Yesterday, I chided President Donald Trump for his paltry maternity leave proposal and his homogeneous cabinet, and a new book is calling me on the carpet. Drop the Ball, by Tiffany Dufu, argues that in our search for gender equality advances, we should look away from the White House and into our own homes.
The Daily Beast writer Keli Goff predicts Dufu’s book will stir up the same feminist zeal as Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, if not more. She explains why:
Dufu uses data and her own story to affirm that until women—and of necessity her argument applies only to straight women in relationships—demand more from their partners at home, professional and societal equality will never be within reach. The reason this message is profound is that historically, feminist leaders have focused on how society needs to change, how workplaces need to change. In other words, how every other man needs to change to help us—except the ones who have the biggest incentive to do so.
Dufu uses data and her own story to affirm that until women—and of necessity her argument applies only to straight women in relationships—demand more from their partners at home, professional and societal equality will never be within reach. The reason this message is profound is that historically, feminist leaders have focused on how society needs to change, how workplaces need to change. In other words, how every other man needs to change to help us—except the ones who have the biggest incentive to do so.
Dufu is tapping into the on-going debate about women’s unpaid labor—the housework and caregiving duties they’re still largely responsible for, despite their growing role as breadwinners. The problem is global. In the U.S., women spend 4.1 hours on unpaid work, while men expend 2.7. In the U.K., the ratio is 4.3 to 2.3. In South Africa, it’s 4.3 to 1.5. And in Japan—where the gap is exceptionally wide—it’s 5 to 1. The effect these responsibilities have on women’s economic advancement is enormous. When the time women spend on unpaid work drops from five hours a day to three, their labor force participation increases 20%, according to the OECD.
Dufu argues the sometimes self-inflicted expectation that women must care for everyone and everything at home is unhealthy and distracts from the tasks that are truly important. She does not dispute that societal changes are needed, but she presses women to expect progress in their own households as well. And she urges them to be okay with “dropping the ball” here and there—ordering takeout, delaying a load of dishes—and with not picking it up again.