Gender Equity and Equality: A Quantitative Study Exploring African Americans Perspectives about Completion of and Actualization of Common Household Tasks

Background: This study aims to address contemporary questions about role performance in African American relationships, tackling some of the complex subtleties of gender distribution of common household task completion.  Traditional theories have promoted a clear separation of gender roles starting very early in the child development process, continuing through to adulthood.  The Civil Rights Movements and Feminists Movements garner reverence to perspectives, frameworks, principles and values about equity and equality among cultural components, including gender.  This research project explores whether, how much and to what degree perspectives about and actualization of common household tasks is similar to and different from traditional perspectives and how the social work profession can address gender and relationship equality as a grand challenge. 

Methods: Convenience and snowball sampling methods were used to collect surveys from a total of 128 respondents, 97 (76%) female and 31(24%) male.  The sample consisted of African American men and women who are/have been in a various relationship types.  The cross-sectional design used a survey that was administered in person, via email and through social media.  The survey was posted on Qualtrics for prospective completer convenience.  Instrumentation included a survey developed by the author, the Common Household Tasks scale (Banks, 2014) that encapsulates typical household items.  The final instrument consisted of a 27-item survey that will be tested for reliability and validity over time.       

A factor analysis was completed to assess whether there was interrelatedness among the 27 common household tasks.  An analysis of eigen values and a visual scree test revealed themes in four categories: 1) Finances, 2) Home Maintenance, 3) Daily Chores and 4) Caregiving. 

Results: Bivariate correlations were conducted that yielded the following results among genders.  A sample of the findings includes:

1. Daily Chores
   1. Actualization for daily chores positively correlates with actualization for care giving tasks and actualization for finances for men and women
   2. Actualization for daily chore negatively correlates with actualization for daily chores by my partner for women but not men
2. Home Maintenance
   1. Actualization for home maintenance tasks positively correlates with actualization for finances and actualization for daily chores by my partner for men and women
   2. Actualization for home maintenance tasks negatively correlates with actualization for home maintenance tasks by my partner for women but not men

Implications: The findings suggest that the field is ripe for uncovering and revealing known and unknown, common and uncommon understandings related to the completion of common household tasks and how this revelation impacts gender equality and role division in relationships.  This research is important to social workers because it speaks to principles of cultural competency, gender equity, and relationship cohesion, principles and values embedded in our Code of Ethics.  These issues clearly sit with and live with social workers in clinical settings, practice settings and in classroom settings, offering new knowledge to novel and veteran social workers alike.