Women 'give up careers', Cause? - Unhelpful husbands



New York: Women has won equal rights in the work place but they prefer a backseat at home and giving up their careers as their husbands refuse to share household chores, reveals a new study.



A research by Youngjoo Cha, a sociologist from Cornell University, found that women are more likely to give up their high flying jobs or take on less demanding roles if their husbands work long hours. This is because they are still expected to do the majority of household chores and look after the children on top of their working day. Meanwhile their husbands put their feet up - even if they have worked the same number of hours, the study suggests. The study found that male spouses were more likely to become the main breadwinner because of the greater domestic demands placed upon women who prioritise their husband's work by staying at home.







"The norm of overwork systematically disadvantages women, who are less likely to work long hours because of the expectation that they will have primary care-giving responsibilities and do more housework than men," said Cha. As long work-hours introduce conflict between work and family into many dual-earner families, couples often resolve conflict in ways that prioritise husbands' careers, the researcher added. However, the study found that the impact on working men of having a wife who works long hours -- whether they are a parent or not -- is negligible.



When looking solely at professional women, the odds that they will quit their job increases by more than half (51 percent) when their husbands work 60 hours or more per week. For professional women who also have children the likelihood that they will resign increases by 112 percent.



The study analysed the responses from 8,484 professional workers and 17,648 nonprofessional workers from two-salary families, using data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.