Fair Play

September 16, 2019
Rodsky, founder of the Philanthropy Advisory Group, tackles in her impressive debut the unequal standards for housework for women who perform many “unpaid, invisible” tasks in the home. A text from Rodsky’s husband about blueberries forgotten during the weekly shopping trip prompted her to ask for more help from him and eventually to come up with a “fair play” system for women who work full time (like their partners), but are also responsible for the lion’s share of home and child management. Broken down into four tenets—all time is created equal, reclaim your right to be interesting, start where you are now, and establish your own standards—her system came together from her research of domestic inequality and interviews with over 500 couples. To facilitate fair divvying up of responsibilities, Rodsky also provides 100 Cards of Fair Play, which represent the most common tasks in the home ecosystem, as well as sample calenders and discussion questions to help couples implement her rules. Couples searching for ways to better manage their families and achieve a balance of domestic work will benefit from Rodsky’s actionable strategy.

September 1, 2019
Domestic responsibilities have long been carried by women, even when both partners worked full-time. Also known as emotional labor and invisible work, these household duties include packing lunches, planning vacations, scheduling extracurriculars, and hundreds more unpaid tasks that culminate in time lost and building resentment among couples. While countless blog posts and op-eds have discussed the problem, few have offered practical solutions. Rodsky draws on her legal background, foundation work, and personal experience to gamify this marital dilemma by introducing a system, Fair Play, in which the aim is not to beat your spouse but to work together to build a sustainably run household. Rodsky's system, which uses task cards divided between partners, is potentially revolutionary, and her book (her first) offers the right combination of venting and commiserating balanced by practical solutions and manageable approaches to tough conversations. Rodsky's method has already been backed by Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine, a women-led media company committed to changing the narrative for women, hinting that Fair Play will receive lots of media buzz and be poised to become a book-club favorite.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)