A few years ago there was a funny little survey funded by fruitgrowers which spoke volumes about the relationship between men and women, particularly on the vexed question of domestic chores.
The survey found that the overwhelming majority of men refused to eat fruit, but said they would be prepared to eat fruit if someone could peel it, cut it into small pieces and hand it to them on a plate.
The survey has at its centre a kind of male patheticness which many blokes seem to regard as endearing, and which most women probably cannot stand.
I was reminded of this survey tangentially while reading about the resignation of Victoria’s Transport Minister Lynne Kosky for family reasons, and started thinking about the extent to which men and women have resolved the question of sharing all the responsibilities of adult life, from keeping the house clean, dropping the kids off at school, feeding the dog, remembering that it’s bin night – the myriad stuff that makes up our day to day.
Perhaps more problematic is the extent to which men and women have worked out how they feel within themselves about whether they are keeping up their end of the bargain on the home front
My suspicion is that men are much more inclined to feel good about themselves for playing a modest or occasional domestic role, wheras women will do as much stuff as they can and still not feel like they’re not doing enough.
The problem becomes more acute, obviously, where the woman works part-time, and even more pronounced when she works full-time.
And when it comes to politics – where every single aspect of your behaviour is held up to constant public judgment, media scrutiny and criticism by both your opponents and your so-called colleagues – I really wonder how women get through it at all when they have family to think about on top of such an inescapable, high-profile job.
This week we saw the departure from public life of a woman who seems to have been eaten up inside by that sense of guilt at being so busy at work that she had not been able to take care of things on the home front.
It might not be a peculiarly female condition. But it would be most common – and most debilitating – among women, as men have a hard-wired rationalisation for being out of play on the home front.
We work as hard as we do because we’re blokes. That’s what blokes do.
But for women, whatever the gains of feminism, there is still a very strong and widespread sense that work is something that they choose to do, and that it’s subsequently up to them to juggle their chosen career with the domestic requirements of their husband and their children.
Victorian Premier John Brumby had some kind and thoughtful words for his troubled transport minister when she announced her resignation from the frontbench and from politics on Monday.
About half an hour after Kosky tearfully bowed out, citing health issues within her family, Brumby held a compassionate press conference where he declared that politics is harder for women than it is for men.
“You’ve got all of the normal responsibilities that go with being a cabinet minister and a public figure but for women there are often additional responsibilities in the home and in the family as well, and I think it’s often more difficult and demanding,” Brumby said.
If you got through the recent roll call of women in politics, most of them have suffered fates which have rarely befallen their male colleagues, or scrutiny which male politicians never experience.
There’s that trio of women who have been slotted in at the death-knell of doomed governments – Joan Kirner in Victoria, Carmen Lawrence in Western Australia, and most recently Kristina Keneally in New South Wales, treated by the male-dominated factions like their careers were expendable in a last-chance bid for victory.
Without discounting the role of her own vanity in her demise, so-called star Labor recruit Cheryl Kernot oscillated between presenting herself as a credible political thinker to caving into demands for absurd photo shoots in the womens’ mags, draped in a feather boa, to enduring the appalling slur from Liberal MP Don Randall at having “the morals of an alley cat on heat” for having a consensual relationship with a male student who was over the age of consent while working as a school teacher.
This at a time when a few of the younger male MPs in Canberra were holding a competition to see how many female staffers they could put away.
Our deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is the best example this country has ever seen of how women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t when it comes to their private arrangements.
While women such as Kosky grapple with and eventually succumb to the fear that they have neglected their domestic responsibilities, Gillard has faced strong attacks for not having any domestic responsibilities at all.
Her private arrangements have attracted a degree of attention which at times has been almost creepy. The fact that she was photographed at home without any fruit in her fruit bowl – at the time she had no-one to cut it into small pieces for – sparked a wave of tittle-tattle with Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan blasting her for being “barren by choice”, as if her childless status rendered her unfit for public office.
Tony Abbott gave her another tickle-up before the 2007 election where he described her as a “one-dimensional political animal” which was a nudge-nudge reference to her disinterest in motherhood – which to his credit Abbott withdrew immediately, and apologised for.
But had Gillard gone down the path of marriage and motherhood she would obviously now be required to bowl up for endless profile pieces about how she juggles the twin demands of family and work, a line of questioning which no male politician ever has to face.
This isn’t a piece about politics but a piece inspired by politics, because it’s politics which provides the most powerful worst-case scenario of the twin pressures women face as they deal with a sense of duty and obligation which men for the large part are hard-wired to ignore.
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RT @matthewbedwell: @antsharwood i just lost it at the'bitter dissapointments' story. Epic . If only we all lived in such a blissfull bubbleworld!
RT @antsharwood: Meanwhile, a case from the glass half full files. Andrew Bolt has attacked me in a much nicer way than usual today http://t.co/mQqX6rOc
Meanwhile, a case from the glass half full files. Andrew Bolt has attacked me in a much nicer way than usual today http://t.co/mQqX6rOc
Trust you've all read Greens senator @larissawaters excellent yarn about the threats to the Reef on The Punch today http://t.co/i6aatFIO
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