Feminist Division of Labor

First of all, you’re probably not reading Echidne of the Snakes, a vice you should rectify – as soon as you finish with Abstract Nonsense.

Second, Echidne has a tremendous post explaining the model of within-household gender division of labor that led Forbes columnist Michael Noer to advise men to marry women who have no careers, and to advocate the wife/whore dichotomy. In a nutshell, the model says that since women have a comparative advantage at household labor because they get pregnant, a household will end up either allocating all household work to the woman or all market work to the man, depending on how much of each there is to allocate.

She goes on to give several different criticisms – that there are within-household disagreements, that the model fails to agree with reality, etc. One theoretical criticism she doesn’t give is that comparative advantage itself isn’t an absolute thing, since a diversified economy is a good thing.

The household equivalent of that is that working in different things is more interesting and less monotonous than working in just one thing. So if there are 60 hours a week of each type of labor to allocate, allocating 30/30 to each partner will be better for both partners’ mental health (especially the woman’s) than allocating all market work to the man and all household work to the woman.