Invisible housework chores

Women do more housework than men. Studies show it. Disgruntled women know it. Dish washers, microwaves and hoovers may have made it less back-breaking but the spread of tasks is still far from even.

Aside from the traditional, obvious tasks like washing up and cleaning the loo, women’s ‘to do’ list always contains a host of invisible housework chores that nobody notices unless they’re not done, nobody cares about, unless they’re not done, and are never considered when it comes to working out who does what and what’s fair.
Women are responsible for strategy management – that usually means planning evening meals, scheduling children’s appointments, arranging birthday and family parties, buying gifts for relatives, buying gifts for kids to take to parties. An endless thankless list of invisible chores.
A new study shows the gender gap is closing for obvious tasks – like putting the baby to bed, washing up or cooking supper. But there is still a hidden inequality for ‘invisible’ household work.
Indeed, Pamela Smock, a University of Michigan sociologist who also works with the council, said a persistent gender gap remains for what she called "invisible" household work — scheduling children's medical appointments, buying the gifts they take to birthday parties, arranging holiday gatherings, for example.
I’ve always said that my husband may start his job earlier than me, but his ends hours before mine does. Mine doesn’t end until the kitchen is clean, the lunch is prepared for the following day, the phone calls are returned and, tired of running through the mental rolodex in my head of things I still need to do, I finally collapse into fitful sleep often to be woken in the middle of the night by some task I failed to do.