A Woman’s Place

It’s convenient to have women at home but it’s not fair.

Domestic work and child rearing is still work and even though it’s unpaid and undervalued society would fall apart without it. We have been taught to believe that this is just the way it is; the way it has to be; women have the equipment for it; men need to provide and women need to care. For years this has been accepted, even though life has changed.

Because I’ve been interested in 1882 I have been looking at the censuses and it is clear that women did work. They worked when their husbands were absent, they worked before they had husbands and surprisingly many worked even when their husbands had jobs. This seems to be particularly true of the seamstresses, dressmakers and milliners.

I have been reading a fascinating book by Emma Griffin called Breadwinner. It looks at the economic history of Victorian Britain in working class households. At the beginning of the period she is studying she notes that few working class women are working outside the home. The man goes out to work, working long hours to ear just enough to keep his family fed and a roof over their heads. He gives all of his wages to his wife, who manages the household budget. However, as the economy strengthens and men are paid better they start to keep some money back for themselves. The men go to the pub and are in the home less, enjoying a leisure time that is not available to their wives. This prompts women to go to work. Obviously, they still have all the unpaid jobs to do but if work is available then they take it, even if they have to chain their child to a chair at home while they are working.

During the wars women realised that working for money was better than being taken for granted but this left gaps. Who was going to do the domestic chores? Surely not men; that would be unthinkable and so a huge campaign was waged to make women believe that their place was in the home. We were overly gendered and in the Fifties women bought into it. 

That was a long time ago, though and we now know that everyone can work and everyone can pull their weight domestically. It takes a village to raise a child, so it would be excellent if that child’s father (and or the man living with their mother) was part of that village.

This current lockdown situation, however, has shown that women still have a long way to go to get equality. When I’m ringing parents to support learning from home I’ve noticed that it’s the Mums I speak to. When those mums have a birthday they tell me, excitedly, that their husband isn’t going to work that day, so he can supervise the schooling while she stays in her bedroom and eats chocolate. 

“I just want to feel as though I could leave the house, or even the room, for ten minutes and someone else will deal with it if World war 3 breaks out.”

I ask, “Do you work?”

“Oh yes but I’ve negotiated with my boss that I will work in the evenings.”

“And your husband?”

“He goes into work/is in the study/out in the shed office.”

I’m sure this isn’t everyone but I was just beginning to get uncomfortable. Women seem to be taking the brunt of this stay at home thing. Then the NHS confirmed my suspicions by making a poster that sent us right back to the 1950s.

Not only are women bearing the brunt but they are being conditioned to do so. Men need to stay home too and not just in the evening to relax and watch TV!