What marketers need to know about housework (Study)

The June Cleaver days are long gone, but marketers aren’t keeping pace with changes in today’s modern households, according to a new study by Harbinger.

In its report, Evolving Gender Roles in the Modern North American Household, Harbinger notes the gender gap in household chores is closing, especially in regards to laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping and meal shopping, where millennial men are stepping up. In addition, younger generations are more open-minded about how household jobs are distributed among men and women, with gender less a factor when it comes to the division of household chores.

The report is based on findings from an online survey of 513 Canadian and 1,005 American adults, conducted by Leger.

Compared to boomers, more millennial men are cleaning (+15%), doing laundry (+12%) and doing meal planning and prep (+8%), while more millennial women are doing yard work (+5%), doing home maintenance and repairs (+5%) and managing telecom/technology (+5).

“Generally [millennial] men and women are moving off on their own and living as singles, so they have to learn to take on these tasks that may have traditionally been associated with the other gender,” says Jennifer Lomax, VP of strategic planning at Harbinger.

However, women overall still dominate household chores in North America. On average, women spend 65% or 4.2 hours more per week than men on housework.

In households where the woman works at least 40 hours per week, women and men share a much more equitable contribution to household chores. On average, she spends more than three hours fewer on chores and her spouse’s contribution increases by half an hour per week.

The report also looks at perceptions of advertising, with 69% of respondents saying advertisers unfairly portray gender roles in the home. In addition, 71% want to see brands portray men contributing to household chores more often, and 56% say they are more likely to purchase brands that show men and women contributing to household chores.

Brands that rely on gender stereotypes risk a backlash from consumers. One brand that discovered this the hard way was LG Canada. In April, the company was accused of sexism after running a social media campaign that featured women doing things like shopping and getting their nails done because of the time they saved using the LG TwinWash.

“It’s embarrassing… They really did become the brunt of a joke on social media,” says Lomax. “For brands that are unfairly portraying women, there is such a loud voice now for women’s rights and gender equality that I think they’re at even greater risk today than in the past of being very publicly shamed for making poor choices.”

Despite the backlash, women are actually more than twice as likely to do the laundry than men (86% versus 40%), and women are twice as likely as men to be involved in nearly all aspects of meal planning and preparation (83% versus 44%).

“Some of it is as we’ve been raised, our parents have asserted some biases that it is still a woman’s responsibility to do the majority [of these chores], or a woman accepts that if a man is not going to step up, we have no choice but to do it ourselves because the jobs still need to get done,” says Lomax. “So I think that despite efforts, there are still legacy precedents set by our forebears… and women just pick up the slack.”

However, the point for marketers is to take consumers’ attitudes and aspirations into account—not the amount of time they spend cleaning and doing the laundry.

The survey finds three quarters of respondents would like to see household efforts split equally.

“No matter what their good or service is, marketers need to figure out how they can be a leader in delivering on that aspirational home, where both men and women are being empowered and recognized for their contributions,” says Lomax.