INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SURVEY PROGRAMME

THE ROLES OF MEN AND WOMEN IN SOCIETY

NEW ZEALAND SURVEY, SEPTEMBER 1995

- HOW THE PRESS REPORTED IT

Focus "A Woman's Place", page C1, Sunday Star-Times, 12 March 1995:

Sharing the domestic load is also a myth, the women (Cherry Raymond, Phillida Bunkle, Sue Kedgley) say.

A recent survey by Massey University showed while most New Zealanders don't think it is bad for men to stay at home and look after pre-school children, only 4% do it.

The only jobs men did about the house with any regularity were small repairs, with 75% of women usually doing the laundry and 70% deciding what to have for dinner.

"There still isn't any question about men staying home with children," says Cherry Raymond ["former activist]

My comments:

The reference to 4% is a misquote. In the report put out by PJ Gendall and DF Russell of the Department of Marketing, Massey University, in February 1995, it states that "only 4% of men stayed at home when they had children under school age". We should bear in mind the age distribution of men responding to the questionnaire (look here). In fact, only 267 men answered the relevant question, of which 16, or 6%, said that they stayed home. To derive the 4% figure, we have to consider only the 11 of the 16 whose wives worked full time when they had children under school age.

For more interpretation of the data on work about the house, look here.

For more information on men staying home with children, look at *****the work by Paul Callister*****.

It is also wrong to take survey results describing events from even perhaps 50 years ago as descriptions of the present.

"Women still worse off", page 40, The Tribune (Palmerston North), 26 March 1995:

Women may be achieving equality with men in the workplace but at home traditional roles are changing more slowly, a Massey University survey shows. ... Results show responsibility for doing chores tends to follow traditional patterns.

In most households men still earn most of the income and women still do most of the housework.

My comments:

Equality can be defined in many ways. While equality of opportunity may well exist (see pay data), outcomes in terms of choice of employment and resulting hourly pay rates, participation in the paid workforce, and hours worked are not equal.

It is not clear why greater earnings by men and more housework by women necessarily results in women being "worse off". It is not immediately apparent that one contribution is greater than the other (but see my paper on Women, Families and Unpaid Work), and nothing is said about the distribution of the results of these contributions.

The survey data on "chores" is not as straight forward as suggested. Look here.

Stuart Birks

3 August, 1995