Women may have earned equal rights in workplace but they take a backseat at home and give up on their careers as their husbands refuse to do their share of the household chores, a new study has claimed.
The research by Youngjoo Cha, a sociologist from Cornell University, found that women are more likely to give up their high flying jobs or take on less demanding roles if their husbands work long hours.
This is because working women have to do majority of household chores, including taking care of their children, while their husbands show less interest in helping her out, according to the study.
However, the study found that the impact on working men of having a wife who works long hours -- whether they are a parent or not -- is negligible, The Telegraph reported. Youngjoo Cha said: "The norm of overwork systematically disadvantages women, who are less likely to work long hours because of the expectation that they will have primary care-giving responsibilities and do more housework than men."
She added: "As long work-hours introduce conflict between work and family into many dual-earner families, couples often resolve conflict in ways that prioritise husbands' careers.
"This effect is magnified among workers in professional and managerial occupations, where the norm of overwork and the culture of intensive parenting tend to be strongest. "The findings suggest that the prevalence of overwork may lead many dual-earner couples to return to a separate spheres arrangement - breadwinning men and homemaking women."
The study looked at 8,484 professional workers and 17,648 nonprofessional workers from two-salary families, using data collected by the US Census Bureau.
It found that women whose husbands work more than 60 hours per week are 42 per cent more likely to leave their jobs than women whose partners work fewer hours.
When looking solely at professional women, the odds that they will quit their job increases by more than half (51 per cent) when their husbands work 60 hours or more per week.
For professional women who also have children the likelihood that they will resign increases by 112 per cent.
However, men whose wives work more than 60 hours per week are no more or less likely to give up work than husbands whose wives work shorter days or do not work at all, the study found.
