If women can be equal in the workplace, why can't men be equal in the home?

Women are more sexist than men when it comes to household chores.

The problem with equality is that women are often unable to accept that men should be treated equally. Many don’t actually want equality — they want control over men and special treatment. This isn’t equality, ladies; it’s a double standard.

Fathers are perfectly capable of taking care of children, but they’re often prevented from doing so because women want to control both them and the children’s relationships with their fathers. This is sexism, and it is especially evident in courtrooms, where women frequently claim they are solely entitled to childcare simply because they are mothers. The data shows that children tend to have worse outcomes with single mothers than with single fathers.

But I’m not talking about the difference here. I’m talking about presumed superiority: the ways in which a majority of American women actually think they are better than men in the entire domestic realm, from kids to kitchens. I’m talking about the things we don’t actually want to give up, the roles many of us want men to play, and the limited roles we are willing to let them play.

Consider the following scenario. You walk into your office on your first day of work and your boss, a man, says: “I have evolved biologically to do this job better than you can, but I’m going to let you try. To be sure it’s done right, however, I will leave you detailed instructions for every individual task. And when I travel, I will call in every couple of hours to make sure you are following those instructions to the letter.”

Most women would immediately complain to Human Resources and perhaps consider filing a lawsuit. Yet when I describe this hypothetical scenario to audiences of women, the laughter begins to ripple through the room by the time I reach “I will leave you detailed instructions.” This is precisely the way the majority of us treat our husbands or male partners when we leave them in charge of the children.

In an article in New York magazine, therapist Barbara Kass calls many of us out on this: “So many women want to control their husbands’ parenting.”

Some readers are probably thinking at this point: Of course! That’s exactly what we’ve been asking for. We want the men in our lives to pick up the slack, to be equal partners as caregivers so that we can be equal partners as breadwinners.