Women around the world do more unpaid housework than men – A recent study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the percentage of men and women who are involved in housework has barely moved since 2003, with 84% of women reporting doing 2.6 hours of unpaid housework daily vs. 64% of men who reported doing any housework at all, and those that did spent 2 hours a day. This is even more striking at a time when the US has nominated its first female presidential candidate.
While women in the US workforce are still struggling to break the glass ceiling, they’re also fighting to stop “scrubbing the tile floor” at home. Cooking, cleaning, and childcare responsibilities often still default to women, keeping them from advancing at work and in society.
The project documents the lives of 47 women who are currently tracking the hours they spend on paid work, unpaid work, and other activities in a custom web application built for this project. The Ties That Bind sculpture will be a data visualization of those hours, made of 1000 handmade tiles, each representing an hour of time worked.
“No matter how far today’s women “Lean In,” it’s hard to be the CEO when they are also the head chef, janitor, and caregiver,” says Sawyer Rose. “The goal of this installation is to shine a light on an important issue in our society, and to be a catalyst for more dialogue and solutions to the problem.”
Learn more about The Carrying Stones Project at: www.carrying-stones.com
