<i> Vive la Difference? </i> Women Work as Men Tinker
I am not alone in my inquiry into the division of housework between husbands and wives, or men and women, if you like.
Lee Carlson of Fullerton sends me an article from the Caltech News about a continuing research into the “technology” of housework by Ruth Schwartz Cowan, professor of history at State University of New York, who is on a fellowship this year at Caltech.
Since her prize-winning 1983 book, “The Ironies of Household Technology: From the Open Hearth to the Microwave,” the subject has been of increasing interest to other scholars, researchers and journalists.
After 12 years of study, Cowan concluded that modern technology moved men out of the house, but did not make women’s work easier. Men used to gather wood for the open hearth, process grain, make tools, brew cider and work in leather. Butchering was a communal chore. The industrial revolution ended all that.
Men left the hearth to earn cash. The cook stove required more diversity of food preparation than the “one pot stew.” Stoves had to be cleaned daily. Cotton fabrics required more washing. The sewing machine meant more work.
To free themselves, Cowan believes, women must change some of the unwritten rules. Some rules--changing sheets once a week, keeping sinks spotless--may not really be necessary, she says. “Other rules,” says the article’s author, Winifred Veronda, “--that men who dry dishes or change diapers are insufficiently masculine, for example--ensure that women will continue to do more of the housework.”
Cowan concludes that we can best help the working wife “by helping the next generation--and ourselves--to neutralize both the sexual connotation of washing machines and vacuum cleaners and the senseless tyranny of spotless shirts and immaculate floors.”
Oddly, Cowan argues that antibiotics have eased the housewife’s role as family nurse, and have done more than the dishwasher and the washing machine in freeing women to enter the work force.
My wife has called my attention to “It’s About Time,” an article in the magazine France, subtitled “Statistics show what women have known all along--they work more than men.”
The article, by Michel Faure, is based on a study by INSEE, a statistical bureau, on how the French spend their time. Though the tone is light, the conclusions are similar to those of Cowan.
INSEE’s findings, says Faure, “seem to bear out a sneaking suspicion we’ve been loath to admit: Namely, that when husbands come home after a day of toil, they plant their feet beneath the table as did their fathers and their fathers’ fathers before them, and they ask their still-toiling wives the age-old question: ‘What’s for dinner, honey?’ ”
It isn’t that men are idle around the house. “When married men deign to lift a finger . . . it’s not to do just anything. It’s to tinker. Because males, well, males tinker. To trust tinkering to the delicate and fragile hands of the weaker sex would be flirting with disaster. . . . While the valiant tinkerers are busy hammering their thumbs . . . their wives are going about their ‘women’s work’ without a fuss. They are tending children, mending clothes, cleaning house, cooking meals and doing laundry. . . .”
I have no idea why my wife pointed out this article to me, except that it’s true that I used to come home from work and say “What’s for dinner?,” meanwhile opening myself a beer. I no longer ask that question. I say “What’s in the micro?” while I check the TV log for a sex and violence movie.
Actually, I have never been much of a tinkerer. I was always afraid of getting shocked or cutting a finger. So I am not the typical husband ferreted out by INSEE.
Caroline Roy, one of INSEE’s researchers, emphasized the average Frenchman’s uselessness around the house: “When he has a woman around--regardless of whether she is his mother or his wife--an employed man participates little in domestic work. The behavior of a husband and father vis-a-vis housework is basically the same whether his wife is employed or not, and whether they have one, two, three or more children.”
Faure ends with a curious finding by an INSEE sociologist: “Men who live with their partners devote more time to their professions than do men who live alone.”
“That’ll go over real big with our wives,” concludes Faure.
Actually, I think that finding ought to be reassuring to wives. I deduce from it that men who do not live with their partners spend a great deal of their time prowling. On the other hand, those who have their partners readily available--when they aren’t occupied with scrubbing the floor or cleaning the sink--have more time to devote to professional pursuits.
Alas, Faure concludes: “Rest assured that old customs abide and timeworn conventions die hard. So do the differences between the sexes, which persist despite all the feminist demands and masculine goodwill, despite all the ‘superwomen’ and ‘new fathers.’ ”
What it seems to mean to me is that Neanderthal women had it better.
