Wives were also much more likely to have main responsibility for childcare. A majority of husbands said they had little involvement in childcare and only six percent said they shared or took main responsibility for these tasks. Women contributed approximately two thirds of the time given to childcare.

The proportion of time spent in housework by wives was not affected by class, education, or income. Women’s share of the time given to housework was influenced by the hours they spent in the paid workforce. Women engaged in full-time paid work had a smaller share of the couple’s housework load than the women employed part time. Nevertheless, those in full time paid work still contributed almost two thirds of the total time given to housework (inside and outside jobs) and to childcare.

Perhaps it is not surprising that wives were far more likely than husbands to report that the division of housework was unfair to them and that they needed their partners to do more so that they too could have more time for themselves. The following is a fairly typical comment:

I’m always tired. I want him to just take some of the burdens off me. Then I too can have a social life.

All but two of the 66 women interviewed (97%) had attempted to get their partners to carry out at least one inside task on at least one occasion. Most women made repeated attempts to get their husbands to perform housework (Table 2). Roughly three quarters of them had requested their husbands to perform four or more of the six inside tasks. Most women asked their husbands to carry out four of the six tasks at least twice.

Any attempt to get a husband to cross the line of job segregation and perform tasks which have been traditionally viewed as women’s responsibilities and performed mainly or exclusively by women is an attempt to exercise power. But just how much power were these women seeking to exercise? It is one thing for a wife to ask for help in special circumstances, such as when she is unwell, it is another to ask for that assistance on a regular basis. Asking for help reinforces existing arrangements and leaves the tasks defined as women’s responsibilities.

Could you help me by setting the table while I help Mary with her homework’?

More than one third of the women who approached their husbands were seeking only occasional help with tasks. Many of them emphasised just how little they were asking their husbands to do.

I have to be really busy to ask him to help. If, say, I was in a hurry and vacuuming I might ask him to put the dishes away.

I only ask on rare occasions, if I’m sick or stressed out.

Most of the husbands from whom wives were seeking only a little assistance did not do a great deal of housework.

About one in seven women were seeking assistance from their husbands on a regular basis and some of these wanted help across a number of areas of housework.

I would like a lot more help around the house. Especially now that I am working. If I wasn’t working it wouldn’t bother me.

Half of the women had attempted, at some stage in their marriage, to get husbands to share or take responsibility for at least one and usually several inside jobs, or to take responsibility in certain circumstances. Many of these women were mainly after help supplemented by some responsibility but more than one in four of the wives interviewed said that they approached their partners for the express purpose of getting them to share or take responsibility for one or more inside tasks. About one sixth of the wives wanted husbands to share responsibility for housework generally.

He is a grown man and so he should be able to see what needs doing. I don’t always want to be in the position of having to nag -- I don’t want to come across as a nagger. I don’t want him to think he’s doing it for me -- he’s doing it because it needs to be done!

I want him to take some responsibility for jobs that need doing. I don’t want to have to supervise everything he does.

A wife can be said to be exercising interpersonal power if by her intervention a husband behaves in a way he would not have behaved had she not intervened (Komter, 1989). Almost half the wives said that their endeavours either failed to achieve any lasting change or they made largely token gains (49%). They had little power and some were virtually powerless. Husbands refused repeatedly to help with tasks or to take responsibility for them.

He always ignores my requests or tells me to get the children to help, or that I should do it because it is my job. He does not help me around the house with anything. He never cooperates!

Several wives said their husbands would help if asked but there was no evidence of them doing so in the data provided. Some of the husbands ignored the requests or performed a task once only and declared it was not their job to carry it out. Others always performed tasks grudgingly, if at all.

When I asked him (to do some housework), he yelled and said, ‘It’s a woman’s job anyway and if you cannot cope you should quit work’

Some of the wives reduced their expectations because they failed to persuade their husbands to take any responsibility for inside tasks. They were now ready to settle for small gains, which usually meant occasional help with one or two undemanding tasks.

I have been mainly after help but I have asked him in the past to share some of the cooking.

There was a second set of women whose husbands usually responded willingly when they were asked for assistance (16%).

He is always happy to help if I ask him to do so.

The third set consisted of women whose husbands were willing sharers of responsibility for one or more inside tasks.

Although they did not always get their way these two sets of women, especially members of the third set, exercised a considerable degree of power.

John now does all his own laundry and ironing and he cooks tea for everyone every night.

These wives were confident that they could get their partners to assist in the future. Some of the members of the second and third sets had reduced their expectations because their husbands were now taking responsibility for a task or several tasks.

I pointed out how much housework needed doing and asked him ‘to do more without being a martyr about it’. It was a good discussion [with some conflict] and he now does some jobs regularly without me prompting him. I don’t want him to do more but he would willingly if I asked him to.

The fourth set consisted of women whose husbands were taking some responsibility but usually reluctantly and whose wives reported they resisted when they sought further help from them.

Roughly 40 percent of the 64 women were exercising a fair degree of power or a great deal of power. The husbands of these women were taking some responsibility for inside tasks or were willing helpers with several tasks.

Although approximately half the women had made some gains through their negotiations with their husbands only about 25 percent of the women were satisfied with the level of change they had achieved. A number of women had given up seeking change not because their husbands were providing sufficient assistance but because they had been worn down by their husbands’ repeated refusal to cooperate, or failure to complete tasks on time, or satisfactorily. A few of the women were fearful that if they kept trying to get their husbands to do more their action would cause conflict and possibly a substantial decline in the quality of the relationship.

I don’t want to see any changes. I think the ways things are [with me taking responsibility for the housework] keeps our relationship strong. We’ve been married for 21 years, that tells you a lot. No, I’m not looking to change things. I think with women these days expecting the husband to do so much more I think that is why there are so many more break ups in the family.

Wives who took a similar position to this woman were inclined to wait for their husbands ‘to see a job needed doing’. They were most reluctant to ask for assistance. Such indirect methods of trying to achieve any change have been shown to be largely ineffectual (Komter, 1989).

Almost two thirds of the women said at their interview that they wanted further change. Most of these were after substantial change. Only eight of the 64 wives said that they were not looking for their husbands to do more because they were now sharing sufficient responsibility for inside tasks. What most women exercising some degree of power had were husbands who had to be asked each and every time before they carried out a task. The great majority said they wanted husbands to see jobs needed doing and perform them without being asked.

I want him to do heaps more without being asked.

In short, although most wives had managed to engage their husbands to some degree in the carrying out of inside jobs most husbands had thwarted their wives’ attempts to gain the degree of participation they were looking for.

The exercise of power by men was frequently quite overt. The husband simply refused his wife’s request, or engaged in an argument with her which was resolved by her performing the task, or by him saying he would do it when he was ‘good and ready’.

Sometimes I find that he doesn’t do things he should do because he wants to have a rest even though I have requested him to do something. He refuses by just saying no and wants to leave it for next time. I can’t wait for that long so I end up doing it myself.

I don’t normally ask him to do anything and if I do it would be the dishes. He just refuses. I might yell and go on for five minutes and probably still end up doing them.

When approached some men repeatedly pleaded ignorance or incompetence or argued that they were being pressured ‘to do a woman’s job’.

When I asked him to do some washing he said he could not do it because he did not know how to operate the machine.

He said it is a wife’s job to do the cooking and so he is going to leave it up to me.

Some men adopted the strategy of denying that a job needed doing or denying its importance.

The floors look clean enough to me. No need to vacuum them. If you really think they need doing then you do them.

What’s the point of making the bed. We are only going to climb into it again in a few hours.

Such husbands denigrate the significance of the tasks.

He is totally resistant because he sees the tasks I am doing as unimportant.

To comprehend adequately the extent to which husbands exercised interpersonal power it is necessary to examine latent power processes as well as the types of manifest power processes that have just been outlined. When latent power processes take place overt conflict and men’s public refusals to assist or share the work are replaced by more subtle processes (Hood, 1983; Komter, 1989). Men are exercising latent power when a wife reduces her requests or gives up asking altogether because her husbands behaviour on previous occasions discourages her from seeking assistance. Women in this situation offered this type of explanation for their current passivity:

When I asked him to do a task his reaction would be ‘Oh, alright, I’ll do it in a minute’ or ‘I’m looking after this child and you want me to do this as well?’

I just asked him to get his dirty clothes from upstairs for me to wash. He’d do it for about a week and just totally forget. I don’t pursue the matter because I’m so sick of it.

One woman, who said the division of housework was unfair to her, was asked why given her sense of injustice she was not attempting to get her husband to do more inside jobs. Her reply highlighted her sense of powerlessness and her fear of worsening relationships by trying for more assistance. It also draws attention to the reality and effectiveness of a husband’s latent power.

Why should I? [ask for more assistance] He wouldn’t do the jobs. He considers most of them as women’s jobs. It would be a losing battle. We would just get into a fight.

Some of the husbands discouraged their partners from asking them to perform tasks by carrying them out in a slip shod fashion at some time in the past (Dempsey, 1997a; Komter, 1989).

I don’t want him to do the washing because he will stuff it up; I prefer to do the cooking and the groceries because he will usually forget something. However, he could wash the dishes more often because that’s a job that’s pretty hard to muck up.

Members of a sub-sample of 45 wives were asked why they had not sought more assistance from their husbands with housework. Sixty three percent of them said that it was in part because their husbands would forget to carry out the task/s concerned.

The strategy of always waiting for wives to remind them that a job requires attention is another way husbands in this study exercised latent power.

Although he says he will do a job if it needs doing he always turns a blind eye pretending the job doesn’t need doing. If I ask him he doesn’t rant and rave, he is too placid for that. He just goes his merry way knowing I’ll do it. He’s always been like that. Letting his old wife cope.

The use of such strategies by a husband reduces the likelihood that his wife will go on seeking assistance. Wives want to avoid the extra task of asking every time for help, especially if it is unlikely the husband will perform the task or do it satisfactorily. Just under two thirds of the sub sample of 45 women said that it was wholly or in part because they believed that they would have to keep asking their partners for assistance that they had not attempted to gain more assistance from their husbands than they had sought.

The attempts of the wives in this study to get their husbands to carry out more housework met with somewhat more success than the attempts of those interviewed for a previous Australian study on this issue (Dempsey, 1997a; 1997b). In the first study only eight percent of wives achieved long term changes compared to roughly 40 percent of the women in this study.

The differences in findings could be due to the fact that both samples were unrepresentative. However, it is likely to be more closely linked to differences in research methods. The earlier study probably underestimated just how much change women were seeking and how much success they experienced. In the second study far more questions were asked about women’s goals and their negotiations with their husbands and there was more opportunity to ask follow up questions. This procedure uncovered more partial successes than had been detected in the earlier study. The study also corroborated the findings of earlier research in showing that the women who used more direct approaches in an attempt to get their partners to do more housework were more likely to achieve more substantial change than those who relied on indirect and occasional strategies (Komter, 1989). Typically the more successful women asked their partners to sit down and discuss the issue of the housework. They tried to get across the message that the housework was a joint concern. They did not necessarily achieve their goal of getting their partner to take some responsibility but they were more likely to achieve substantial help whereas those who used less direct techniques such as hinting at the need for a task to be done, asking in a deferential manner, or waiting for a husband to notice something needed doing were much less likely to receive substantial assistance. A woman using less direct techniques communicated to her partner the message that she saw the jobs concerned as her responsibilities.

Notwithstanding the successes achieved by many women, men generally experienced more success than wives in exercising latent as well as manifest power. When men refused to share more of the work at home there was little most women felt they could do about it.

Some commentators argue that when women face resistance of this order they have at least two alternatives: leaving the jobs undone, or leaving the marriage. Clearly a growing number of women are making the latter choice. The women interviewed in this study had chosen, at least for the time being, to stay with their marriages and try to make them work as well as possible. Once this choice was made it appears that they were reluctant to engage in all out resistance. A number volunteered the view that conflict would jeopardise important goals such as having a harmonious marriage and a supportive family life for their children. The few women who reported that they had adopted the tactic of trying to get their husbands to carry out more housework by ‘downing tools’ said that their attempts failed.

The dishes piled up in the sink. In the end there was no alternative but for me to do them.

I tried to get things changed by leaving the dirty washing for him to pick up. It didn’t work. The mess was still there.

At a time when there is so much emphasis on agency it is important to stress how more constrained were the choices of these women than those of their menfolk (Weedon, 1987; Wearing, 1990). This was in part because of the advantages men are endowed with by wider structures and cultural processes. Women were constrained economically, culturally and socially. There is not the space here to deal with this complex matter in detail. However, I do want to highlight the negative impact that the institutional character of marriage had on these women’s attempts to bring about change.

Women’s ability to exercise interpersonal power was lesser than their partners because any negotiations occurring between husbands and wives over housework took place in a cultural context biassed in men’s favour. The existing rules allocate the more time consuming and tedious tasks to women (Dempsey, 1997a). A woman seeking change has not only a resistant husband to deal with but a powerful tradition and a contemporary set of norms that say the tasks belong ultimately to her. This culture has a taken for granted quality. This was shown by the responses women and men gave when they were asked: How did you and your partner decide who would wash the clothes? Or if we asked a similar question about cooking or cleaning the bathroom we usually got the following type of response.

The laundry -- it was never discussed just done by me.

Cooking -- there was no decision, I just do it. I mean this is the man who lies in bed yelling out to me to come in and adjust the aerial because the TV has lines.

The washing? She does that she knows how to.

The following extract brings out both the power of the ‘marriage rules’ that set the parameters for so much that happens in a marriage but as well the ambivalence some women feel about the issue of approaching their husbands over inside jobs. The woman concerned had asked her husband repeatedly with virtually no success to carry out all but one of the inside jobs enquired about in this study. When she was questioned as to how she and her husband decided who should do the cooking she said:

We did discuss the cooking early on in the relationship. Nothing was decided because I do it! He may have cooked tea once or twice years and years ago but he believes he was never taught to cook. It goes back to upbringing I would just do it... what I was brought up to believe I should be doing. Some things are just ingrained into girls, and other things are ingrained into boys. It’s just a social thing.

As this case illustrates men frequently use the ‘rules of the game’ to frustrate women’s endeavours to get them to assist. Their chances of success are often enhanced by women tethering the existing division of tasks to socialization processes. Women do this probably because of the link that is often present between their sense of personal worth and their activities as homemakers and mothers rather than say as paid workers (Hakim, 1991; Probert, 1996).

There were a number of women who said they were after some form of assistance from husbands who nevertheless stressed that tradition and socialization ‘decided’ what happened in their marriages:

We were brought up knowing that women do the washing and the cooking.

I asked him to do the shopping because he enjoys that but I have not asked him to do most jobs. Instead I have just followed the pattern of my parents.

In this society a husband’s paid work commitments legitimate him absenting himself from the jobs at home but women’s paid work does not extend similar rights to her. All of the women in this study were engaged in paid work. Like women generally in this society these women were expected by their partners and probably other people in their circle to organise their paid work around their commitments as mothers and to a lesser extent as wives (Brannen and Moss, 1987; Izraeli, 1992). In the popular media the message is still being put across that there is a ‘rightness’ to the traditional division of tasks (Dempsey, 1997a; Connell, 1995).

The study does provide some support for the growing number of feminists who argue that women can challenge men’s domination and negotiate successfully for a more equitable division of unpaid work (Weedon, 1987; Wearing, 1990). Betsy Wearing, for example, says women can create time for their leisure by successfully resisting the superior power of husbands to walk away from the work at home. A substantial minority of women made considerable gains and probably a majority made at least some gains.

The study, however, probably provides more support for the feminists who stress that women’s retention of most of the work at home is due to men using their superior power to resist as much change as possible (Davidoff, 1976; Deem, 1982; Delphy and Leonard,1992). It needs to be borne in mind that most of the gains of women in this study took the form of help rather than a sharing of responsibility. Although they engaged in paid work the great majority of women surveyed bore overall responsibility for housework and childcare and spent twice as much time as their partners carrying out the work at home. Yet, 97 percent of the women interviewed had attempted to get their husbands to increase their participation in the tasks traditionally performed by women.

A majority of wives who asked their men to take or share responsibility received at best assistance when they requested it. Many of those who wanted husbands to take some responsibility or at least to help willingly had to deal with uncooperative partners some or all of the time. Many men either fobbed their wives off or helped out grudgingly. These type of responses encouraged many women to give up trying to change things and settle for no assistance or assistance in an emergency.

In summary, the persistence of as much inequality in the division of housework as was found in this study has far more to do with men’s superior interpersonal power and the wider cultural structural and economic forces facilitating that power than it has to do with women’s reluctance to share the work at home. Those who want change can, however, take heart from the fact that a substantial minority of women had successfully negotiated with husbands to make a significant contribution to the work at home.

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Classes are defined here as aggregates of people sharing similar market situations, indexed by occupation and employment status (Jones and Davis, 1986).