Christian Perrier wrote:
If this means what I think it means (but, not being a native speaker, I may be wrong...even if I'm sure I'm not), ie a couple-style relation with someone else, I think the question is not really appropriate in the context. After all, who would imagine asking that very same question to a man ? Bruce, no personal offense intended and this certainly does not remove the interest of your list of question...but this is just a suggestion to remove that specific one.
I think it's a relevavnt question and could well be asked of both women and men. Aren't there studies suggesting that, at least in some countries (ie Australia is certainly one), women in a household tend to do more housework than men and that therefore they have less time to spend at their hobbies. Since FOSS is a hobby for many people, I would assume that, on average, this sort of thing would have an impact on the involvement of women who are living with men in any sort of shared household arrangement.
I guess I think this would be very different if we were talking about something that was people's paid work, rather than an amusing hobby :)
Maybe a better question would be "do you share a household with other people and are those people male or female?" Though I'm pretty sure that some would find that question intrusive as well.
Note that I am trying to talk about broad trends here, which may not even be present in some countries (though I'd bet icecreams on them being present in quite a lot of places), and I am certainly not talking about any particular individuals. Of course there is massive individual variation with anything like this.
Helen (who is not in a permanent relationship and who certainly spent more time doing housework than the man/men in her household, the last time she was living with one/some).