Let's have this tough conversation

Roles in a relationship are often based on gender rather than skills and interest

- Phil Slade

It’s an interesting quirk of human nature that men tend to be more interested in “things” (and gravitate toward jobs like mechanic, engineer, technician, builder or stockbroker), and women tend to be more interested in “people” (and gravitate toward jobs like nursing, social enterprise, communications, teaching, foreign aid or psychology). It’s not a hard rule, of course – I myself am a psychologist and a trained primary school teacher – but at the population level this difference exists.

What is also interesting is that in relationships, there’s a tendency for each gender to gravitate towards certain household jobs. This gravitation is may be based on preference, but more often it’s based on social expectations. For instance, we know that in the vast majority of relationships women are doing most of the meal prep and men are taking care of any home repairs. I know this may be offensive to some, but the data is what the data is.