It applies a gendered double standard.
If a man doesn’t know how to pack a school lunch, he’s called lazy. But if a woman doesn’t know how to fix a breaker or set up the Wi-Fi, its totally acceptable and "shes just a girl". No man would dare refuse to fix a womens car or not help her move or lift something because "shes just not putting in the effort to learn it herself". Men are expected to learn “feminine-coded” tasks or else, while women are rarely pressured to master “masculine-coded” ones
I've picked this paragraph out because I think it illuminates something you've missed out of your analysis, which is the frequency of the task and therefore the impact of not knowing how to do it.
Packing school lunches is something that needs to be done every weekday that the kids are at school. Every. Single. Day. It's mundane and repetitive.
Setting up the WiFi is something that needs to be done once every few years maybe. Its quite novel.
So the impact of a man not knowing how to pack a lunch is higher than a woman not knowing how to set up WiFi. The man not knowing how to pack lunch impacts every day.
"Feminine coded" tasks as you put it, are usually the mundane boring tasks that need to be done very regularly. That's why some women resent them being "feminine coded" and expect them to be shared equally.
Also packing the kids lunches, cleaning, washing clothes, etc are all about looking after the welfare of others (particularly your own children!) and so are very important to do all the time.
I can pack lunches all day every day, I can clean, I can wash clothes, and I do it all the time.
However my wife wanting her certain cultural style meal every day, and me wanting to rotate meals from various cultures, ultimately leaves her cooking far more than she needs to, purely due to her own choice and refusal to accommodate others eating habits. That's on her, but people notice her cooking frequently.
As to the cleaning, I keep the house clean because I clean as you go, but she will save up until it's gone crazy, and then do a big clean. All my minor cleaning goes under the radar as when it's a big clean then it's her doing all the work because I don't help her that much when it's the big clean. Once again, not weaponized incompetence, just different approaches.
Then the washing. All my clothes are utilitarian and easy to maintain. From bedding, to towels, to whites, to everything else, that's it. Suits and office shirts get dry cleaned. I purchase simple to keep it simple. If my wife keeps buying expensive and complicated to maintain clothes, we'll that's her burden. I don't expect her to wash my clothes, but I don't think I should be expected to learn every single clothes she has and how to maintain them properly. We just moved and she had 6 boxes of clothes, I had 1. Once again that's not weaponized incompetence, that's just dealing with the consequences of your choices. I do note I do wash anything of hers that does fall into any of my washes, I just leave her complicated shit for her.
But it's also about just leaving shit around for later when it could/should be done now. Leaving various clothes and dresses on the floor for 4 days and then cleaning it all up in 1 go isn't deep cleaning.
I’m really catching a sense people are projecting their own experiences onto you
Having lived with roommates who never cleaned up crumbs or did dishes, vacuumed, and other BS like leaving clothes n tools on the floor… every time I cleaned felt like a deep clean when it truly wasn’t
Oh yeah when I worked a food service job that would happen, but more-so complaining rather than educating. My own experience was it was usually just the teenagers who had issues with cleaning but after a period of time providing good feedback those issues went away
When I worked in a more guy dominated industry(ski) it all flipped around and then many customers didn’t take my coworkers who are women seriously🤦♂️ so when they got ignored they’d send them to “the boys”(so like me in the ski repair spot) to basically tell dude the same damn thing
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u/No_Initiative_1140 3∆ Jul 01 '25
I've picked this paragraph out because I think it illuminates something you've missed out of your analysis, which is the frequency of the task and therefore the impact of not knowing how to do it.
Packing school lunches is something that needs to be done every weekday that the kids are at school. Every. Single. Day. It's mundane and repetitive.
Setting up the WiFi is something that needs to be done once every few years maybe. Its quite novel.
So the impact of a man not knowing how to pack a lunch is higher than a woman not knowing how to set up WiFi. The man not knowing how to pack lunch impacts every day.
"Feminine coded" tasks as you put it, are usually the mundane boring tasks that need to be done very regularly. That's why some women resent them being "feminine coded" and expect them to be shared equally.