Equal Partners

Improving Gender Equality at Home

By: Kate Mangino

Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar

Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

From gender expert and professional facilitator Kate Mangino comes Equal Partners, an informed guide about how we can all collectively work to undo harmful gender norms and create greater household equity.

As American society shut down due to COVID, millions of women had to leave their jobs to take on full-time childcare. As the country opens back up, women continue to struggle to balance the demands of work and home life. Kate Mangino, a professional facilitator for twenty years, has written a comprehensive, practical guide for listeners and their partners about gender norms and household balance. Yes, part of our gender problem is structural, and that requires policy change. But much of our gender problem is social, and that requires us to change.

Quickly moving from diagnosis to solution, Equal Partners focuses on what we can do, everyday people living busy lives, to rewrite gender norms to support a balanced homelife so both partners have equal time for work, family, and self. Mangino adopts an interactive model, posing questions, and asking listeners to assess their situations through guided lists and talking points. Equal Partners is broad in its definition of gender and gender roles. This is an audiobook for all: straight, gay, trans, and non-binary, parents and grandparents, and friends, with the goal to help foster gender equality in listeners' homes, with their partners, family and wider community.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Kate Mangino (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Everyone should read this

Great explanations and suggestions for a healthy perspective for change. I only wish that it spoke less directly to the feminine role. Sometimes it seemed like it was a book for women and not all genders.

Eye-opening, evidenced-based analysis of gender inequality and what we can do about it

I have always had the intention of splitting domestic chores equally with my wife. This book helped me see how society socializes men to take on less of the cognitive labor at home (among other things), and I was enacting that socialization despite my efforts to the contrary.

I highly recommend Equal Partners to everyone. It’s a nonjudgmental read filled with concrete steps to help achieve true equality at home, or at least get farther along that road.

Excellent book

My wife and I listened to this book together, and we’re so glad we did. A thorough, research-based but very accessible book about a really important topic. Also shows how traditional gender roles fail people of all genders, and offers practical advice on how to change

Very much needed book

Great book! I’m a male with a wife and two kids. So much in this book resonated with me. I wouldn’t say that I’ve achieved “equal partner” status, but I am consistently surprised at the number of couples that fall into what Mangino calls a neo-traditional household, where the woman still bears an overwhelming share of the domestic and child rearing burden. As such, the book is a super important contribution to helping our behaviors come more in line with what we profess our values to be.

What I appreciated most about this book was that even though this is a topic that can make me super defensive I simply never had that reaction. That’s not by accident, and Mangino states early on that she is writing to and for people like myself.

In my household I do more of the daily grind work, which in my view has compensated for the fact that my wife does 90% of what Mangino calls cognitive labor. I had viewed this division of labor as playing to our strengths, but the book makes a good point that these are only seen as our strengths because of the way we’ve been socialized. As the author points out, I’m able to do cognitive labor at my job, so why can’t I do it in the home. It’s a work in progress, but the book was very helpful and an enjoyable read.

Must read!!

Put words to things I only felt conceptually. So good. I’m glad this voiced common problems and solutions to real inequality issues that make me feel trapped everyday. So happy this book exists.