«A gigantic new poll
from Gallup and the International Labour Organization has found that
more than a quarter of both men and women worldwide think women should
stay home to raise kids and do housework instead of holding a paid job.
The survey, which reached almost 149,000 adult participants in 142
countries and territories in 2016, was released Wednesday for
International Women’s Day, and the pollsters says it's representative of
more than 99 percent of the world’s population.
Christina Cauterucci is a Slate staff writer.
Participants were given three options for their preferred female
employment situation: staying home to do unpaid homemaking and care
work; doing paid work outside the home; or doing both. Of men, 29
percent said they thought women should just stay home, while a slightly
smaller proportion, 28 percent, thought women should just do paid work.
Among women, 27 percent preferred doing unpaid housework and 29 percent
wanted just a paid job. A plurality of both—40 percent of women and 38
percent of men—wanted women to do both.
When the report’s authors separated the results by region, stark
differences came to light. The men of North Africa were more likely than
anyone in any other region to say women should stay home—51 percent
registered that preference. In Arab nations, 45 percent of men felt the
same. North American men were closer to the global average; 21 percent
said a woman should only do unpaid work at home. Men in Northern,
Southern, and Western Europe were most amenable to women in the
workforce: Just 12 percent want women to stay at home.
The survey found that, though cultural and family norms are major
predictors a woman’s desire to work outside the home, 36 percent of
women who live in households that deem it not acceptable to do
paid work outside the home still want to do so, whether solely or in
addition to their housework. The poll’s authors note that, of the more
than half of women worldwide who are not currently in the workforce, a
58 percent majority wish they were, and that 70 percent of women and 66
percent of men overall think women should hold paid jobs of some kind.
When participants were asked about the biggest challenge for women
who work outside the home in their respective countries, the most
frequently cited issue was balancing work and family life, followed by
affordable child care. People in developed nations were more likely to
express concern about wage equality, the top issue mentioned in the
U.S., while residents of developing nations were more likely to cite
unfair treatment, harassment, and workplace abuse.
One of the more telling takeaways from this survey is that a sizable
plurality of both men and women in most regions, including North
America, believe that women should both work a paid job and, as the survey put it, “take care of [the] family and the housework.” Though the gender “chore gap” is slowly shrinking,
women do the bulk of housework and child care in every country where
it’s been measured. That often translates to less capacity to take on
higher-paying leadership roles at work and less energy for personal
pursuits.
Perhaps oddly, in North America at least, more women than men think
women should do housework in addition to paid work. In urban areas in
the U.S. and Canada, 32 percent of men who took the survey thought women
should only have paid jobs; just 19 percent of women felt the
same. Perhaps the men of North America felt weird about assigning women
so much labor. Urban women, meanwhile, under internal and external
pressures to be high-achieving careerwomen who are also attentive
mothers and homemakers, feel a clearer mandate to do both.»
