This piece is not quite a round-up, but rather a social study trying to prospect the gender disparities in today’s world (referring to vacuuming, of course). I am able to write this thanks to the data collected during my recent giveaway. I got the idea of hosting this after one of my readers placed a comment which I totally disagree, emphasizing the fact that this blog is primordially written for housewives:
Just a thought… given it’s 2016 and not 1916, “housewives” are no long the sole individual responsible for cleaning.
Your information is quite valuable, but your presentation is a bit archaic.
The idea of comparing men vs. women is not new. People have been doing this for thousands of years, with respect to all kinds of activities. Since antiquity, with a few exceptions, women were supposed to be discreet, reserved, while men needed to “reach their full potential”. Things haven’t evolved much over time, and women were pretty discriminated during Middle Ages, during the industrial revolution and even within our Contemporary Era.
There are many examples of women who have managed to power through all these dark times, and I’m not going to get into details. Some of the names which quickly come into my mind are Marie Curie, Mother Teresa, Golda Meir or Virginia Woolf. Fighting gender inequality was however a long and subversive process. Even today, after almost 50 years of feminism, women still do more housework than men. Previous studies showed that married women in UK, for example, do way more cleaning, ironing and decluttering than their partners. How much more? About 10 times more. In UK, only one in 10 men does more housework than his wife, according to a study undergone by the Institute for Public Policy Research in 2012.
On an intimate level, some couples go the extra mile. In some relationships, women find their men more attractive after they do housework. This seems to be a “biological defense mechanism”, at least, according to this article, which is based on the research carried out by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research in 2005. They basically measured the amount of time spent by each gender doing housework. Back then, men were slowly catching up, doing on average about 13h of housework per week, compared to 17h invested by women. The bad news is that their study thinks men are also creating in the process 7 more hours of work, for women to handle.
Since 2005 however, a lot has changed. A more recent experiment tried to asses the effectiveness of doing house chores in unemployed people. Turns out men still manage to do less cleaning, even when they are not working.
Prerequisites
Now, back to our business, before I present the results of my study, I would like to briefly cover the demographics of my blog. Seems fair to know which gender visits VacuumsGuide.com more, since this will most likely influence the results of the study at some unidentifiable level. Although I will not give the exact number of visitors (this information is not important), I will say the value is well over 100,000 just to assure you I have a good ground base. As you can see in the left figure, in the last 30 days, the number of women only slightly surpassed the number of men who accessed this blog.
Also, it is worth mentioning that women are much more attracted to giveaways; thus you can see in the right a graphic containing the gender dispersion of the persons participating to this study. Women are overwhelmingly subscribing to giveaways, a characteristic also seen on platforms such as Pinterest. It is well known the fact that women are more active on image-based sites, and this extends to other behaviors. From my subjective experience, women tend to be more optimistic when it comes to lotteries, bingo games, slot machines and other chance related winning opportunities. Ok, so now that we’ve established all the prerequisites, let’s move to the fun part. Let’s answer the question “Who uses the vacuum cleaner more, men or women?”.
The answer
According to the input given by the 173 participants, all residents in US, women vacuum 2.7 times more than men, as you can depict from the graphic listed below.
Who vacuums more, men or women?
Only in 4% of the cases, the vacuuming chore is equally split in the household. 1% of the participants were not able to provide a valid answer. What is also interesting to read are some of the comments left by various participants:
I do all the vacuuming. I don’t think my husband has ever touched it.
I’m not sure my husband even knows how to turn the vacuum on, let alone vacuum anything with it! The vacuumer is me for sure!
The woman vacuums the most in my home! (The man doesn’t even know where the vacuum is stored, or what it looks like!)
As the woman, I am the only one who vacuums in my house. I am told that this is because I’m the one that wanted the cat and the chinchilla.. Lol I think he’s just a bit lazy in the housekeeping department
Here, it’s me, a woman. Disgusts me actually. I think if vacuums were made to look and sound more like a classic muscle car, say a Mustang or a Camaro, we might get more guys to run them around the house.
Conclusions
Unfortunately, vacuuming still remains a chore which many seem as intended only for women. What do you think, will this change in the near future? Will this inequality be consummated in time? Will men start vacuuming more, now that the latest vacuum cleaners are more appealing design-wise?
Jason Roberts
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Derek says
Jason I follow your posts and appreciate the work that you do. I’ve looked everywhere and continue to hear that central vac is better than canister and uprights due to the power. I own a Miele S7 cat and dog and a Miele S5. While I enjoy using these units I do still smell a musty smell from the vacuum that I’m sure would be fixed by a central vacuum system. In addition I would be very interested in having a much larger power head 17” and hard floor cleaner that would be capable to run up to 20 inches wide. Understanding that I’m positive that my Miele wouldn’t be able to perform well with attachments that large as they have a larger tool but was not recommended because of the amount of suction the Miele has. Ive read a lot about central vacuum systems but all that I can find is usually sponsored by the manufacture that is producing the product which leads me to believe they are going to tell me what’s best for me to buy their product. That’s why I thought I would take the time to ask you. Are central vacuum systems really that much better than my Miele vacuums? If so is buying a dual motor 240 volt better than a standard one motor 120 volt? Would either of those units have enough power to successfully utilize the larger attachments that I’m looking at getting? I’m willing to spend some money on one as I’m a buy it once buy it right kind of guy. Could you recommend the best most powerful unit that has a good reliability history?
Also my wife traditionally vacuums but I do help her by vacuuming once a week.
Thanks in advance
Jason Roberts says
First of all, you will be surprised to see that central vacuums aren’t really that much strong. I’ve covered some basics here, but I would like to do an extensive guide on this soon. The problem is versatility. You have to be careful with the included accessories. I haven’t heard of many central vacuums that feature a 17″ or a 20″ nozzle. Of course, 240V units are more powerful, but they are also more expensive. Electrolux BEAM Alliance is a great product. Honeywell also makes great central vacuums. I’ll go deeper on these units in a few weeks.
Felix says
For the record I vacuum clean our house, I enjoy using using the Dyson multi floor vacuum, which really works great btw.