The Nobel for brisket goes to . . .

The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
By Ruth MarcusWednesday, October 28, 2009

"I bet he wasn't folding laundry."
-- Carol Greider, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine, on what she was doing at 5 a.m. when the big call came, and her thoughts on learning of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.
Is there a woman around who read this quote and didn't smile with recognition? Greider's wry assessment encapsulates so much about the state of modern women: Nobel laureates but also -- if not inevitably, then at least overwhelmingly -- laundry-folders, school-lunch makers, play-date arrangers, schedule-managers.
This is less a complaint than an observation. In fact, to some extent women are reluctant to yield dominion over the home front even as they become the majority of the paid workforce.
"A Woman's Nation Changes Everything" is the title of a new report by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress. It does -- and it doesn't. The "Battle Between the Sexes is over. It was a draw," Shriver writes. "Now we're engaged in Negotiation Between the Sexes."
True, but from an unequal start, and with an unequal appreciation of that disparity. "Both sexes agree that women continue to bear a disproportionate burden in taking care of children and elderly parents, even when both partners in a relationship have jobs," John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira write in one chapter of the report. Here's the interesting subtext, though: Fifty-five percent of women strongly agreed (and 85 percent overall agreed) that "in households where both partners have jobs, women take on more responsibilities for the home and family than their male partners." Just 28 percent of men strongly agreed, and 67 percent agreed. That's a pretty big perception gap.
Put President Obama down as a strong agreer. "Today's Obama family is obviously not typical," he told NBC's Savannah Guthrie. "Five years ago, six years ago, though, we were having a lot of negotiations, because, you know, Michelle was trying to figure out: Okay, if the kids get sick, why is it that she's the one who has to take time off of her job to go pick them up from school, as opposed to me? If, you know, the girls need to shop for clothes, why is it that it's her burden and not mine?"

Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/27/AR2009102702842.html