[shoo]

More generally, not specific to the dear tech industry, there's been a fantastic discussion on metafilter titled "“Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor" [1]. If you are a person who has personal/professional relationships with other people, it's probably worth a read [2].

Anyhow, I'll quote an excerpt from one of the comments:

> A married man is considered (in the sociology findings) to bring "more than" one person to work with him, because it is assumed he has someoone feeding/dressing/cruise directing him. This frees up his brain space for ... work. On the other hand, a married woman is considered to bring less than a whole person to work. Because she is assumed to be feeding/dressing/cruise directing at least one other human. And possibly incubating another. This is taking up valuable brain space that could be devoted to work.

So, there's a conscious or unconscious bias against women in working life, due to the assumption that they'll be doing more than their fair share of unpaid, generally undervalued labor outside of the workplace. Oh so plausible. This would be a rational reason for a workplace to discriminate against women, given the existing context of structural unfairness and bias in the rest of society. "Hurray!"

[1] http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emo...

[2] ...unless you are very uncomfortable with reading criticism of men, and you cannot stomach discomfort. in that case, it's probably best for everyone involved if you don't follow the link.

[malandrew]

Also sounds like a bias against men. Men are perfectly capable of feeding and dressing themselves. And while I don't know what exactly "cruise directing" means in this context, there is no reason to believe that men aren't also capable of doing that either.

I just got out of a relationship where I handled all those responsibilities. I wasn't compensated for it, nor did I expect to be. Insofar as my own generation is concerned, I've encountered lots of men that cook. In fact, I have known more men that cook than women. I also know more men than women, but the relative frequency seems about equal between the sexes.

[shoo]

Sure. I agree, and certaintly cannot argue with you about facts of your own life.

It's more subtle: I don't think anyone is making sweeping uniform generalisations. i.e. "ALL MEN DO a" "ALL WOMEN DO b". I'm not claiming anything about specific individuals. but I am indeed claiming there is a general bias, at least in a statistical sense. For example, here's an arbitrary statistic from the UK in 2012 [1]:

> Just over one in 10 women – 13% – say their husbands do more housework than they do, while only 3% of married women do fewer than three hours a week, with almost half doing 13 hours or more.

So, given no further information about particular circumstances, if I were a betting man, I know which way I'd bet about this kind of thing.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-gen...

[malandrew]

I'd take that bet if we're talking about the SF Bay Area.

I honestly have a hard time with any such figures since they take entire heterogenous regions and distill them down to a single figure that isn't going to hold true for all places. Single figures suggest homogeneity and that couldn't be further from the truth.

The UK is not the US. There are totally different cultural forces at play. I'm half British and all my aunts do most of the housework. My female and male cousins are one generation younger and share homemaking responsibilities with their male/female counterparts. The effect is stronger for those that live in larger cities. I've also live in China and Brazil. The homemaking habits of either country are not in the least bit applicable to the US.

Even within the US, there are big differences between California (where I live now) and North Carolina (where I went to school and college). Many of my classmates that stayed in Raleigh-Durham area have lifestyles where women are likely to handle homemaking responsibilities relative to those that left the region to live in places like SF, NYC and LA.

Here in the Bay Area, it's even more extreme. I wouldn't assume that any of the women I encounter does any more or less housework than any of the men I encounter.

Since all this talk is about the SF Bay Area and regions that aren't the least bit comparable in terms of homemaking activities. I don't even know many tech couples that live together. If they live together, they both handle homemaking activities.

You can't take a bias from somewhere else and blindly apply it to the SF Bay Area.

Furthermore, the modern house is sufficiently automated or simplified that handling home chores is hardly the full time or even part time job it once was. Laundry you can do once a week to every two weeks. You can get a roomba. You have services like homejoy to take care of the heavy duty chores like cleaning the bathrooms, mopping floors and cleaning the kitchen. I'm one of the few people I know that actually handles such chores themselves instead of hiring help to do it. It's not that hard and it's not that time consuming, especially considering that most people can hardly afford more than 300 to 600 square feet of living space per dwelling inhabitant in this city.

At the end of the day, these figures just aren't compelling as a way to describe the housekeeping chores division between men and women that work in tech in Silicon Valley.

[rmc]

#NotAllMen

[lawnchair_larry]

This sounds intriguing for a second until you realize it has no basis and some commenter just made it up. Seriously when is the last time you looked at a woman in the office and thought she must be too busy taking care of a man to work?