Just theorizing about housework

I was reading Cinzia La Strega's article about housekeeping, always a topic of hot contention in gender-based commentary. Since it seems to be impossible for me to post comments on her site, I thought I'd take this topic up on my own. Cinzia's take on it is that women, even high-powered ones, still hold on to their household responsibilities is "because they don't really want to forfeit their "traditional feminine" roles." 

I've always had a different theory about working women who still do the lion’s share of the housekeeping work. There could be some aspect of adherence to tradition in their minds, but I chalk it up to a difference between the sexes – but not in the same "evo-psych" way that the MRA and fundamentalist crowds rationalize female subordination. Allow me to elucidate...

 High-powered women are what they are because they are very ambitious. Same goes for men of course. Ambitious people, theoretically, are highly motivated and take-charge sorts. To me it seems to follow logically that such a person would make for a more fastidious housekeeper than a person who is... not so ambitious. Maybe… I mean, I haven't actually done any research to back this part of the theory up, its just quid pro quo. That aside, when you do consider the supposed “differences” between the sexes, something interesting comes up. And that is, women are less likely to delegate. In a business setting, they often will do their own gruntwork, while men are normally quite a bit more comfortable delegating their work to subordinates. Sadly, women are inclined to say “It’s just easier/faster if I do it myself.”  And, well, oftentimes it is easier. And faster. It also means that in doing so, women have twice the workload and half the reward, but they make that choice. And I think this is simply a habituated behavior that women have picked up, by way of generation after generation after generation of repetition. 

From my observances in life, men rarely will say that sort of thing, unless they really do view their subordinates as incompetent, or if they feel attached to the work itself. They are normally quite eager to delegate to others, and this is a strength for them in business. I hate to admit it, but it is probably one of the core reasons why men have historically succeeded at far faster rates in their careers and business enterprises than women have.

Perhaps its not so much of a strength in the home-sphere though, at least not in the last five decades! I kid you not, I've actually been told that it's a ploy men use to get out of doing household chores, pretending to suck at them. Rather than spend the effort training them, and the rigour of maintaining the standards, and chore of encouraging them to do it despite clearly being disinterested in the work, the women will often just "do it themselves." 

This is a bit of a stereotyping gong show, and for that I apologize (ugh, stereotypes) but my theories are extrapolated from real statistical evidence about women's habituated behaviors. I, unlike the MRA set, believe this is the result of a cultural/historical tradition rather than a biological outcome, and as such it can very easily be trained out of us. That said, given the intensity of the "opposing" side, is it really likely that we will? And do we even want to?