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The Wife Drought

 

By Annabel Crabb

 

“A mother who works is a ‘working mother’. A father who works is just a normal guy”. Why is this normal and how can we change this perception?

 

I really enjoyed this book, a lot of what we already know but it was filled with statistics and facts you can recite easily to start an important conversation. I do have a bit of a crush on Crabb, she is intelligent, articulate, honest and straight forward.

 

The writing style is both charming and light, making this book an easy read, which you can get through quite quickly.

 

While many men are able to have long successful careers, this isn’t without the help of their dedicated ‘wife’. However swap the roles around and we are faced with comments such as ‘how are the children and husband doing without you’, not a question that is ever asked of a man in the same situation. This book stipulates and compares the struggles of working woman as opposed to working men.

This is of course just based on the normal idea of a family and doesn’t take into account many other factors.

 

An important and recommended read. An eye opener and should be read by both men and women.

 

Favourite quotes:

  • The obligation that evolves for working mothers, in particular, is a very precise one; the feeling that one ought to work as if one did not have children, while raising one’s children as if one did not have a job. To do any less feels like failing at both. This explains the constant state of tension and anxiety widely reported by working mothers

  • Job specifications for the position of ‘wife’ might look something like this: opening exists for leader of a small, spirited team in a vibrant but often chaotic environment. Applicant must be mature and patient, as team members may at times be prone to sudden mood swings, unorthodox social techniques, strategic tunnel vision and outright insubordination. Applicant will have responsibility for cleaning, laundering, tutoring, light maintenance, heavy maintenance, procurement, occupational health and safety, occupational therapy, nutrition, ethical guidance counselling, transport, skill training, intra-team human resource management, outsourcing, mentoring, mediation, education and sanitation. Fine motor control and calm temperament a must. Creative experience and demonstrated innovation strong advantages, esp. capacity to construct, for example, a plausible bat costume from basic household items in under ten minutes. Some tasks may be repetitive. Formal performance assessment very limited, though applicant may self-assess regularly in bleaker moment. Salary nominal

  • Lets look at the gender pay gap in Australia. Women constitute almost half of the workforce, but get paid on average 17% less than men

  • The most important element in equalising the differential is for a woman to become a man – Catherine Fox

  • “The Commonwealth Public Service Act (section 49, part 2) decreed that every female officer shall be deemed to have retired from the commonwealth service upon her marriage”. That’s right, women were obliged to resign once they got married

  • It was not until October 1966 that the Holt government finally repealed the legislation and married women were freed to work in the public sector

  • Women do more housework than men even when they also have full time paid jobs. And men do less housework than women even if they’re not working at all

  • “We do two things to women in advertising. We play on their insecurity about their looks, and we play on their guilt about their children; if you love your children, you’ll keep them safe from germs and buy this new disposable wipe” says advertising creative director Dee Madigan

  • Only 19.3% of fathers who hadn’t taken paternal leave put their toddlers to bed regularly. But that rose to 27.9% among dads who had taken 10 days or more

  • Housework doesn’t count towards the best-known measure of national productivity, the gross domestic product, even though women spend an average 33hrs a week doing it. And it’s not paid

  • In 1967 the Chase Manhattan Bank established that a housewife was worth $8300 annually (about $60000 in todays terms), based on their 12 distinct jobs: nursemaid, cook, housekeeper, dietician, food buyer, dish washer, laundress, seamstress, practical nurse, maintenance man, gardener and chauffer

  • Janine Haines (democrats leader) told the Canberra Times in 1987, ‘when people say to me “how do you feel leaving your husband and children at home while you go to work?” I tell them that I will answer that question when it is asked of a man first’

  • A working father with a stay-at-home partner is a perfectly ordinary proposition. A working mother with a stay-at-home partner, however, is lucky

  • A mother who works is a ‘working mother’. A father who works is just a normal guy

  • A woman who earns more money than her husband may be worried that this makes her less womanly

 

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