Becky, I'm not sure that the responses you've seen here so far are representative of relationships as a whole. It's all very well for people to chant the mantra that "gender roles" are supposedly a "thing of the past," but it's simply not true. They have only been moderated somewhat by current economic conditions, especially women going out to work. No doubt I could dig up more information about current domestic practices if I took the time, but with even a cursory glance the first thing to turn up was this article from Psychology Today titled "Who's Cleaning the House?".
While there is no quantitative data in the article--and roles in marriages vary widely with individuals, as they always do--it does make it clear that women on average still do significantly more "housework" than men, in some cases a lot more. So "gender roles" in this sphere have not disappeared. They have only converged somewhat.
But to start with, what precisely is "housework"? Too often it seems to be restricted to a female definition of "housework": viz., the triad of "cooking, cleaning, and laundry," the jobs women more often do. Much of the time the jobs men do far more often are excluded from this equation: car maintenance, plumbing, electrical and other repairs, painting, mowing the lawn and other yard work, shoveling snow if applicable, exterior jobs in particular. If the gutters are clogged, it's usually a man who gets up on the ladder to unclog them. Even taking out the garbage is more likely to be seen as a "man's job."
So why is there this difference? The article points out that it's not just "men" but women as well who are more likely to see these tasks as belonging to their respective spheres. This is clear from certain facts the article presents. It states for instance that for many men,
Tasks like landscaping and repairs are acceptable, because they affirm their manliness and personal identities. Other tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry, are often seen as women?s work.
It goes on to say that "cleaning toilets" is often included in this perception of "women's work." But it also points out that
Many wives want to control the housework, because they see the home as their territory. Some see housework as a way to confirm their identities as homemakers, and to express love and support for their families.
So the tendency to see certain territories and tasks as "affirming gender identity" is equally true for men and women alike! Then it goes on to say:
Additionally, because the cleanliness of a home reflects on the wife and not the husband, she may have higher standards on how to do things. It?s probably safe to assume that if his wife thinks he?s inadequate as a housekeeper, that?s something he can live with.
I'm sure that's true. But why would the cleanliness of a home reflect more on a woman than on a man?
Because the cleanliness of a home is more embedded in women's instinctual standards than it is in men's. We've all heard how many men living alone can tolerate living in a mess, even with underwear strewn on the floor in some notorious cases. Women by comparison tend to like a clean, tidy home. Most men sure do appreciate the way a woman can keep the home so nice. But with a few exceptions, would they care about just a little dust and dirt? I've still got a plaque on the wall that my wife and I both loved. It reads: "My house is CLEAN enough to be healthy... and DIRTY enough to be happy!" A sticker on the fridge reads "I cleaned my house last week--sorry you missed it!"
It's women more than men who are motivated to put so much effort into cleanliness, and it's a standard by which women more than men judge both themselves and one another. Whoever heard of a man going into a lady's home, drawing his finger across the mantelshelf and turning up his nose, saying "Ugh! DUST!" That's only the kind of thing certain women do!
Women can be just as territorial as men in their own sphere. Not only in the home, as the article says, but in child care too, which the article doesn't even mention. That too "affirms women's identity" as mothers and gives them control of children, while many fathers can be kept out of it by the process known as "mothergating." That can include claiming that men are too ignorant to know how to "do things right" with children. So my point is that women, despite their complaints, are for the most part, just like men, doing these jobs because they want to, not because anyone "forces" them to. And just as men can feel threatened by women doing "men's work," women can feel the same about men doing "women's work"--or more to the point, being good at it!
My only real complaint with the article is that it's not completely gender-balanced. It points out the "advantages" many men get from "affirming their manliness" while rejecting certain tasks like "cleaning toilets," implicitly castigating men for doing so. While admittedly citing the advantages many women get from "affirming their womanliness," it fails to mention how many women do the same with respect to "men's jobs." "What, me, get up on a ladder? That's dangerous! Or get on my back under a car to change the oil filter? That's a dirty job, a man's job!" So what price "cleaning toilets"? Of course, I am not claiming "all women" are like this. Far from it! But far more women than men consider these to be "men's jobs."
Why these differences between women and men? Of course they're a long way from being absolute. They are tendencies only toward one thing or another. It's a matter of quantifying the difference: how many men or women do this or that? Here, certain factors can be discerned.
A woman's tendency to see the home as "her territory"--which includes "taking care" of it--is analogous to a female bird's instinct for building a nest--a nest for the young. A place where she, as well as the young, feels protected and well ordered, with everything "shipshape"--even if that's a "masculine" expression! Women often feel an "urge" to clean and put their "nest" in order, especially during pregnancy. Now in avian society it's the job of the male especially (though not exclusively) to provide physical protection, by luring predators away from the nest. In human society things are the same in some ways, and different in others. Like birds, it's still chiefly the job of the male to provide physical protection from enemies and other predators. Unlike birds, it's also chiefly the job of the male to provide physical protection from the elements in the form of the exterior structure of a house that holds the whole thing together.
But apart from that, one difference is that women are still motivated to take care of the inside of a house, while men take care of exterior matters. It's men who mostly do the job of painting the outside, say, while on the inside, the environment "protected" largely by the work of men, more women take care of "interior decorating"--or direct it at least--along with what women categorize as "housework."
I can't (all right, "won't"!) resist digressing on that topic to an anecdote that still made me laugh, along with my wife, after more than forty years. When we went to buy carpet for our first house, the salesman turned to me and described the "practical" matters of the price, quality, and hardwearing nature of the carpet. Then he turned to my wife and his voice changed abruptly to a "feminine" note as he assured her that he was also a "qualified interior decorator" who could naturally advise her about colors, textures and other aesthetic aspects of her preferences.
Anyway you get the idea. As a trend, "men take care of the outside, women of the inside." That's one difference. So women vacuum the carpet, while men mow the carpet of grass we call a "lawn."
Another is that "women work with soft materials, men with hard materials." So women work with fabrics, launder the clothes--and often mend them, even today--while men fix the plumbing and do the carpentry.
Similarly, women do more "social" things, while men do more "physical" things. This is a fundamental difference underlying "gender roles," and can be seen in the fact that cooking, laundry, and child care too, regarded as "women's work," are more intimately related to caring for the needs of people directly, while exterior maintenance, repairing gadgets, plumbing, car repairs and so forth, seen as "men's work," involves "mechanics" and taking care of things, physical objects.
Another difference is that "women do delicate work, while men do rough work." This is a real, physiological difference. Women's fine motor skills are typically better than men's. In the old days, when magnetic core memories for computers needed threading together, they would typically employ only women for this delicate task. Meanwhile, men do more tasks calling for brute strength.
Yes, admittedly there are exceptions to everything. Watchmaking for instance has always been a male tradition, as delicate as it is--though again, it does involve "hard" rather than "soft" materials. Still, things like sewing, knitting and crochet work are typically "female," while driving screws, hammering nails and humping heavy stuff around is typically "male" work. So too is anything dangerous. If you're sewing, the worst you can do is stick a needle in your finger. That's not even as bad a "hitting a nail on the thumb," let alone falling off a ladder and breaking your neck.
Then there are the unseen and unappreciated gender differences, the "subtle" ones. In particular, the different pattern of men's and women's work and motivations.
Men's work tends to be more "intensive." Men are likely to "focus" on a task more exclusively than women do. And they often work harder at it. Afterwards, they may need a longer period of rest to recover.
Women's work tends to be more "extensive." They're doing this and that all the time. But it isn't necessarily as hard or demanding in a physical sense, and they may not be concentrating on it in the same way that men do. "Child care" can be timeshared with other activities. It's well known that women, more than men, have a facility for "multitasking." So a woman may be ironing or folding clothes while entertaining herself by watching TV at the same time, while a man is totally concentrated on the task at hand.
The influence of "gender roles" is also clearly visible in the differences between the kinds of paid work women and men tend to choose outside the home, as well as how they divide their time between home and outside work.
How about the bottom line? In a way, that too is right there in the article:
...men and women have different ways of defining what?s fair. Men look at the total picture. They consider everything they do in their marriage. They throw in the amount of money they make and time spent at their jobs or with their kids. [...] Women tend to focus only on the amount of housework that has to be done...
And while this article doesn't say so, other studies have shown that the total time men spend on work of all kinds, both paid work and unpaid chores around the home, is on average more than the time women spend, typically by a couple of hours a week.
Anyway if so many respondents here claim to be doing just as much or even more of that traditional triad of "women's work," cooking, cleaning, and laundry, that's not in line with what the article is telling us about how women on average still do most of those particular chores. I'm tempted to speculate that because our members are likely to have more "feminine" traits than the typical male, you may not be getting a response typical of the population as a whole.
Still, that's not really important, when what matters is not "who does what," but whether the individuals involved are happy and comfortable with their respective roles. If you're uncomfortable or insecure in your role, that's a matter for concern.
It's not that it's "unmanly" to do what has more often been considered "women's work." But for one thing, is any of this about what you don't do, rather than what you do do? Are there typically "masculine" tasks you perform that affirm the male side of your identity in a rewarding way?
Even more important than that, I would say, and irrespective of "gender roles," is the need for each partner to feel uniquely competent in some sphere or other. in ways the other partner depends on. The knowledge of "indispensability" to a partner brings feelings of security in a relationship. Again, this doesn't have to be about "gender-linked" skills, though it often is. My wife did most of the cooking because she was good at it, which everyone acknowledged, though I would often help her by chopping vegetables or measuring things. I also washed the dishes after a major meal, but those are less skilled tasks. HollyGreene on the other hand does most of the cooking, being better at it, so it doesn't have to be "gender-linked." Either man or woman may be better at doing the finances. I've heard that in Japan it's women who more typically do that job.
But your girlfriend sounds pretty smart, and may be just as competent as you are at a lot of things. Do you have the feeling that you "could easily be replaced"? (That reminds me of an ironic little story that Fredric Brown wrote.)
Of course, when it comes to insecurity, you've mentioned elsewhere that you don't think your girlfriend really likes your crossdressing (which in view of her support may or may not be true), and she had trouble with a previous boyfriend who did it. That can leave you feeling unsure of her esteem in your "female role."
Finally, you said she "she tends to be... interested in doing her own thing yet is expectant of me to serve." This suggests what you may be lacking is overt appreciation for what you do. That of course is a complaint that many women have also: "lacking appreciation" from their husbands for what wives do for them and for the family.
If you're feeling insecure for any of these reasons, it's best to talk with your girlfriend and try to get some reassurance.