Chore wars hit women harder - study

In The Break-Up, Brooke calls it a day after being under-appreciated one too many times by boyfriend Gary.

In The Break-Up, Brooke calls it a day after being under-appreciated one too many times by boyfriend Gary.

Published Aug 27, 2015

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London - Women are more likely than men to seek a divorce because they get frustrated when men do not pull their weight.

Researchers have found that women ended their marriage more often because they get annoyed at having to do more of the housework and more of the childcare.

They asked for a divorce 69 percent of the time as they became fed up with the lack of gender equality in their marriage.

By comparison, there was no statistical difference between men and women initiating the break-up if they were just dating or cohabiting.

The study looked at couples in the United States.

Researchers examined the figures from 2009 to this year in the How Couples Meet and Stay Together, a nationally representative study.

It followed 2 262 heterosexual adults aged between 19 to 64 who said at the beginning they were in a relationship.

By this year, 371 of those taking part had broken up with their partner or were divorced.

The findings showed that, among married couples, there were 92 divorces and women initiated 69 percent of them.

Among cohabiting couples there were 76 breakups and just 56 percent were begun by women.

Married women also reported being less satisfied than men with their marriages.

Among unmarried couples, women on average reported their happiness with the relationship at 4.29 whilst men put theirs at 4.22, with five being the highest. But with married couples, men put their happiness at 4.61, significantly higher than women at 4.46.

The study was led by Michael Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University, who said that second wave feminism’s claim that marriage is “inherently hostile to women” had played a part in shaping women’s views of getting hitched.

Professor Rosenfeld wrote: “I think that marriage as an institution has been a little bit slow to catch up with expectations for gender equality. Wives still take their husband's surnames, and are sometimes pressured to do so. Husbands still expect their wives to do the bulk of the housework and the bulk of the childcare.

“On the other hand, I think that non-marital relationships lack the historical baggage and expectations of marriage, which makes the non-marital relationships more flexible and therefore more adaptable to modern expectations, including women's expectations for more gender equality.”

Professor Rosenberg added: “The results are consistent with a feminist critique of heterosexual marriage as a gendered institution in which wives find less satisfaction than husbands do.”

Daily Mail

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