Bill and Melinda Gates washing dishes together every night is proof men equally ‘belong’ to the kitchen
After 25-years of marriage, Melinda and Bill Gates continue to have a balance partnership owing to a fit of frustration by Melinda at the dinner table.
The subject of house-chores and between married couples whose responsibility it is to undertake this duty often becomes a topical issue in Ghana.
While this responsibility could be subject to an agreement between married couples, some entitled people usually argue that it is the sole role of the woman to take on house-duties including work in the kitchen.
Power-couple, Melinda and Bill Gates, have revealed that their long-lasting marriage can be attributed to having a balanced partnership.
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The couple, who have been married for over two decades met in 1987, when Melinda gained a job as a product manager in Microsoft.
The two were seated next to each other by chance at a work dinner and hit it off.
Melinda, now-wife had first rejected a date invite from Bill for two weeks because he was not “spontaneous enough.”
A persistent Bill followed through with a call later to ask for a date that night.
The couple have since founded the world’s largest charity, Gates Foundation, with focus on addressing poverty around the world. They have three children, Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe
Regardless of their busy schedules, the two make time for house chores including cleaning dishes together as a family each night. And this responsibly is very important because it negates the retrograde rhetoric and the stereotype that women are the natural gender to perform time consuming traditional roles.
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The powerful activity of washing dishes is a key effort by the power-couple to help solve gender inequality, improving poverty, and boosting the overall economy.
Gates indicates that women, on average, spend seven more years doing "unpaid" household work than men over their lifetimes.
And if women are able to lower their weekly unpaid work from seven hours per week down to five, their workforce productivity is boosted about 20%. Adding that sharing chores can make relationships stronger.
Billionaire philanthropist Melinda Gates sat with Business Insider US Editor-in-Chief, Alyson Shontell, to discuss her new book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, and share musings of her career and marriage.
"One night I realized I was still in the kitchen a good 10, 15 minutes after everybody else doing the last-minute things," Gates told Business Insider.
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Gates writes in her book that when she was first pregnant with her oldest child, she felt alone in her marriage to Bill. Her husband was working and traveling all the time as the CEO of Microsoft. And Melinda didn't know who she wanted to be in her marriage.
With time and after a series of important conversations, the couple learned how to become more balanced. They resolved to have shared responsibility by undertaking family dish-washing owing to an expression of frustration at the table by Melinda.
“Sometimes in the moment my frustration or anger just comes out. So one night we stood up after dinner and people in the family started to melt away, like, off they go upstairs. So hand on my hips, I'm, like, 'Nobody leaves the kitchen until I leave the kitchen”, Melinda emphasized.
That got the family's attention and everyone stayed to help. Now it's become a Gates tradition.
The night before the Business Insider interview, Gates says she and Bill divided up the dish-washing after dinner.
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Source: YEN.com.gh
