Men who assume feminine tasks are less likely to marry. MEN in traditionally masculine jobs are significantly less useful around the house - and the reason could be that they know their line of work makes them more attractive to the opposite sex. Elizabeth McClintock, from the University of Notre Dame in the US, found that men in male-oriented jobs do almost two hours less housework per week compared with those in more stereotypically female jobs. "This could show that [the other] men do housework to compensate and make themselves more attractive," McClintock says. Even in these circumstances, the chances are that the wife still does more: on average, women do two-thirds of housework. McClintock's previous work has found that men in "female" professions were less likely to marry. "There seems to be a romantic cost to those jobs," she says.