In almost half of American homes, the rooster isn’t ruling the roost. That’s among the findings of a Pew Research Center survey of 1,260 couples. In 43 percent of the couples, women made more decisions, almost twice as many as men, in four areas, according to a report in USA Today.

Those areas include planning weekend activities, household finances, major home purchases and TV watching.

The more traditional are surely surprised at the results in at least two cases: household finances and TV watching.

Make that one maybe and one for sure: TV watching.

How many times in your own household does the man of the house fall asleep on the sofa with the remote clutched in his hand as if it is his last connection to the living world? And just try to quietly pry it from his hands. “I was watching that,” he will say, barely opening one eye. Never mind that he’s been snoring the better part of 30 minutes.

It’s just the way we are. Men just can’t help holding on to the remote and women keep wishing he’d just settle on something already.

Older couples are more likely to share decision-making, the survey found, in three of the four areas.

Couples under 30 aren’t so inclined to share. Forty-two percent said they don’t share the decisions in any of the four areas. It’s every man – and woman – for himself (or herself).

But people are marrying later in life. Women who have been supporting themselves aren’t so quick to give up the independence of making their own decisions about money. And why should they?

More than a few couples will maintain separate accounts. However it works in your own house is up to you, as long as you both agree that’s what works.

But despite our best efforts to equalize salaries and opportunities, we’re still clinging to some gender stereotypes that aren’t so simple to explain.

The study also noted that there are still some professions in which men are more accepted. Look at your own business dealings. If you are typical, according to Pew researchers, your lawyer is a man and your banker is a woman, as is your child’s teacher. If you are a man, your doctor is more likely a man. Among the couples questioned, only women went to women doctors.

And then there is the workplace.

Maura Belliveau is a faculty member at Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business. In a recent article for the university’s Web site, she said that the 25 percent difference in salaries we are familiar with hearing doesn’t take into account all the factors that go into salary decisions. Differences in education, tenure with the firm, other factors can play a role in a woman making less than a man for essentially the same work. Yet there is still a difference – up to 5 percent – even with all things being equal, she said. Her research found that even in occupations where results are largely measurable, elite MBA women’s pay lags that of men, even with comparable education, hours worked, duties performed and position in the company.

An article last year in The Washington Post may in part explain why.

About 10 years ago, a group of female graduate students at Carnegie-Mellon University filed a complaint with economics professor Linda Babcock.

In the Ph.D program, the women were all teaching assistants while their male counterparts in the same program were teaching courses on their own.

When the professor took the complaint to the dean, he told her it was simple: The men had asked to teach classes; the women waited for someone to ask them to teach. And they were still waiting.

It appears that while women are making the decisions in the home, many are still clinging to traditional stereotypes in the workplace.

Perhaps it would help us all advance to a higher level of cooperation if smart women began to speak up at work as frequently as they are doing at home.