On my kitchen noticeboard I have a postcard portraying a boilersuited female, her hair tied up in a spotted bandana, her right arm muscularly flexed, her expression one of fierce determination and issuing from her lips the words, “We Can Do It!”
It’s a reproduction of a 1940s American wartime poster of Rosie the Riveter, when women took the place of menfolk in heavy industry as the USA went to war.
Why it’s on my noticeboard is a mystery since I couldn’t drive a nail in straight without either puncturing a pipe or knocking the entire neighbourhood off the National Grid. ‘Ineptitude’ doesn’t begin to describe my cackhandedness with things practical.
Some men are handy as a pocket, gifted in the DIY department. There are others to whom the initials DIY mean ‘Don’t Involve Yourself’, but the most irritating is a resident Procrastinator Pete who CAN do the job, but never gets round to it. The answer of course is to call in a professional. Even he will fail to turn up on the promised day at the promised hour. (“Rush job elsewhere missus.”) He will consume large quantities of tea and currant cookies, charge you an arm and a leg and lead you into a row with Procrastinator Pete who “was going to do it next Saturday.”
The point of this disquisition is a thing I read in the tabloid press concerning directions for assembling a four-foot trampoline. Instructions included in the pack by the makers advise that “the extremely strong elastic retaining ropes ought not to be installed by a child or woman alone, but additional assistance should be sought from a strong man.”
All laudably elf’n’safety-conscious and an obvious safeguard against prosecution by weak-wristed victims of elasticated whiplash. To say the makers’ altruistic motives have rebounded on them is putting it mildly. Cue an immediate display of bristling feathers and squawks of indignation from the sisterhood of self-righteousness who’ve responded with accusations of patronising sexism by implying that the average woman isn’t strong enough to tighten guy ropes and had better get a real guy to do it.
May I respectfully suggest they get a grip on themselves? Having the skills to do a job and having the physical strength to do it are two different things. Brains may devise a tactical means of getting a coffin round the turn of the stairs, but if you haven’t the brawn to take the weight of it, you’re bate. I don’t see many of the sisterhood rushing to volunteer as scaffolders, pipelayers or hod-carriers – though I bet they wouldn’t mind directing operations from a safe distance as lady engineers with a clipboard.
Rarely a day goes by without some meretricious little incident being interpreted as a slight or slur and inflated into an ‘ishoo’. Tiresome nitpicking and constant refining upon trifles are doing the equality debate a disservice. A movement that began in an honest and serious effort to redress the imbalance between the sexes shows signs of straying into farce.
Society is changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Just as the First World War planted the seeds of women’s suffrage, so post Second World War, it was unlikely that Rosie the Riveter, having tasted independence and gained a wage, would meekly return to domesticity and apple pie.
Here, most women have always worked, usually for criminally low wages, juggling job, home and childcare. Their daughters and grand-daughters are still doing it, but they’re a new breed of articulate women reared in a more strident era where the emphasis is on rights rather than responsibilities and the cult of ‘self’ reigns.
Grace, courtesy and empathy with others are outmoded currency. Technological skills, self-belief (however unfounded,) and a brass neck they believe will bring them success and fulfilment. They ought to look at the mental health statistics for young female singletons. Eventually, when they get over themselves, let them look for a man who can paint, paper, wire, plaster, plug and shift wardrobes and is willing to do so when asked.
As they say in these parts, “It’s still the women who, (metaphorically speaking) do the heavy liftin’!”
