Women at work

I was a bit disturbed this morning listening to World Business, I think, on BBC’s World Service. They were talking about women at work, things like the gender pay-gap, maternity/paternity leave, and the small proportion of women on company boards. Sweden was focused on as the “best” for women at work.

The assumption was of course that good = being in remunerated employment. Now far from disagreeing with that, I think that the opportunity to do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay is highly desirable for everyone, women and men. But it is not the only good. That is a modern and harmful fallacy.

What most struck me was a comment about bringing up a family at home being “drudgery”. Drudgery? Hard work – certainly. But as Jane pointed out to me, nearly all work has an element of drudgery in it. Sitting in front of computer screens. Answering phone-calls in a call centre. A production line. Agricultural labour. Even the caring professions. But home management is not exceptional drudgery; it’s not unusually dull. In fact there’s probably more variety and skill in being a housewife (or househusband) than the majority of jobs. It’s time we stopped running it down as somehow second class (or third…).

It’s often been pointed out how many skills a stay-at-home mother employs. There’s a cheesy YouTube video of a job interview for being a “mom” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWcJZ210AaM). From this side of the pond, the Daily Telegraph listed 26 morning tasks that mothers have (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10151000/Mothers-have-26-morning-tasks-study-shows.html). But they don’t convey half of the importance of the role of parent, of either sex, passing on language, life-skills and values. Neither do they convey the situations that parents navigate, nurturing children, negotiating teenagers, and often caring for elders.

Come on! Let’s stop denigrating the role of homemaker, and instead give it the honour it deserves.