The title of the blog is Out of the Binder, Into the Kitchen: Working Women And Cooking. In it, Maria places a massive black-and-white 1950's ad portraying a woman, presumably a housewife wearing an apron and a smile as she opens an oven to place a meal out on the table. The image takes up more space than her blog text. It's quickly followed by an image of actor Ryan Gosling in a meme that capitalizes the feelings of Internet communities on Mitt Romney's expression.
The blog stems from survey data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on time use between men and women who are working. The result was that, on average, women clean and cook about twice as much as men do in addition to their job requirements. The gap widens with those who have children. The conclusion and quotes that make up the remainder of the blog take those details and harp on gender equality.
Unless I'm missing something, this was the most incomplete trash I've read in a long time.
In other words, facts like "time spent cleaning" should be given SOME kind of specificity. Like, how many tasks completed during time spent, or quality of completed tasks, or maybe measure the attitudes toward cleaning of each participant, or something! Anything! I can easily see men coming home and putting something in the microwave, whereas I can just as easily see a very involved and high quality recipe being made by women. And I'm not saying that because of any reason other than I've seen it with my own two eyes; I couldn't tell you what my male roommate eats when he comes home I happen by him as he's eating. When my female roommate is cooking, I could be anywhere in the house and the smell gets to me.
I was reminded of a similar, and popularly cited book, The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, for the statistic that women use an average of 20,000 spoken words in a day versus a 7,000 spoken-word day for males. The conclusions drawn from most of the front-running distributors of this finding were that women were simply superior communicators and that men were simple, predictable creatures. A NYTimes article on the uselessness of men goes so far as to joke that as long as men remain entertaining, women will keep men around, and the author thoughtfully shares the hope that it is enough. Dr. Brizendine's finding has been disputed (though poorly, likely due to financial limitations). Another fun argument is that women, possessing more genetic material was an obvious advantage. If only genetics were so simple.
The data collection needs to include, for example, in the word collection, efficiency of language, what is the topic of communication, social dynamic, etc. Otherwise, we're left at the mercy of people who believe they can glean truth from incomplete facts and make broad-based claims about gender equality. On the one hand, you'll have the ultra feminist claiming superiority in communication, and on the other you'll have masculinists and entertainers saying women are incapable of being quiet.
Coming full circle, the Godoy blog about gender equality in time spent cleaning needs serious details to draw any meaningful conclusion, and a piece of advice for their next blog, don't try to cover poor journalistic work ethic with an Internet meme. Seriously.
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