The age old debate about who does more around the house will never be settled, thanks to some philosophers may at least understand why it won’t be settled. Using affordance theory (which is about objects, situations, and actions being related) philosophers argue that the way the world is interpreted fundamentally defines how we react, or not, to an implication of a chore. For example, a man might see a room as being disorganized and leave it at that whereas a woman sees the same room and thinks about the necessary action of having to organize it, meaning that the woman in this example has more of a mental burden than the man. Of course, it’s a very gendered conversation and there’s no clarity of any of this being innate or learned behaviour.
Regardless, you should tidy up after yourself.
“Many point to the performance of traditional gender roles, along with various economic factors such as women taking flexible work for childcare reasons,” said Dr Tom McClelland, from Cambridge University’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
“Yet the fact that stark inequalities in domestic tasks persisted during the pandemic, when most couples were trapped inside, and that many men continued to be oblivious of this imbalance, means this is not the full story.”
McClelland and co-author Prof Paulina Sliwa argue that unequal divisions of labour in the home – and the inability of men to identify said labour – is best explained through the psychological notion of “affordances”: the idea that we perceive things as inviting or “affording” particular actions.