"Men's time doing housework is about the same as it was in the 1970s, and that's true whether or not the woman earns more money or the man earns more money."
Work, in the words of Karl Marx, is a "means of life" in two senses. It is, first of all, an instrument for human life. It is the activity by which we reproduce ourselves from day to day, from year to year, from generation to generation. But work also forms, so to speak, much of the matter of human life, at least for most people in any society with which we are familiar.
Although De Noire is based in Europe, she believes that economic upheaval in the United States "triggers huge uncertainty" across the pond because of America's global influence. De Noire first noticed a decline in business right after Donald Trump was elected in November 2024, as Americans and the rest of the world anticipated upheaval. "I didn't even bother working South by Southwest because the first Friday night I attempted to work, I walked into a completely empty club and didn't make any money at all,"
One of my late mother's widowed friends made the comment, "Finally I can have a scrambled egg for dinner. I'm never making another meatloaf again." And this was a woman who had loved her husband and had a pretty good marriage. Her grown kids were upset that when they came home to visit, "Mama isn't cooking anymore!" Yeah, Mama didn't care.
James Howe spent about two years working full-time as an Uber driver in the Denver area after losing his job. Initially, he said, he could work about 40 hours a week, accepting every trip that the Uber app offered him, and earn between $2,000 and $3,000 in gross pay, he told Business Insider.
The language of blue-collar fathers isn't spoken-it's lived. It's written in grease-stained paychecks, in Saturday mornings spent under the sink, in showing up to work sick because the mortgage doesn't care if you have the flu. After forty years in the trades and raising my own kids, I finally decoded what my father and countless men like him were really communicating through their actions.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that women are more likely than men to work fully remotely, with about 16.4 % of women working entirely from home compared with 10.5 % of men in late 2024. Surveys and workforce reports also consistently find that women, especially mothers and caregivers, are more likely to choose or remain in remote roles because of caregiving responsibilities and the unaffordability of childcare.
Putting on makeup. Like, we're supposed to disguise ourselves; otherwise, people think we didn't take this outing seriously, didn't care enough, or didn't act professionally. In some ways, beauty standards are social obligations. Keeping up with nails, clothes, hair, etc., that's almost an expectation in some relationships.
I've always worked, even after having children, but like many women, I squeezed myself around my husband, Neil, who was the breadwinner, working in the insurance industry in London. Between having our two daughters, who are now 22 and 18, I became a stay-at-home mom. I looked after the children and the house, and managed to shoehorn my own part-time career as a counsellor and therapist around that.
Mid-career women with at least five years' experience are being overlooked for digital roles in the tech and financial and professional services sectors, where they are traditionally underrepresented, according to the report by the City of London Corporation. The governing body that runs the capital's Square Mile found female applicants were discriminated against by rigid, and sometimes automated, screening of their CVs, which did not take into account career gaps related to caring for children or relatives, or only narrowly considered their professional experience.
