Women? Will it EVER change?

I had my “click” moment  in the early 70s when my husband emerged from the kitchen and announced, “I did the pots!”  Imagine my surprise — and despair — when I pick up the September 2,  2018 issue of the New York Times  and see this headline:  “Honey, I Swept the Floor.”

Almost a year ago, Marianne Schnall predicted that 2018 would be “the year of women.”  Schnall, author of  What Will It Take to Make a Woman President? and founder of Feminist.com, argued that women  were “rising up,” their political power was growing, powerful men were being held accountable and that men were also becoming “part of this cultural revolution.” 

Didn’t we say the same thing in the Seventies? 

I’m a hopeful person by nature, but as my late and beloved old lady, Aunt Ruth, used to say, “I’m not an optimist; I’m a realist.” 

For example, I thoroughly enjoyed the premise and the performances in For the Girls, as the lyrics evolved from I’ll-die-if-he-doesn’t-love-me songs to hear-me-roar anthems.  It was, as the flyer promised, “the soundtrack of my life.”  But a niggling thought kept running through my mind: what has really changed?   Wonderful historic footage played on a big screen in the background, including a montage of  Me-too movement villains.  The audience, mostly women my age (I saw only one man), hissed angrily at images of Cosby and Charlie Rose and others  — their emotions heightened (I suspect)  because this was, coincidentally, the day of Brett Cavanaugh’s confirmation.  

I had the same sinking feeling a month earlier, during the Notorious RBG movie and, more recently, watching the play, Gloria: A Life.  The audience, again, was women my age.  Yes, a new generation has “discovered” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, progress is evident, some women have crashed through the glass ceiling, but what has really changed?  Women’s consciousness, for sure.  Society, not so much. 

Admittedly, for most of my life I’ve been more sideliner than activist,  Married in 1966, a first child in 1969, I soaked up the rhetoric of the Women’s Movement, read Ms., and talked of the need for societal change.  But I tended to leave bra-burning and marching to others.   My gender battle was waged at home, often railing against my husband when he’d emerge from the kitchen and expected me to thank him or praise him for scouring the few pots I’d left in the sink after doing what felt like everything else.  

Which is why the despair bubbled up again when I read the Modern Love piece, “Honey, I Swept the Floor.”  My husband and I were brought up on songs and standards that taught us what our very clearly defined “jobs” were — handling the homefront or being a good provider.  It took a few years for feminism to creep into our household. And when it did, we had to figure out what an “equal” partnership might look like.   

In contrast, Brooke and her husband had “evolved enough to shed traditional roles and aspire to an egalitarian relationship.”  And yet, three decades later, her husband also makes look-what-I-did remarks like, “Trash has left the building!”

Interestingly, Brooke frames the issue as her husband’s (successful) attempt at “branding”: 

While he never actually came out and said, “I do more than you,” he didn’t need to. By consistently claiming credit for everything he did, he was dominating the dialogue in our new domestic world order and positioning himself as the winner in the “who is doing more” fight.

By the time I figured this out, he had already captured a significant amount of brand mind share. Whose day was harder, whose parenting technique was better, who was responsible for cleaning the flotsam at the bottom of the garbage can — all of these conflicts could be branded or rebranded to his advantage. If I allowed Christopher’s brand to take over our household, I would be in danger of becoming the AOL to his Google.

I feel for Brooke and for her “friends, men and women, who shared similar stories about how branding had invaded their marriages.”  But  branding– a noun that didn’t exist when I got married — is only a strategy. The problem is that even when marriages are egalitarian, women are still doing more — more of the work, more of the thinking and planning.  

Brooke notes that neither she nor her husband like “the drudgery of household chores, particularly the never-ending laundry and dishwashing.”  Well, who would?  

The more pressing question is:  How can it change?  Many men don’t think gender rules need tweaking, and some women don’t either. As Susan Chira points out in a recent NYT article, “Women Don’t Think Alike. Why Do We Think They Do?”   

And then there’s the question of future generations.  I haven’t discussed gender with my oldest grandson, soon to turn 16, but I vividly remember walking into my daughter’s house when he was around four.  He greeted me in the kitchen with a hug and then raised a finger to his lips. “Daddy’s taking a nap,” he  whispered.

“What about Mommy?” I asked.  

“No,” he said without skipping a beat. “Mommies don’t take naps.”  

Pardon me for being a realist. but perhaps the old French philosopher was right:  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose—the more things change, the more they stay the same.