Trotz oder wegen Feminismus?: Frauen immer unglücklicher

All told, more than 1.3 million men and women have been surveyed over the last 40 years, both here in the U.S. and in developed countries around the world. Wherever researchers have been able to collect reliable data on happiness, the finding is always the same: greater educational, political, and employment opportunities have corresponded to decreases in life happiness for women, as compared to men. (...)

Why? What is causing these trends (and what can we all do to reverse them?)

Some of the more obvious explanations are weaker than you might think:

For example, these trends are not caused by women working longer hours than men. We know this because women don't work more hours than men. In a mammoth study of twenty-five countries, ranging from the U.S. to France to Slovenia to Madagascar, men and women were asked to keep track of what they were doing at various times during the day, and then the hours for each activity were calculated. The results: in developed countries, men average 5.2 hours of paid work a day, and 2.7 hours of homework, for a total of 7.9 hours a day; and women average 3.4 hours of paid work, and 4.5 hours of homework, for a total of, yes, 7.9 hours a day. These averages are statistically identical in virtually every developed country in the study: women and men work the same number of total hours in a day. (It is only in less developed countries such as South Africa or Benin, where women have fewer choices and are largely excluded from the workplace, that women actually work more hours per day than men.)

Nor are they caused by gender-based stereotyping. Sure, forty years ago such stereotyping was still dominant - in 1977 74% of men agreed with the statement "Men should be the primary breadwinner and women should be the primary caretaker of home and family." Today, however, that number has fallen to only 42% - which happens to be almost exactly the same as the percentage of women who agree with it (39%). Your opinion of which roles are most appropriate for men and women to play is not now determined by your sex.

Den vollständigen Beitrag findet man in der Huffington Post.

Männer arbeiten mehr als Frauen

Eine Studie des Schweizer Bundesamtes für Statistik über Veränderungen beim Zeitaufwand für Haus- und Familienarbeit 1997- 2007 gelangte zu einer Erkenntnis, die das ständige Gejammer über die besonders von der Doppelbelastung betroffenen Frauen Lügen straft:

Nimmt man die berufliche Erwerbsarbeit hinzu, so arbeiteten Väter mit Kleinkindern 2007 insgesamt am Arbeitsplatz und zu Hause 73 Stunden pro Woche (…). Bei den Müttern mit Kleinkindern wuchs die gesamte Arbeitsbelastung für Erwerbs-, Haus- und Familienarbeit (…) auf 71 Wochenstunden.

Solche Meldungen stellen unsere Medien immer wieder vor ein Problem. Wie sollen sie solche Nachrichten präsentieren, ohne zugleich der Ideologie von der ewig ausgebeuteten und zu kurz kommenden Frau und dem ewig ausbeutenden, patriarchalen Pascha untreu zu werden? Schließlich haben sich praktisch alle Journalisten dem Verbreiten dieser Ideologie als oberstem Arbeitsauftrag verpflichtet. Wie berichtet man also wahrheitsgemäß über die Erkenntnisse einer solchen Studie, ohne das beliebte Frauen-Bemitleiden zu vernachlässigen?

Der Schweizer "Tages-Anzeiger" hat für dieses Problem eine elegante Lösung gefunden.

Und nach dem Motto "Garbage in, Garbage out" findet man hier einen der Kommentare, zu dem diese irrwitzige Berichterstattung regelmäßig führt.

Britische Paartherapeutin warnt: Männer verwandeln sich in halb-weibliche Mischformen

Modern women are turning their husbands into 'male-female hybrids' by ordering them to do a rising number of domestic chores, a relationship counsellor claims.

Women increasingly used to being in charge in the workplace are adopting the same policy at home, telling their men to perform traditional housewives' tasks such as the laundry, vacuuming and ironing. As a result men are abandoning their natural manly instincts and becoming hybrids of both sexes, according to a book by relationship expert Francine Kaye.

Mrs Kaye, who counsels dozens of couples every week, says she is seeing more and more relationship difficulties stem from the way that women treat their other halves. She claims that women are so used to being bossy and decisive in the office that they end up taking charge when they get home.

Die Daily Mail berichtet.

Viel Lärm um nichts

Feminism is the theory that men and women are equal in every respect - except for those in which women are superior. The trick is to interpret every social indicator as though it demonstrates arbitrary male privilege or genuine female superiority. Fortunately, a little bit of ignorance is all it takes to accomplish this feat. For example, when studies show that girls perform less well than boys at advanced math, it is due to systemic discrimination in favour of boys; but when the same studies show that boys’ under-performance in the language arts is four times as great as that of girls in math, well that is due to girls’ innate superiority.

Keine News, sondern nur ein netter kleiner Essay im kanadischen "Western Standard".

Frauen belastet von "unsichtbarer Hausarbeit"

CNN berichtet über eine neue Studie – und belegt damit, dass manche Frauen und ihre Fürsprecher niemals mit Jammern aufhören werden:

"First, the good news: Men are doing more than they used to, according to findings released in April by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. For example, in 1976, men did about six hours of housework per week; in 2005, that had increased to about 13 hours. Women, meanwhile, decreased their weekly housework from 26 hours in 1976 to 17 hours in 2005.

Now, the bad news: The same research found that men create, on average, seven more hours of housework a week for women. That extra work may not be as obvious as doing the dishes or mowing the lawn. So-called "emotional labor" -- tasks like writing holiday cards, scheduling doctor appointments and planning family gatherings -- is too often left to wives, says University of Michigan sociologist Pamela Smock. "As long as the invisible labor is borne by women, things aren't going to be equal, even if surveys show they are," Smock says. Such work can be a major source of mental stress, she adds."

Männer haben Mitarbeit im Haushalt mehr als verdoppelt

Bei der heute morgen auf Telepolis veröffentlichten Studie (Heirat sei ein "Verlustgeschäft" für Frauen, weil sie mehr Hausarbeit bedeute), wird interessanterweise genau jener Aspekt der Studie ausgelassen, der ein positives Licht auf Männer werfen könnte: Diese haben ihre Mitarbeit im Haushalt in den letzten Jahrzehnten mehr als verdoppelt.

In 1976, women busied themselves with 26 weekly hours of sweeping-and-dusting work, compared with 17 hours in 2005. Men are pitching in more, more than doubling their housework hours from six in 1976 to 13 in 2005. Stafford analyzed time-diaries and questionnaires from a nationally representative sample of men and women over a 10-year period between 1996 and 2005. The federally-funded study showed that, compared with the single life, marriage meant more housework for both men and women. "Marriage is no longer a man's path to less housework," Stafford said.

Man hätte als Überschrift für den Telopolis-Artikel also mit derselben Logik "Heirat für Männer ein Verlustgeschäft" wählen können. In einer Gesellschaft des Frauen-Bedauerns wird sich aber wohl niemand darüber wundern, dass die andere Variante gewählt wurde.