“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand.” Emily Kimbrough

Introduction

Gender Traps articulates a truth women already know: that the men they love are complicit in a greater system which extracts their unpaid labor without their consent. Women are held hostage by love: for their children, for their aging parents, and for their partners. Women do twice the domestic labor as their male partners in the US and globally, contribute 12.5 billion hours a day of unpaid labor and the situation has not improved since the 1990’s. The US economic system relegates most women to low-paid or unpaid care work and has dismantled the social safety net of affordable childcare and eldercare. While women carry the brunt of domestic labor, emotional labor and care work, men opt out of this work because they know women will not abandon their loved ones. To add insult to injury, it is not socially acceptable for liberal men to admit they have left their partners to do most of the heavy lifting, so women must declare them equal partners when they are not. In addition to taking on more male-coded jobs and household tasks, women are expected to label decisions as mutual when they primarily benefit the male partner. Women are trapped between two extractive systems— the family and the neoliberal culture predicated on the backs of women.

Unequal Partnerships: A Group for Women Frustrated by the Imbalance in the Domestic, Cognitive and Emotional Labor in their Primary Relationship New groups forming for women in relationships with men (transgender women are welcome). This group will help you identify behaviors and beliefs that interfere with relationship equality. The groups are 75 minutes long and include homework and group exercises. The group is split into two four-week segments with a break in between. Each four-week segment will be $100. Part 1 includes clearly defining healthy relationships, understanding emotional labor, identifying the root of power imbalances and the social messages that support inequality, as well the ways women can undermine themselves and each other. Part 2 Disrupting power imbalances, options for responding to a partner that expects power to flow primarily in one direction and building supportive community outside the family. Please send me an email if you are interested.

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Original Art by Gabriela Regina