Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women

Men get one thing from marriage that women never do: They get wives.

Wifework is a fiercely argued, in-depth look at the inequitable division of labor between husbands and wives. Bolstering her own personal experience as a twice-married mother of three with substantial research and broad statistical evidence, Susan Maushart explores the theoretical and evolutionary reasons behind marriage inequality. She forces us to consider why 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce, and why women are responsible for initiating three-quarters of them. If family life is worth saving, and Maushart passionately believes it is, the job description for wives will have to be rewritten.

Susan Maushart was born in New York and moved to Australia in 1985. Her first book, Sort of a Place Like Home, won a Festival Award for Literature at the Adelaide Festival in 1994, and her second, The Mask of Motherhood, was published to international acclaim. A senior research associate at Curtin University and a columnist for the Australian Magazine, she lives in Perth with her three children.

Wives do on average 90 per cent of the laundry and 82 per cent of all indoor cleaning and tidying. The difference between the domestic workload of husbands with employed wives and husbands with non-employed wives was found to be exactly ten minutes a day. One US study found that 70 per cent of a random sample of fathers were not responsible for any child-care tasks, and an additional 22 per cent were responsible for only one such task.

Husbands and wives may say they are committed to equality, and indeed, many believe that they live that way. Yet, whether they are employed or not, wives still perform an astoundingly larger share of the physical, emotional, and organizational labor in marriage. In Wifework (shorthand for this relentless routine of husband maintenance), Susan Maushart takes a radical look at the institution of marriage, exposing the truth of how far we've really come in thirty years. She forces us to consider why 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce, and why women are responsible for initiating three-quarters of them. If family life is worth saving, the job description for wives will have to be rewritten.

Bolstering her own personal experience as a twice-married mother of three with substantial research and broad statistical evidence, Maushart delves into history to explore the theoretical and evolutionary reasons behind marital inequity. Wifework is candid, bold, at times savagely witty, and always fervently argued.

"Maushart assembles an overwhelming amount of data documenting how marriage has perpetuated inequities between husband and wife."—Christian Science Monitor

"Susan Maushart's heartfelt and incendiary Wifework is a brief against traditional marriage that took me back to the galvanizing effect of reading Friedan."—Salon.com

"I think married women should read this book and see if their marriage is really a fair enough deal—and ask for a better one if they need to."—Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D., author of Everything You Know About Love and Sex Is Wrong

"With good-humored aplomb, Maushart makes clear she doesn't think marriage or men are 'rotten,' but that 'the way we typically divide up the business—and the pleasure, too—of our adult relationships is inefficient, maladaptive, and unfair.'"—Bookpage

"A wake-up call for women feeling trapped by marriage."—Booklist

"100 percent honest. [A] smart and witty book."—Publishers Weekly

Men get one thing from marriage that women never do: They get wives.

Wifework is a fiercely argued, in-depth look at the inequitable division of labor between husbands and wives. Bolstering her own personal experience as a twice-married mother of three with substantial research and broad statistical evidence, Susan Maushart explores the theoretical and evolutionary reasons behind marriage inequality. She forces us to consider why 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce, and why women are responsible for initiating three-quarters of them. If family life is worth saving, and Maushart passionately believes it is, the job description for wives will have to be rewritten.

Susan Maushart was born in New York and has lived in Australia since 1985. Her first book, Sort of a Place Like Home, won a Festival Award for Literature at the Adelaide Festival in 1994, and her second, The Mask of Motherhood, was published to international acclaim. She is a senior research associate at Curtin University, a columnist for the Australian Magazine and lives in Perth with her three children.