Sanna Schildt

Back to spring issue 2006

Everyday life is everywhere and in everything, but not everything is mundane. Sometimes the mundane is a stronger, sometimes a weaker, thread that runs through all life situations, but it is always there. Including large social issues! Who will do the dishes is no less interesting a topic of debate than the presidential election. The everyday life reflects the way we operate in the world,” says Eeva Jokinen, research fellow of the Academy of Finland and a docent of the University of Helsinki.

For her monograph entitled Aikuisten arki (‘The Grown-up Everyday’), Jokinen, who works for the University of Jyväskylä, interviewed women and men who are in the middle of their busiest years, analysing the events, routines and thought patterns in their everyday lives.

“I wanted to avoid the kind of thinking that perceives the everyday as something we can delimit to one place, such as home, or that belongs to an institution, such as the family,” says Jokinen, who defined five dimensions to serve as a tool for assessment and identifying the everyday. In everyday life, external pressures are adjusted to suit one’s own rhythm of life, and aspects that are part of everyday life, such as repetition, a sense of home and habit, enforce gendered conventions.

On whose terms?

The most controversial moments in the lives of adults are related to the couple relationship – and housework. The acquired and often unquestioned conventions continue to divide household work into men’s and women’s jobs. Who does and what? Who is allowed and who is expected to do something? And why?

Women spend three hours and 25 minutes a day on housework, men two hours. Although the concept of equality among 30- to 40-year-olds is well internalised, habits sit tight, both in women and men. The gender division of many household chores has loosened with the introduction of new technologies: dishwashers take care of the dishes and the vacuum cleaner has replaced elbow grease. Both appliances can be used by either partner, whichever has more time. For some reason, how-ever, taking care of clothes still falls within women’s domain: women spend two hours a week doing the laundry, men 14 minutes.

“Washing clothes is a mystery to men, and this is accepted as a natural state of affairs. But if a woman can mend her car, this is admired and encouraged,” says Jokinen, describing the volatility of gender roles.

Jokinen would like to see a more equal everyday life in future. The trend seems promising. This may be because of increased diversity in family formations and the imagery conveyed by the media. For example, celebrity chefs have encouraged men to take up cooking – although, to begin with, mainly for parties and on Sundays. How does hiring domestic help, which has become more popular among young urban families, affect the situation?

“Domestic help is more about turning unprofitable work into profitable work. This creates more jobs, as someone is doing housework for money. But from the perspective of gender roles, it makes no difference, whether the housework is done by the mother, girlfriend or a cleaning lady. The firms offering housework services are run mainly by women,” says Jokinen.

Then, could the recently much publicised stay-at-home-dads help to break down conventional gender roles? According to Jokinen, the idea is interesting, but stay-at-home dads are in reality very rare. Only four per cent of those receiving parental allowance are men. If things remain externally unchanged in society, the changes within the home sphere, the everyday life and division of labour will also remain slow. Society does, how-ever, have the power to affect equality in everyday life through social and employment policies; for example, by redistributing the costs incurred by the parental allowance between both parents’ employers.

Broadband steals time

The biggest change in people’s everyday life has been brought by the Internet and broadband connections. Because of computers, the borderline between work and free time has become blurred. The increasingly popular method of working from home is also a cause of restructuring in people’s daily lives.

“People find work incredibly demanding. People working in the ‘economy of meanings’ constantly have to struggle to keep up with the competition. Staying temporarily at home with the kids, being unemployed and long child-care leaves are stumbling blocks in women’s career paths. Job markets and the need to care for one’s family are continuously at loggerheads,” says Jokinen.

Although running the everyday life involves many conflicts, Finns are mainly happy with their lives. When the interviewees were asked, if they could have one wish what would it be, the answer was unanimous: more time. The everyday life is described as being tough but rarely boring. Therefore Eeva Jokinen does not subscribe to the idea of the “daily grind”.

“It seems that the aversion to the greyness of life is a passing trend. Isn’t it now the ideal to be able to enjoy normal life and routines? Besides, grey is a fine colour, it consists of all the colours in the universe,” muses Jokinen.