Gender equality

Maybe you’re one of the lucky few with a boyfriend who helps a lot with everyday household chores. Times have changed since our parent’s era (where joint custody sparked a new generation of newly responsible dads), even more if we compare to our grand-parent’s era (where it wasn’t even a question that you would find the woman in the kitchen).

Thank God…mentalities have evolved. We as women, have more control over our destiny than ever before. Also true that the men around us are more sensible to the matter at hand, more conscious of the importance of sharing the load. But do you know a single guy that boasts to his friends:

“I’m so lucky, my girlfriend does everything around the house…’’

No..

Even if there is some progress, women are still the ones who consider themselves ‘’lucky’’ if their partner participates. Erasing generations worth of gender-biased chores from our brains is no easy task. We often consider the guy to be helping HER in HER tasks… But deep down they are just trying to be ‘’nice’’. For real, I’m grateful for all that my ‘’nice guy’’ of a boyfriend does (S/O Renaud). I tell him when he does the laundry, or the dishes: ‘’You’re so sweet. Sincerely.’’

As a manufacturer of cleaning products, at Pure, these are questions we ask ourselves. We’d like to contribute to a healthier society, one that is eco-responsible, but also fair. Pure would like to participate in this change of mentalities that is slowly operating across canadian households. Because it is truly in the process of changing, because today’s men are a lot more open to the subject.

Although, between practice and principles lies a significant gap. Even if the speech has changed, women are averaging 2.8 hours of daily household chores whereas men average 1.9 hours. Mais, on dirait qu’entre la théorie et la pratique, il reste un décalage. A 54 minute daily gap. This fascinating article from Radio Canada outlines pertinent stats and the evolution of splitting chores throughout history.

This data also reflects in our consumer stats here at Pure. Maybe we are indirectly contributing to this sexist vision by adressing directly to women. But really and truly doesn’t take away from the fact that over 95% of sales on our website are made by women. We just want to talk in all transparency about this reality. No need to reinforce the fact that household chores mostly fall on women. We just want to include men (and children tomorrow, watch out kids) in the general conversation…but in fact, women are the ones buying. To this day, it is them, our consumers, our ladies, that embody our public. They are the ones who feel concerned by our values and products.

So today we raise a simple question: what are we going to do about it?

Do you have any ideas of what a business like ours could do to help contribute to a fair repartition of household chores?

And gentlemen…where are you at!?