Everything starts at home – this conviction is asked to start talking about the work of women and the full baggage of pathology that marks it. It is in the home 4 walls that mechanisms are born, which then regulation the lives of adult women for decades.
Everything starts with raising girls completely different from boys. From an early age, girls have been taught that their place is home and his endless responsibilities. Cooking, cleaning, caring for younger siblings – this is their everyday life, entered into childhood as a apparent ritual. Meanwhile, boys, although raised in the same homes, are treated differently: their time is “more precious”, their space slower. A survey conducted by sociologist Sandra Hofferth of the University of Maryland, based on data from the 2003–2014 American Time usage Survey, shows that girls aged 15–19 spend an average of 45 minutes a day on home duties, while their peers – boys – devote only 30 minutes to this [1]. akin conclusions come from the UNICEF Global Report, which reveals that girls worldwide execute 40% more unpaid housework than boys [2].
Young people then enter the education strategy and come into contact with beliefs about the feminized professions (ironically, of course, little paid and more frequently found in the grey area) and the masculinized professions. In 2018, a meta-analysis of 78 studies involving more than 20,000 children of different ages, analyzing their drawings of scientists, was published. The results showed that around 70% of the six-year-old drew women as scientists, but as early as 16, only 25% of the girls represented scientists as women. In boys, this decrease was even more pronounced: 17% of six-year-olds drew female scientists, but only 2% of boys did so at 16 [3]. However, it is hard to be amazed due to the fact that the school strategy effectively strengthens and builds a stereotypical approach in children. For example, according to the data presented by the Museum of Women's past Foundation, women are only about 4% of the figures listed in Polish past textbooks, and this is not due to the fact that they did not make history. The strong binding of children to stereotypical social roles is harmful and for boys, and for girls who then frequently neglect to get out of imposed standards.
Later there is only a cause-and-effect sequence. The most common obstacle to women's engagement in social and professional activities is concerns about home and household [4]. erstwhile the Central Statistical Office in 2022 asked women and men about the reasons for their professional inactivity, women indicated home duties, and men replenishing qualifications and doing their best [5]. We go back to the fact that women who are taught homework gotta do it, and as a consequence they do a large part of it. According to the UN, they execute on average 2.5 times as much unpaid home and care work as men [6]. According to a 2018 study by the global Labour Organisation (ILO), women execute about 76.4% of unpaid care work, while men – 23.6% [7]. In addition, UN Women data indicate that women spend an average of 4.3 hours a day on unpaid care work, which is nearly 3 times more than men who devote about 1.6 hours a day [8]. Consequently, women can little frequently afford to take overtime, extra tasks or to throw themselves into the race for the highest positions – as their colleagues do. Not due to the fact that they deficiency ambition or little industrious. The reason is usually trivially simple: their husbands, like most men, do not share household duties with them [9]. Oxfam estimated that women and girls execute 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work all day. If this work were to be valued at the minimum wage level, its value would be at least $10.8 trillion per year, which exceeds the value of the global technology manufacture [10]. Then what? But we're driving this economy? However, this work is fundamentally underestimated and considered normal, leading to a physical and intellectual burden on many women. Although the difficulty of combining work and household life frequently falls on them, women in Poland inactive make this effort. They work professionally to keep economical independency and the right to decide their own lives. However, they frequently deficiency a partner model of kid rearing, which remains uncommon in Poland. Data do not leave illusions: the labour force rate of childless women aged 26-30 is about 90%. However, erstwhile a kid appears, the numbers fall to 78% for mothers of 1 kid and for women raising 3 or more children to 62% dramatically. The biggest decrease is seen among the mothers of the youngest children: in the group of mothers of children aged 1–3 only 62% stay active, which means a decrease of as much as 26 percent points compared to the childless women. What about men? The painting here is completely different. For fathers, the appearance of a kid frequently mobilizing. The labour force rate of men with children is as advanced as 97%, while children aged 26 to 30 years are 92% [11].
So let's say a female overcomes all obstacles. It will pass through the viscous floor, penetrate the glass ceiling and despite regular struggles with uneven responsibilities – it will scope the management position. Does that mean that the road to the summit is open to it? Not necessarily. Despite the increasing presence of women in management positions, many inactive encounter invisible barriers that effectively inhibit their promotion to the highest levels. According to the Hays Poland study of 2024, as many as 56% of women believe that due to their sex there is no equal chance for promotion. For comparison, only 21% of men have akin convictions. The difference speaks for itself [12].
However, after years of effort, fighting and crossing invisible barriers, a female reaches the desired summit, another challenge awaits her. This time, not in the form of additional duties or reluctant looks, but in the form of a pay gap – a silent reminder that even in the highest positions, being a female means earning less. We would very much like to believe that the sex pay gap is only 4.5% [13]. If we number an uncorrected wage gap, which is simply a simple percent difference between the average hourly wage of men and women, then in fact it can be so much and we can definitely honor ourselves with the title of Europe's leader. Unfortunately, by calculating the adjusted wage gap, by examining the results of "similar" workers, at a akin age and in a akin position. It turns out that it ranges from 12.2% to 30% in management positions [14]! Then what? It's not that colorful anymore.
Women's work has been built on pathology for years – on absurds, which we frequently hold ourselves unconsciously and on systems that alternatively of supporting, only restrict us. Stereotypes, inequality, deficiency of real support mechanisms – all this makes women, even at the highest levels, inactive gotta fight for something that should be obvious. Fortunately, change is yet taking shape. Directive 2019/1158 of the European Parliament and of the Council on work-life balance with private parents and carers and Directive 2023/1970 on strengthening the rule of equal pay are signals that Europe is starting to take this problem seriously. But no directive will change reality unless we change our own convictions first and dare to build a fresh culture of work – 1 that will yet not be based on individual else's sacrifice, but on real equality.
Because the real change starts not in the laws – it starts in us.
[1] Vide: https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/study-gender-inequality-childhood-chores/?utm_source=chatgpt.com.
[2] Harnessing the Power of Data for Girls: Taking stock and looking ahead to 2030 – October 7, 2016.
[3] The improvement of Children’s Gender-Science Stereotypes: A Meta-analysis of 5 Decades of U.S. Draw-A-Scientist Studies, 2018 – kid Development. David I. Miller, Kyle M. Nolla, Alice H. Eagle and David H. Uttal of Northwestern University.
[4] Office of the Ombudsman, “Women in Public Life – Kantar Polska study for the Office of the Ombudsman”,[2019].
[5] Main Statistical Office Causes of inactivity at working age 18–59/64 years due to sex in 2022
[6] Budget of population time, Central Statistical Office of Poland. Time structure of persons over 15 years in 2013
[7] The Unpaid Care Work and the Labour Market. An analysis of time usage data based on the latest planet Compilation of Time-use Surveys- Jacques Charmes.
[8] Forecasting time spent in unpaid care and home work – UN Woman.
[9] Sylwia Kwasniewska (2022) Women's unpaid work: equality begins at home (https://criticypolitics.pl/economy/women-work-home-diversity/).
[10] net source: https://www.oxfam.org/en/not-all-gaps-are-created-equal-true-value-care-work?utm.
[11] net source: https://economy observer.pl/2022/12/18/maturity-in-polska-laws-from-early-woman-juz-never-returns-to-market-work/?
[12] Women on the labour marketplace 2024 – Hays Poland.
[13] Ewa Rumińska-Z cold, Alicia Wejdner – Women's legislature Association "Women, Labour marketplace and Pay Equality".
[14] Ewa Ruminska-Z cold, Alicia Wejdner – Women's legislature Association “Women, Labour marketplace and Pay Equality”
