50/50? (On the burden of domestic labour)

My co-worker spoke about having a day off tomorrow. I asked her if she was excited and she responded with "meh", and a shrug of her shoulders. She then proceeded to crack jokes about how it'll have been more exciting if her husband didn't have the day off also. 

You see, everytime it's nearing the end of her shift, I make a casual remark about how she can at least go home to relax. And everytime, she makes sure to list every chore that awaits her at home. This my co-worker constantly talks about her husband's incompetence when it comes to domestic labour. How she'd still have to do all the cleaning at home, How until she returns, she is sure their kids will be freezing because he would not bother to turn on the heat, how he was told to take the dogs out to the garage because it was raining and he just opened the door and let them run free so they came back soaked in mud which she spent her morning dealing with. All these she says amidst laughter and a care-free attitude. 

I enjoy hearing this lady go on her little facetious rants. I particularly find it fascinating because I come from a culture where people do not "wash their dirty linen in public". A lot of times when women are dissatisfied in their marriages, it is only an open secret. Given that marriage for many women is something that they aspire to, and something which gives them some sort of status, they would not dare make it a routine to show their discontentment. Perhaps amongst much older women who have little or nothing to lose, you might occassionally hear shady remarks made, but in my experience, middle aged women, actively raising kids barely outwardly complain. And to my own understanding, they have many causes to voice their frustrations about.

When I hear men speak about the type of women they desire, they talk about both the utility the woman would bring them economically (College-educated, driven, independent etc), and how much she would be able to "keep the home". Now, there is nothing inherently wrong in desiring these things. The only problem is that while women today can meet these demands, it seems to me that men have either remained stagnant, or are progressing at alarmingly slow rates. Women contribute financially to their homes, and yet take up an overwhelming amount of domestic labour. And somehow that has become the norm. We have empowered women to be go getters, to work hard, make their money and make sure to not rely on men, and women have normalized that. It's a wonderful thing. It's what we want. 

But that becomes a sort of injustice when after spending the day, sweating and striving just as hard as any man, you return home and take up yet another role, with little or no help from your partner. A role that society gives you very little room to mess up in. In my country, all a man has to do is contribute in the least way possible to these domestic roles, for him to receive resounding applauses, and for people to tell you how lucky you are that your husband has perhaps done his own dishes, changed his kid's diapers or has managed to take the food out of the fridge for it to defrost. It's a tragedy, really. And women are not angry. They just take it as life, and they learn to tell jokes between themselves of this pitiful shared reality. It's appalling. Domestic labour is labour. It is hard work. It is severely undervalued work.

There is also the issue of weaponized incompetence. This is when a man contributes to domestic labour, but does it in a really bad way, so that he is not asked to do it, and so that the woman ends up dealing with that responsibility herself. At my student accommodation, during the start of year clean, the cleaners had come to the shared kitchen in my flat for a deep clean, but on seeing that it was kept in good condition, decided only to wipe the counters and be on their way out. When I reported it to management, the lady sarcastically responded "oh that's great. Sounds just like what my husband would do if I ask him to clean". I found that very funny. But it is not funny that even the most simple of  domestic tasks, a lot of men fail to perform properly at home. 

A couple of years ago, my friend's mum had travelled for a couple of days, and so the househelp was charged with the responsibility of preparing his meals. He did not like how the food she made tasted. He came crying to me how he needed to find a wife who could cook, because he had been subjected to eating only yams (the only thing he could cook) until his mother returned. It genuinely amazed me. That was his take-home from that situation. There was no self-awareness that perhaps it was time to equip himself with the knowledge of how to prepare his own meals. Nothing. The only thing he thought to himself was how it was imperative to find a wife who could cook.

Such is the case with a lot of young men back home. When men are seen frequently eating out, they are jokingly told that they need to go and marry. But that's not the case with women. I had a friend who would join her male colleagues to go get food during their lunch break at a food place near their office. It was easier for her to buy food, because she would get home from work very late and in her tiredness, spend time cooking, just for it to spoil due to issues with power outage. The third time she went with them, they told her that it was not a good look for her, and that it gives potential suitors the impression that a young woman like her, cannot prepare her own meals. They reasoned that if she could not do it for herself now she was single, and lived alone, it would seem as though she would not be able to do it for her husband and kids when the time came. 

There is nothing inherently wrong in wishing for a partner who can cook. Absolutely nothing at all. But it is revolting to think that women exist just to fulfill men's domestic needs; that everything we do or do not do is an audition to take up this unpaid role as a domestic servant; that when a man is seen to be failing at these tasks, he is not told that he needs to sit up, instead he is told to get a woman in his life to pick up his slack for him. But for whatever reason, a woman seems to fail, and her entire worth as a human being is brought into question. A popular Nigerian influencer posted a lot of pictures of himself (over a period of time) eating in restaurants, and after a while, his comments were flooded with people sending words of sympathy and pity to him because he had just gotten married, and they were so sure that his wife was failing him and he was to be subjected to these conditions for the rest of his life if he did not do something to correct the situation quickly.

There is so little grace given to women who are deemed unworthy because they "fail to perform these roles". They are the butt of many terrible jokes, and the punchline of many teachings from the mouths of preachers. If you make the mistake of saying you do not quite enjoy these tasks, you'd be perceived as though something is wrong with you. When on twitter, the discourse came up of women preparing Christmas dinner, and women said they found the entire process so stressful, the men on twitter swore that this generation of women had lost the plot. They insisted that women enjoyed spending the entire day or more in the kitchen doing back breaking work. When this influencer I had spoken of above, interjected saying that he prefers to pay someone so as not to stress his wife, and allow her spend quality time with her family and relatives, he was once again met with a lot of backlash, and many words of sympathy. 

 I once described myself as a staunch egalitarian. I believe strongly in splitting societal roles, as much as possible. I am happy to pay my own share of the bills and do my own share of the labour. And I am well aware that in partnerships it will not always be an equal or even equitable sharing of responsibilities. On some days, you do pick up the slack for your partner, and they do the same for you. But for a lot of women, it is not only on rainy days that they are weighed down by this enormous responsibility. It is everytime, in every weather condition. As a woman I am now hyper-aware of the fact that the odds are not in my favour in this very department. Society is structured in such a way that I am more likely to take the shame and feel the guilt of not meeting up with these domestic responsibilities even if I am dealing with the same amount of pressure in other aspects of my life, as a man. So, these days, when a man around me complains about how they met a girl who says she would not be paying a single dime for anything once she gets married (which is mostly not the reality at the end of the day), I ask them about how they plan to contribute to domestic labour. Often times, I do not get a satisfactory response.