Gender Equality at a household level: a fight for equality in perception

International development agencies put Gender Equality as a cornerstone of development. As a subject and object of the development, I will discuss this issue at the level of a household: It is not from the perspective of empowering women, providing them an equal access to education, health, and economic opportunity. It is from my own experience, dealing with my husband attitude.

As a worker and a wife, I have to do domestic chores before or after working with my office tasks. Many times, the domestic works make my energy run out. My husband, a worker too, sometime gives a little help. As both of us play two roles, I really expect that we give an equal effort to accomplish the domestic works. 

This is just an example. If I am busy with cooking work, I want him to help me clean the house with an agreed standard particularly with the level of cleanliness. Yet, he insists with his own standard. As he does not perform well, then we made a division of labor. Later, he did not do the job as expected. Finally, I took the charge. A wife does most of the domestic chores again.  

My question with the case is "why is it hard for a men to have a high commitment to the domestic chores at the same level of women?" As a wife, I feel responsible of making the house clean as living in a clean home will give a comfort feeling to a family member; of providing the family with enough food to eat as it will strengthen the family bond. The members will feel secured and find easy to stay at home. Unfortunately, I cannot find such feeling of responsibility from my husband.

In my case, in addition to the commitment, perceived standard is also matters. When my husband perceives that helping in garbage cleaning is a sufficient help, in my opinion, it is not enough. This draws me a conclusion that the foundation of the equality in a household is a perception/attitude. When my husband sees that his help is adequate while I don't, the equality in the household works would not occur.   

Gender equality at the household level is constructed by wife and husband. While I don't enjoy equality in the domestic works, I enjoy equality in education and in economic opportunity. At these points, I am lucky to have a husband with the opinion that women can have high education and carrier. That allows me to pursue my master degree and to work comfortably. Although I have to leave home for a long time, he is ok.

Now, what kind of equality is pursued by a women? People always said that gender equality is rights entitled to human-being, but women is still struggling in getting the rights. The next question is "from whom the women is asking for the rights? from government, social, family, husband? 

At the core level, I believe that gender equality is defined by family. So, if you are searching for equality, you should change the perception of your family. Then, you can intervene social system including your government to make you have your rights. 

Lastly, my effort for having an equality in household chores may fail, so i am planning to just hire a house assistance and make my husband pay her salary, hihiihihi.