STUDY OF 1,130 WOMEN TIED UNEQUAL HOUSEWORK TO LOWER DESIRE
Housework and sexual desire were linked in a study of women partnered with men: the more they did, the less desire they reported.
The paper, by Emily A. Harris, Aki M. Gormezano and Sari M. van Anders, was published September 16, 2022 in Archives of Sexual Behavior. It drew on 1,130 participants across two samples, all women in relationships with men who lived with their partners and at least one young child or dependent.
The researchers tested whether a woman’s share of the household labor, compared with her partner’s, tracked with her desire for him. They also checked whether feeling that things were unfair, or that her partner depended on her, helped explain the pattern.
One questionnaire statement used to measure unfairness read, “Too many of the daily tasks in our household are my responsibility.” It was a survey item, not a participant’s words.
How the study measured the load
The team built its own household-labor survey covering 119 tasks. Analyses grouped them into eight factors, including finance, cleaning, childcare, social planning and household administration.
Participants rated how often they did each task compared with their partners. The scale ran from “My partner always does this” to “I always do this.”
The authors wrote that they wanted to capture work beyond visible chores, including social planning, administrative tasks and the mental and emotional side of childcare. They also wrote that earlier studies often relied on brief measures that missed much of the work of running a home.
The first sample was recruited before the COVID-19 pandemic through Prolific, with participants in the UK and the United States. The second was recruited during the pandemic, with participants in the UK and South Africa.
What the results showed
In both samples, doing more relative household labor predicted lower sexual desire for a partner. The effect was the same size in each.
The link showed up across all eight task factors. In the first sample, childcare and development had the strongest negative connection to desire, followed by parenting logistics and life and social planning.
Perceived partner dependence partly explained the pattern in both samples. One statement used to measure it read, “Sometimes I feel as though my partner is like an extra child I need to look after.” That was also a survey item, not a participant’s quote. In the first sample, the authors estimated it accounted for 43% of the effect.
Perceived unfairness was less consistent. It explained the link in the second sample’s single-mediator model but not the first’s. When both explanations were tested together, the unfairness pathway was not significant in either.
In the second sample, women estimated they spent far more time on household labor than their partners did. The authors described the gap as approximately 70% more.
The authors wrote that the findings offer quantitative support for a socio-structural explanation of lower desire, rather than treating it only as a problem in women’s bodies or minds. The paper separates desire for a partner from sexual satisfaction, which the authors wrote are related but not the same.
The study was cross-sectional, so the authors wrote that it could not establish cause and effect or which direction the relationship runs. They called for longitudinal research to test the pathways.
They also cautioned that the samples were mostly from Western countries and the first was mostly White. They wrote that the findings may not apply across cultures, race, class, gender or sexuality.
The later study that complicated the picture
A separate, later paper, “Division of Household Labor and Sexual Desire: The Role of Gender and Benevolent Sexism,” was published April 27, 2026. It is independent research, not a follow-up to the 2022 work.
Across two studies with a combined sample, women reported doing more household labor and having lower desire than men did. The authors wrote that their results did not support a general link between doing more household labor and lower desire.
Among women, the link depended on how strongly they endorsed benevolent sexism. It was strongest and most consistent among women with lower endorsement, and the authors described the relationship as conditional on women’s beliefs about gender roles.
