Many working women want a wife
NEW YORK -- Now that women have solidly earned their place in the work force, many find themselves still yearning for something men often have: wives.
"The thing I most want in life is a wife. I'm not kidding," said Joyce Lustbader, a research scientist at Columbia University who has been married for 29 years. "I work all day, sometimes seven days a week, and still have to go home and make dinner and have all those things to do around the house."
It is not just the extra shift at home that is a common complaint. Working women, whether married or single, also see their lack of devoted spousal support as an impediment to getting ahead in their careers, especially when they are competing against men who have wives behind them, whether those wives are working or staying at home. And research supports their argument: It appears that marriage, at least marriage with children, bolsters a man's career but hinders a woman's.
With two-income families now the norm, and both men and women working a record-breaking number of hours, the question has become how to accomplish what used to be a wife's job, even as old-fashioned standards of household management and entertaining have been relaxed. Many men are sharing the work of chores and child care with their wives, and some do it all as single parents, but women still generally shoulder a greater burden of household business.
According to 2006 survey data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in five men engages in some kind of housework on an average day, while more than half of women do.
"The real challenge is, companies expect you to perform as if someone is at home taking care of everything for you," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women. "Some men are better positioned to deal with these corporate demands because they do have someone at home. Most women don't."
Working women have noticed that their male colleagues with wife support -- whether or not those wives are themselves working outside the home -- get further at work than the women who are fettered by marriage and children. Women occupy 50.6 percent of managerial and professional positions, according to the research organization Catalyst, but make up only 15.6 percent of Fortune 500 corporate officers.
While outsourcing household work is a potential solution for families that can afford it, it doesn't solve all the issues. Women are still predominantly the ones hiring and managing the help, according to specialists. Even if the workload is divided, women complain that they are usually the ones organizing, juggling and filling their head space with the daily demands of family life. That leaves less time and energy to focus on the workplace tasks.
"Men lock the door and leave. Things could be a wreck or whatever, and it doesn't affect their other world," said Dawn Santana, a lawyer. "I walk out and worry about the house looking nice because the kids have play dates, etc. Someone has to worry about that, and it's usually not the dad." 