“If I’m telling you that [humans] are not good at multitasking (what we’re good at is switching between tasks very quickly), and I’m telling you that all this work of multitasking is actually draining your energy, draining your brain, draining your capacity.
Then I tell you ‘hey, women are really good at this’, that means we’re putting one group — women — into this position of being drained constantly (or more significantly or more severely) by a gender myth. By something that isn’t even true.” – Dr. Leah Ruppanner, MissPerceived podcast
The goal of challenging narratives (and its cousins: assumption and stereotype) is to shake loose their hold over us. The way we tend to accept them, use them, and perpetuate them without even realizing it. The way they feed our stress load.
When it comes to uneven distribution of labor in the home, one narrative/assumption/stereotype I hear repeated in various forms: “women are better at multitasking.”
Ok, don’t get me wrong. Multitasking can be an incredible skill. If you are proud of your multitasking ability and worried that I am going to negate something you hold dear, stay with me for a second, the ability to multitask can still be a point of pride.
The problem with the statement “women are better at multitasking” is not in the “...better at multitasking” part, but in the general use of “women are…”.
Usually statements that start with “women are better at…” or “mothers are better at…” come down to assumptions about biology. Our brains. Our bodies. The way evolution drives the wedge to define a gender binary based on sex or sex hormones or sexual differentiation.
If you hold onto this belief, rest assured, you are not alone. A majority of people (over 80%) believe that women are better at multitasking for biological reasons.
But the context of “biological truth” gets us into trouble. Instead of seeing multitasking as a learned skill, we see it as an innate feature that came with the body we were born into. And like most things that are assumed to be “biological”, it can quickly become an excuse to overburden women without offering additional support. Maternal instinct. Maternal sacrifice. Maternal caregiving. Women can handle it… it’s biological!
Here’s the crux of the problem: the “women are better at multitasking” narrative is not biologically true….
LINKS:
Can We Reduce Parental Stress by Lightening the Mental Load?
Dr. Leah Ruppaner’s MissPerceived podcast on the myth of multitasking
Redistributing labor in the home:
MOVE Your Marriage — 1.5 day “WeTreat” for couples in early stages of family building.
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