Building equitable relationships is a challenge in an unequal world

Queer relationships aren’t immune to the traditional and systemic inequalities of the world

Read the pages of Sex and the Steel City, and you’ll hear the full gambit of love at university, from romance to heartbreak. It’s one of the learning experiences universities don’t advertise on their brochures, but it’s an integral part of many students’ university lives. For queer students in particular, the newfound freedoms of university life can be an integral part of self-discovery. 

But, as queer students get into their upper years, the realities of an unequal world start to creep into the choices we make. While queer relationships tend to have a more equal distribution of labour than heterosexual relationships — something many of us are and should be proud of — decisions that students make as they transition into their careers can have serious impacts on the future of that equality. 

Unequal distributions of labour in relationships represent an enormous problem for many heterosexual women who are disproportionately affected by this. It can limit their career opportunities, their life satisfaction and damage their relationships.

These inequalities are not always intentional however. Millennial men, who overwhelmingly want equal relationships with their partners, have been found to struggle realizing that goal once they have had children. 

These are not just the problems of straight people willingly or unwillingly finding themselves confined to so-called traditional gender roles — they can come for queer couples too. While queer relationships tend to have markedly better distributions of domestic labour both with and without kids, it isn’t automatic. 

Queer people tend to be more vulnerable to outside factors like job insecurity, lack of familial support and mental health challenges. 

With these difficulties in mind, it’s also important to recognize that it’s not just traditional gender roles that create inequalities in straight relationships either. These inequalities are often structural ones, reflected onto straight couples in unequal ways. These structural inequalities can affect queer relationships in much the same way. 

In the case of men giving up on their ideals of equality when they have had children, while some of this may be motivated by a newfound belief in gender roles, most researchers suggest that the limited resources given to parents who aren’t mothers are to blame. 

It is both a lack of flexible work options and parental leave and a stigma against making use of these options that forcibly push young men away from parenting. There is no reason to suspect that these barriers do not also affect queer people. 

Similarly, a recent crisis in Canada’s childcare sector has pushed many women out of work to care for children. While this disproportionate effect on women might be partially avoided in queer relationships, the lack of childcare would still damage queer parents’ careers and futures. 

Increasing job market demands for unpaid overtime, extra hours and always-on communication have had disproportionate effects on women’s lives as they juggle these expectations alongside their disproportionate share of household labour. A perfectly equal queer couple would still have to face the challenges of increasingly demanding jobs and domestic lives. 

While queer couples may be better positioned to negotiate these difficulties together, these ever-increasing pressures will require more active communication and work than ever before. 

The heart of the problem is not only the unreasonable demands our gendered expectations place upon women to be both workers and domestic labourers. The problem also lies with a society that privatizes domestic and childcare work onto individuals and families. 

Some may propose that in place of traditional nuclear families, large extended families might be able to socialize some aspects of this labour. However, this isn’t a viable solution for many people. This could be especially impractical for queer people who are disproportionately faced with a lack of family support. 

As we enter the political and working world, young people, especially queer young people, need to take on the feminist project of providing social support for everyone. If we want to live in a more equal world, it’s not enough just to desire it, we have to fight, work and strive for it.