Opinion |

For women, equality still elusive

On this Mother’s Day, I find myself thinking about two very different stories that may be related.

In the first story, U.N. Women recently reported that women are underrepresented at all levels of political decision-making worldwide. Achieving gender parity – in terms of equal participation and leadership by women – is far off, casting doubt that the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals can be achieved by 2030.

The report cited these sobering statistics (if you share my belief that gender parity in government is important):

-At the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.

-Only one-quarter of legislators in national bodies (like our Congress) are women, with gender equality thought to be 40 years off.

-In local government, women hold 34 percent of elected positions. Only two of 136 reporting countries have reached the 50 percent threshold.

The number of men and women in the world is roughly equal.

The second story began on an encouraging note. In the past 50 years, the share of women who earn as much or more than their husbands has tripled. But according to a new study from the Pew Research Center, some things haven’t changed: Women still do most of the caregiving and housework, even in marriages where the wife is the primary earner.

Household duties are shared equally in just one type of marriage, the study said – when the wife is the sole breadwinner.

Jessica Grose, opinion writer at The New York Times and author of “Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood,” linked this “second shift” dynamic to a working paper issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research a decade ago. It said, “Our analysis suggests that gender identity considerations may lead a woman who seems threatening to her husband because she earns more than he does to engage in a larger share of home production activities, particularly household chores.”

According to Grose, the imbalance appears to be a global phenomenon. She learned why it feels so impossible to fix: A University of Kansas researcher told Grose that women are, in effect, doing the equivalent of an extra month of unpaid labor a year, based on time-use data.

Men get an extra month of leisure.

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As Grose suggested, there needs to be more conversations around the division of household labor. To ease the exhaustion women are feeling, men should begin entertaining the notion of working some of these second shifts. Women alone can’t solve the problem.

If there’s not a direct correlation between women’s underrepresentation in political life and overrepresentation in caregiving and housework, there is certainly a thread that ties the two realities.

This time three years ago, I celebrated the leadership of women who were successfully navigating their countries through the pandemic. Several of them have since resigned or left office, including Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s former prime minister, and Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s former first minister.

To be fair, neither woman resigned because their household duties had become overwhelming.

Ardern said she quit because she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job. In the same vein, Sturgeon explained that “giving absolutely everything of yourself to this job is the only way to do it. But, in truth, that can only be done, by anyone, for so long.”

She added, “I am not expecting violins here, but I am a human being as well as a politician. There is much greater intensity, dare I say brutality, to life as a politician.”

It speaks to another, unfortunate reason why women are staying away from public life – a fear of abuse and a fear for their safety, and the safety of their families. The UK’s Inter-Parliamentary Union found that 82 percent of women politicians surveyed in 39 countries had experienced some form of psychological violence – mostly perpetrated on social media. Among them, some 44 percent said they had received threats of death, rape, beatings or abduction, including threats to kidnap or kill their children.

As the U.N. Women report noted, women demonstrate political leadership by working across party lines — even in the most politically combative environments. We need their voice and participation, in voting and running for office. Their views on social and economic issues like workplace equality, parental leave and child care, race relations, health care and education must be adequately represented in government.

These are issues that matter to all of us — on Mother’s Day and every day.

Dinkin is president of the National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego-based group working to create solutions to challenging issues, including intolerance and incivility. To learn about NCRC’s programming, visit ncrconline.com