it might be fun! But no. Nor are we suggesting that women act like men and wait for men to do all the stuff that needs doing. The kids won’t survive. But we are suggesting that once in a while we just wait. Restrain that instinct to get it done and crossed off the list. See what happens.

And we are also suggesting we learn from the Icelanders. When women work together across boundaries, their power is vast. So even if men don’t change, women can take over when they work together. Then things will really get done!