From the kitchen sink to the office desk

One thing I hear regularly from both my mother and mother-in-law is this: “It was different for us when we had babies, we weren’t expected to work.” And it has made me think. While it is wonderful that I am no longer chained to the kitchen sink the way my female ancestors were, instead I am chained to the office desk and I’m really not sure this is what the early feminists intended. Or that this is the best thing for the human race in general.

Just as they didn’t have the option to go out and work, I don’t have the option to stay home and raise my children and I can’t say I’m very happy about that. But in that sense men and women have achieved a sense of equality, they don’t have a choice in that either, we are all slaves to the system.

From where I’m sitting the corporate world still feels very masculine and to make it to the top you have to behave like a man, adopting traditionally masculine tendencies and hiding feminine ones which in my humble opinion are highly undervalued. And that is a pity because women can bring something different and wonderful to the world of business and I genuinely believe the world would be a better place for it.

You see I don’t actually believe men and women are the same, although it is true to say some women are naturally masculine and some men more feminine, so I am certainly not advocating a return to the way things were – there are women out there who belong in the world of business, and men who don’t. What I’d love to see is human beings having a genuine choice, a world that doesn’t bat an eyelid at a man who chooses to stay home and raise the family, or perhaps where a couple equally share the responsibilities of work and home life.

In other words, what I would like to see, what I think would be true equality, is a world where feminine and masculine qualities are equally respected. Where a housewife isn’t looked down on but valued for the hugely important job she does raising children. Then we will truly be equal. Different, but equal.

And speaking of feminine tendencies that are undervalued while I’m on one, as my maternity leave came to an end I got so sick of people commenting that I was returning to the “real world”. What can possibly be more real than giving birth, caring for a small baby? That is far more raw, and visceral, and real than the phoney, man-made corporate world. And yet all I seem to hear about these days is “What’s best for business?” Yes, we’re all just cogs in the business world, and child rearing is such an inconvenience (anyone else want to point out the obvious problem with that attitude?)