Women Leadership Stops At Home

Women may not need a survey to tell them that they wield power at home.

But that is what a study from the Pew Research Center finds when it looked at gender and power at home.

1,260 couples were surveyed this summer. The findings:

• 43 Percent of couples, women made more decision at home
• Areas they dominated were weekend activities, household finance and home purchases 
• Men defer to their partners or share decision making

On the All American favorite pastime-- TV watching -- women actually control the remote control 27 percent of the time, 26 percent for men.  And 25 percent say they decide together.

On finances, 45 percent of women say they manage money, 37 percent of men do.

Surprisingly just eight percent of couples say they make decision together in all four areas.

Melinda Forthofer, director of the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina-Columbia, said to the Chicago Sun Times, ''Despite the fact that in our society, we have had this notion of males as heads of households, we have seen the pattern that women tend to really be the managers."

"I think the big story over time is the rise in shared decision making," said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University tells the Washington Post. "It's not the same as the '50s and '60s, where 'father knew best.' "

Ironically, when Pew Research Center asked “Who Is A Better Leader?”  Women ranked higher than men in the areas of honesty, intelligence and other character traits. But only six percent surveyed said women would make better political leaders than men.  #