Ladies, put down that vacuum: where you live determines how much housework you do

How much time a woman in the U.S. spends cooking dinner and cleaning the bathroom depends on where she lives, according to a new study. The study, published in Social Science Research, found that women in more progressive states tend to do less housework than those in more traditional states, regardless of whether or not they themselves worked outside the home.

“Married women and mothers’ housework time is structured by broader cultural contexts of gender empowerment and family traditionalism,” researcher Leah Ruppanner said in an email. “So, full-time college educated working women in states with more traditional cultures spend more time in housework than an equivalent women in a less traditional state.”

In the study, states were defined as “traditional” or “progressive” based on factors such as the gender wage gap, the percentage of full-time working women, the percentage of women with college degrees, the marriage rate, the percentage who regularly attend church, the fertility rate, and the political parties of elected officials.

Those factors in her state can impact how much of her life a woman spends vacuuming. More traditional states see women doing more chores while men do fewer, a pattern of distribution women have been used to for quite some time.

“We know that time in housework is often at the expense of time in employment and leisure so these institutional differences have broader implications for mothers’ economic and physical health,” Ruppanner said. “The reduction in mothers’ work time has long-term consequences for their employment status and economic resources. So, time in housework is important and consequential beyond just family time.”

But most notably, these trends are the same whether or not a woman herself works: Living in a more traditional state means a woman is more likely to do a greater portion of the housework regardless of outside employment.

So for example: Katie lives in Utah, a state where women are a smaller part of the labor force. She works 40 hours a week but is still likely to do more housework than Molly, who lives in more progressive Maryland and also works 40 hours a week. Katie does the same amount of housework as her neighbor Anna, who doesn’t work outside the home, because they both live in more traditional Utah. Working mom Molly does the same amount of housework as her neighbor, Ava, who does not work, because they both live in Maryland.

Nationwide, American women spend 113 minutes doing housework whereas men spend 43 minutes. Women in New Mexico and Rhode Island spend the most time (143 minutes) and women in North Dakota spend the least (88 minutes) doing chores. North Dakota also sees the smallest gap between men and women, at 33 minutes, and West Virginia the largest, at 93 minutes. Women in the South do more housework than those on the Eastern seaboard.

To determine how much time a woman spends dusting or grocery shopping, researchers used data from the American Time Use Survey in combination with the three outside factors in each state.

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 1:54 PM with the headline "Ladies, put down that vacuum: where you live determines how much housework you do."