Traditional gender roles have been evolving over the past 20 years, especially with the huge number of women in the work force.
As a result, men are now more laundry chores; and marketers have reacted accordingly. According to the Wall Street Journal: “Makers of detergent and washing machines are changing their product development, advertising, and how-to-use instructions.”
Here’s a Wall Street Journal video on marketing laundry-related products to men.
It’s great to hear that men are finally stepping up and helping out with household chores such as doing the laundry! All these home maintenance tasks shouldn’t be confined just to a woman. If both people live in the house then they should share the responsibility. What comes as a surprise to me is why it is being so blown out of proportion. Why does it have to be such a big deal that men are helping out with such a simple task? It’s as if they are being praised for just doing the right thing. Regardless, it is definitely a step in the right direction and shows that we have made progress in the fight for gender equality.
The post is important because it reflects the reality. Thankfully, it’s changing.
When men finally participate in household works it get very beneficial for women because it makes the job easier and will also benefit both family members. Since they are all living in the same house it is their responsibility to take care of whatever is in the house. And there is no shame for anyone to conclude that it doesn’t look good for a men to do laundry for his wife or cleanup anything in the house. Most of the household task most be a consideration for both genders because it involves the well being of the house and another way to take care of ourself.
agreed
Recently the department of labor reported to women accounting for nearly 50% of the work force. These increasing numbers suggest that nearly every house hold has both a man and woman working jobs therefore making the division of house tasks necessary. The importance of commercials like these are to slowly breakdown these ideologies so that forth-coming generations will find it hard to believe that fighting for gender equality was ever a “thing.” Even though we hate to admit it we still refer to house chores as women tasks whether we believe it or not. This post is powerful because it shows how marketers are slowly reconstructing outdated ideologies through the media.
Do you even know how to do laundry?
Sent from my iPhone
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Yes! And I have done it a number of times.
In the video we know that 70% men aged 18-34 are mainly responsible for the laundry. Although the biggest leading factor is that more men are single today, more people are sharing the housework in the family. We all know that women did almost all the housework in the past. I think this is a good phenomenon in the society. And marketers are slowly reconstructing outdated ideologies through the media and advertisement.
From Hanjun Du (spring 2016 MBA350)
It’s great that men are being brought into the commercials for laundry. There is such a transition from the mother being the hometaker back in the day to now where there is such diversity in the household with chores. Men being put into the ads shows the public that men are capable and can do the laundry for the house and that it is not just a women’s job. The fact that there are men detergents is crazy too! It gives men the ability to have a more masculine smell and it doesn’t segregate them from being able to do laundry. Men can have their own style of smell.
Marketing professionals in the hiring business also need to take into consideration gender roles changing. For example, companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers have already begun to change their policies to allow men to take time off of work when they become a new parent. PwC’s policy states that new parents, regardless of gender or primary care status can take six weeks of consecutive full paid leave. This is so different than policy in the past where men were never given time to take off of work because it was expected that the woman would be the one to stay home with the child. The concept that 70% of men between the ages of 18-34 are responsible for the laundry is an interesting statistic, but is not surprising considering gender roles have been changing. I think marketers are responding appropriately to the ever-changing world we live in.
🙂
I don’t know why the reporter feel so surprise that more men doing laundry. I think for any family, it is very common that the husband and wife share the household chore. Maybe in the past usually women did the laundry and everything in the kitchen, but on the other hand, men also didi the chore such as gardening, equipment maintenance (i.e. tube, machine, etc). Are those not count as household chore? I think 70% of young men begin to do the laundry does not mean they never do other household chore before.