Why Unpaid Labor Is More Likely to Hurt Women’s Mental Health Than Men’s
打扫卫生、照顾家人：无偿家务劳动伤害女性身心
In countries around the world, women do more unpaid labor — housework, child and elder care, and the mental load of managing a family — than men. New research suggests it takes a health toll on many of them.
在世界各国，女性比男性承担了更多无偿劳动——家务劳动、照顾儿童和老人，以及家庭管理带来的精神负担。新的研究表明，许多女性的健康会因此受到损害。
The more of this labor women do, the worse their mental health, found a meta-analysis of 19 studies covering 70,310 people globally, published this month in The Lancet Public Health. It analyzed the unpaid labor of people who also worked for pay. Other recent studies have similarly found that women’s household labor is associated with poor health, both physical and mental.
本月发表在《柳叶刀公共卫生》杂志上的一项后设分析发现，这种无偿劳动做得越多，她们的心理健康就越差，该分析解读了从事有酬工作者所做的无酬劳动，纳入19项研究，涵盖全球70310人。最近其他研究同样发现，女性的家务劳动与身体和精神上的健康状况不佳相关。
一项研究发现，在各种家务中，男性洗碗对女性在这段关系中的幸福感最为重要。
The findings point to a reason women are more often diagnosed with anxiety and depression than men, and help explain why, now that schools are open and mothers are back at their jobs, they still feel more stress than they did before the pandemic. The mental health effects of such additional work that mothers did in the depths of the pandemic, and still do, hang on.
研究结果指出了女性比男性更常被诊断出患有焦虑和抑郁的一个原因，并有助于解释为什么现在学校开放，母亲们重返工作岗位，她们却比大流行前感到压力更大。母亲们在大流行最严重的时期所做的这些额外劳动，以及现在仍在做的额外劳动，对心理健康的影响仍然存在。
“In many ways, Covid has stalled or in some instances reversed some of the hard-won gains in gender equality,” said Jennifer Ervin, an author of the study and a Ph.D. candidate at the Center for Health Equity at the University of Melbourne in Australia. But, she added, the results show that “reducing the disproportionate unpaid labor burden on women, by enabling men to take on their equal share, has the potential to improve women’s mental health.”
“从许多角度来看，新冠使性别平等来之不易的一些成果停滞，或者在某些情况下逆转了这些成果，”该研究的作者、澳大利亚墨尔本大学健康公平中心的博士候选人詹妮弗·欧文说。但是，她还说，结果表明，“通过让男性分摊同等比例的劳动，减少女性过多的无偿劳动负担，有可能改善女性的心理健康。”
Housework and child care, the research found, have much less of an impact on men’s mental health. That’s probably because they do so much less of it. In the United States, women do an average 4.5 hours of such work a day, compared with 2.8 hours for men, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (it calculates overall averages, regardless of whether people are employed). In Greece, women do 4.3 hours while men do an hour and a half. Even in the most gender-equal countries, like Sweden, women do 50 minutes more a day than men.
研究发现，做家务和育儿对男性心理健康的影响要小得多。那可能是因为他们做的要少得多。根据经济合作与发展组织的数据，在美国，女性平均每天在此类劳动上花费4.5小时，而男性则为2.8小时（它计算的是总体平均值，不考虑人们是否就业）。在希腊，女性花费4.3小时，男性1个半小时。即使在瑞典等性别最平等的国家，女性每天也比男性多做50分钟。
During lockdowns, men did more unpaid labor than they had before, but so did women, so their total shares remained about the same. This was true in a variety of countries.
在封锁期间，男性从事的无偿劳动比以前更多，但女性也是如此，因此他们分担的比例还是没变。在许多国家都是如此。
But it’s also because the type of such work men do is generally less time-sensitive and more enjoyable, or at least more tolerable. For example, men are more often responsible for outdoor tasks, like mowing the lawn, that are done less often and on their own schedule. Women are more likely to take on daily tasks that need to be done at certain times, like preparing meals or cleaning up.
但还有一个原因是，男性从事的此类工作通常不需要很高的时效性，而且更有趣，或者至少没那么难熬。例如，男性更多负责户外任务，比如修剪草坪，这些任务不经常做，而且是由自己来决定劳动的时间。女性更有可能承担需要在特定时间完成的日常任务，例如做饭或打扫卫生。
Societal expectations probably also play a role. Studies have shown that women feel pressure to keep their homes clean, for instance, and feel judged if they don’t. Men, on the other hand, are often praised for doing mundane tasks like cleaning a house or taking a child to an appointment.
社会期望可能也在发挥作用。例如，研究表明，女性在保持家中整洁方面会感到压力，如果不这样做，就会受到评判。另一方面，男性经常因完成打扫房子或带孩子去诊所之类的平凡任务而受到称赞。
It’s not unpaid labor itself that is problematic, research has found. Rather, it’s all the baggage around it — whether it conflicts with someone’s other responsibilities, like paid work, and whether it’s what someone wants to be doing.
研究发现，有问题的不是无偿劳动本身，而是围绕它产生的所有负担——它是否与这个人的有偿工作等其他职责相冲突，以及它是不是这个人想做的事情。
Social scientists first named these issues more than half a century ago, and they’ve only become more acute since then, as more women have taken on paid work. “Role strain,” a term coined in 1960 by the sociologist William J. Goode, describes what happens when someone’s multiple roles interfere with their performance in others — when long hours of unpaid domestic work make people feel less able to do their paid work, or vice versa.
半个多世纪前，社会科学家首次提出了这些问题，自那以后，随着越来越多的女性从事有偿工作，这些问题变得更加尖锐。社会学家威廉·古德在1960年创造了“角色压力”的说法，它描述了当一个人的多重角色干扰他们在其他角色中的表现时会发生什么——当长时间的无偿家务工作使人们觉得自己无法完成有偿工作时会怎样，反之亦然。
“Time poverty” — a term social scientists use to describe not having enough time to do work or leisure activities — particularly affects women with caregiving demands and people with inflexible, low-paid jobs. Time poverty contributes to declines in mental health, research shows, and also makes it harder to do things that improve health, like exercising, sleeping or nurturing friendships. One study found that while opposite-sex couples are increasingly likely to share responsibility for paid and unpaid work, men spend significantly more leisure time on weekends while women do more housework.
社会科学家用来“时间贫困”一词描述没有足够时间从事工作或休闲活动，这尤其影响需要照看他人的女性和从事不灵活、低薪工作的人。研究表明，时间贫困会导致心理健康水平下降，也会让人更难去进行改善健康的事情，比如锻炼、睡觉或增进友谊。一项研究发现，虽然异性伴侣越来越有可能地分担有偿和无偿工作的责任，但男性在周末度过的休闲时间明显更多，而女性则做更多家务。
In some cases, parents who forgo paid work to care for children have been found to be happier about their unpaid labor — but not always. It depends if that aligned with what they wanted to do, or if they felt they had little choice about it.
人们发现，在某些情况下，为了照顾孩子而放弃有偿工作的家长更乐意做他们的无偿劳动——但并非总是如此。这取决于这些无偿劳动是不是他们想做的事情，或者他们是否觉得自己别无选择。
“It’s not clear-cut that doing a larger amount or greater share of unpaid domestic work is negatively associated with physical or mental health per se,” said Daniel L. Carlson, a sociologist at the University of Utah, who studies the topic. “Mothers who have majority responsibility for those tasks but are also very conventional in their gender roles are OK with that responsibility. But women who believe more in egalitarianism having those responsibilities leads to poorer mental health.”
“做更多无偿劳动或分担更大的比重是否与身心健康本身存在负相关，这一点并不明确，”犹他大学研究该课题的社会学家丹尼尔·卡尔森说。“分担更多这类责任的母亲如果在性别角色上也非常传统的话，对承担这些责任没有意见。但更相信平等主义的女性承担这些责任，会导致心理健康状况较差。”
Part of that is discordant identities, he said: “I want to be this person, but I’m not.”
部分原因是身份的不一致，他说：“我想成为这样的人，但我不是。”
Tellingly, while same-sex couples tend to split primary responsibility for work and family once they have children, they tend to be happier with the division. Research has found that it’s because there is more often a conversation about who will do what, rather than an assumption based on gender.
很能说明问题的是，虽然同性伴侣在有了孩子后往往会分担工作和家庭的主要责任，但往往对分工更加满意。研究发现，这是因为他们更常讨论由谁来负责做哪件事，而不是基于性别假设。
The Lancet researchers said that drawing definitive conclusions from the 19 studies was difficult and that more research would be welcome. One hole in the academic research, which some newer studies are beginning to address, is a more detailed look at how different types of chores and responsibilities affect people.
柳叶刀的研究人员表示，从19项研究中得出明确的结论是困难的，最好能进行更多研究。一些较新的研究开始解决学术研究中的一个空白，即更详细地研究不同类型的家务和责任如何影响人们。
People tend to like shopping more than laundry, for instance, and cooking more than dishwashing. Child care may feel more rewarding than housework — and reading or going on a walk with a child more enjoyable than calming a tantrum or handling a 3 a.m. wake-up.
例如，人们往往喜欢购物多于洗衣服，喜欢做饭多过洗碗。照顾孩子可能比做家务更有价值——比起安抚发脾气的孩子或照顾凌晨三点醒来的孩子，阅读或与孩子一起散步更令人愉悦。
But what seems clear, the researchers said, is that when men do more unpaid labor, it eases the impacts on women.
但研究人员表示，当男性从事更多无偿劳动时，它对女性的影响会减轻，这一点似乎很清晰。
来源：好英语网
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