Planning parties, ordering food and taking notes in meetings are just a few of the thankless tasks that women more often shoulder at work. Often called “office housework,” these responsibilities contribute to the smooth operation of the workplace but go unnoticed when it comes to promotions or pay raises. Fortunately, there are strategies to help you avoid getting stuck with these obligations

  • Jennifer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Interesting tips and definitely something I’ve experienced myself in the workplace. But I’m struggling to understand how the experiment relates to workplace housework.

    The report says “Participants were told they’d each be paid $1 for their participation, with one catch. If one of the three participants clicked a button on the computer screen, that person would receive $1.25, and the other two would receive $2. Women were 48% more likely than men to volunteer to press the button. In other words, women took a hit so that everyone came out better.”

    If the person gets an extra 25cents it’s not a thankless job, just the least profitable. Also, unless I’ve missed something, how does this tie to office housework? Again, unless I’ve missed something

    • Springtime@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Women taking the least profitable outcome was overproportional, so men came out top by not volunteering for the office household tasks and making more money in the experiment.

      Without the gender bias, you’d expect a similar outcome for men and women to volunteer.

      The authors conducted additional experiments with same gender groups. It appears, they measured the time it took someone to volunteer and there were no differences in women-only and men-only test groups, so in the mixed groups, men seemed to hold back to volunteer, while women felt more obligated to step up.

      Edit Shortened answer by taking out quote from the aricle

      • Jennifer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Thanks for the reply, I’m still not sure if I would equate overproportional volunteering for a lesser profitable task equates to work “chores”.

        I would understand if author etc deduced that I meant men where more hesitant to do lesser tasks when woman are around. But I think that speaks more to the power balance issue that specifically work chores.

        To me, the article shoe horns a scientific study to match a list of tips that are pretty unrelated. There’s space for both discussions but seems to be a strange choice of evidence for the latter.