Last week, the NYTimes Opinion section had a piece called “How to Make Your Marriage Gayer” where they went over a study that looked at the strain and distress levels across different-sex (heterosexual), gay, and lesbian marriages.  Women in different-sex unions recorded higher levels of strain and distress in their relationships. While, men in same-sex marriages reported the opposite, low levels. The men and women married to women reported about the same levels of distress. A previous research study had already concluded that women generally show most of the distress in relationships, but what this study found is that it’s only women married to men.

Why? You ask?

The short answer, stereotyping of gender role duties increases in heterosexual marriages causing tension. One of the researchers’ states, “The gender expectations traditionally associated with being a wife seemingly encourage married mothers to do more housework than their unmarried counterparts, and their husbands to accept that as normal.” While same-sex couples don’t fall in the traditional stereotyping of gender roles they consequently end up sharing housework and parenting duties more evenly, taking on both traditionally “feminine” and “masculine” tasks. 

Its clear equity of housework is important to everyone, but especially for women. 

Here is a graph I found on Statista that shows how housework is divided among genders in different countries.