Cindie Chavez – ©2018
Looking at things from a different angle can facilitate genuine shifts in mood, perception, and experience. Like the tarot’s “Hanged Man” card suggests with its image of a person hanging upside down from a tree branch, sometimes the easiest way we can change things is to change the way we look at them. (Note: In spite of the card’s name, it is not depicting someone that has been hanged, thankfully!)
Ever since I was a young girl I’ve been aligned with the idea that I can (and should) reach for the stars, that I shouldn’t let my gender keep me from aspiring to achieve anything I set my mind to. I still hold to that idea. I believe that all of us, regardless of gender, should be encouraged to reach for the stars, shoot for the moon, believe in ourselves, dream big dreams, and succeed.
And although history books rarely record women’s achievements in anything near equal measure to men’s achievements, women HAVE achieved “it all”. We are doctors and lawyers and Supreme Court judges. We are world leaders. – Even though the United States failed to elect Hillary Clinton as our first woman President, there are plenty of countries that have NOT failed to put a woman in the top leadership position. We are scientists, fighter pilots, authors, psychologists, law enforcement officers, astronauts, teachers, professors, builders, race car drivers, actors, athletes, Olympians, musicians, entertainers, technicians, ministers, entrepreneurs – there isn’t a single field where women have not aspired to, and reached, “the top”.
And, I’m not suggesting that we should stop reaching. We have yet to achieve equal pay for equal work, and there are still far too few of us in the top leadership positions in both government and private industry. We have yet to vanquish sexism, misogyny, and many “gaps” that we live with daily. We definitely need to keep reaching, and keep going, and of course, we need to be compensated and respected for the myriad contributions we make.
However, what keeps nagging at me isn’t that we need more women “at the top” (although believe me, it has nagged me plenty) but that we need men to be more comfortable reaching down to what is perceived to be the bottom – the unpaid labor and necessary work that keeps the world turning day after day – the multitude of chores historically given to servants. These tasks are generally carried out by women, both physically and emotionally. The laundry load and the emotional load have predominantly been women’s burden to bear.
The emotional load doesn’t get a lot of airplay. The idea that there isn’t just the physical work of doing the laundry, there is the emotional/mental work of knowing that my light blue shirt can’t go into the dryer, his dark blue shirt needs a cold wash, and the laundry detergent that works best for both is on sale this week and we’re almost out. Every physical task carries an invisible mental and emotional component as well.
Last Saturday morning while lazing in bed, snuggling down under the blankets, I verbalized just how much I was looking forward to the day. My spouse asked me exactly what I was looking forward to the most and I replied that someone was going to serve me brunch and dinner. He replied with a sound that made me think he was unsure how to take my answer. Sort of a sad sound that someone might make if you tell them your puppy has a fever. I suppose it sounded like I was suggesting that I don’t like to cook, and by extension, cook for him, for us. But, I LOVE cooking dinner for him, for us. AND I also love the times when I’m not. Cooking isn’t a thing I hate, not at all. (Scrubbing toilets and mopping floors are a topic for another day.)
He repeated what I had said, that I was looking forward to “being served” – and yes, I was. Those two words stayed in the back of my mind all weekend – “being served” – what struck me was the thought that so many men (regardless of race or economic status) have been “served” most of their lives. And I’m guilty of serving them. In my first marriage I was a stay-at-home mom and homemaker for decades. I have two sons that were brought up in a household where “Mom” did almost all of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and whatever other tasks “servants” generally do. So I spent more than two decades “serving men” as my full-time occupation. I served them with utmost pride in my work, and usually not too much begrudgery. Looking back I’m relieved that I can say I taught my sons how to cook and clean, and that I required them to do their own laundry and contribute to household chores as they got older. It was important to me that once they moved out and were on their own that they knew how to take care of themselves, and their households, and weren’t dependent upon someone else (a woman) to do it for them. And yet, for the majority of two decades, I carried most of the house tending load – both physically and emotionally.
From the time I was four years old, my mom worked a full-time job. Both of my parents worked full-time jobs – but it was my mom who did the majority of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, organizing, and carrying the heavy, and invisible, emotional load of it all.
Women are reaching and attaining the highest heights in every field, and yet many of them are still expected to run a household on top of running an office, a company, a race, or whatever other job (or even jobs) they’re doing.
This dichotomy of gender roles is never so obvious to me than at extended family celebrations and holiday dinners. The last family dinner I attended was an all-day event with a large family group. The women that attended were all employed in positions other than “full-time homemaker”, and please don’t misunderstand me – “full-time homemaker” is an honorable, and demanding job. I did it willingly for decades. My firsthand knowledge of the value and intensity of the position is central to this essay. I have no problem with a woman choosing this as a full-time vocation – my problem is that this choice is rarely valued or compensated adequately. I’m not belittling anyone who holds down the fort as her full-time job. Far from it, I’m amazed that this difficult job of maintaining a household is automatically expected of women even when it is in addition to another job(s).
The women at this family dinner I attended included a high-school teacher, a chef, a scientist, a saleswoman – and it was these women who were in the kitchen cleaning and cooking the entire day until it was time to sit down and eat. The eating was over in 30 minutes and these same women were back on their feet in the kitchen washing and drying dishes, cleaning tables, packing up food, and putting everything away.
The men in the group were quick to jump up and help, when they were asked – to open a jar, to fill an ice bucket, to carve a turkey, to carry some chairs. And when they weren’t being directed to a particular job they were sitting on the couch catching up and watching sports.
When I was growing up this is exactly what I experienced at every holiday gathering I was a part of – and as a child of divorced parents, I had two sets of family to attend events with as well as being invited to non-family events. This was always the scenario. The men in my family were hard workers and kind husbands and fathers. I’m not assigning blame here; they were (and are) also socialized into this paradigm of male privilege, playing by these unspoken rules. They were loving men who were always ready to help – when they were asked.
And that’s a big part of the problem, another facet of the invisible weight that women carry in addition to whatever jobs and responsibilities they’re already carrying, is the idea that they not only have to “ask” but they often have to direct the work as well. In the corporate world it’s called “project management”, but on the home front not only is it not named and not assigned a value but it’s barely recognized. It’s also complicated by the fact that when a woman asks for what she needs it often gets labeled as “nagging” (hence making her a “nag”.)
When someone says “If you need anything just ask” there is a hidden presupposition that goes without verbalization – that it’s “your” job, not mine, and if you need help you’ll have to ask.
In those years of my first marriage where “full-time homemaker” was my choice, I nearly always heard in my head an unspoken extension to that sentence – “If you need anything just ask, otherwise I’ll be in here watching football.” The project was all mine, and if I needed help I’d have to ask. And most likely I’d have to explain what needs done, and provide direction, and possibly even oversee the part of the operation I’d just tried to hand off. Most of the time it felt like it wasn’t worth the stress of asking. Easier to just grin and bear it, do it myself, and somehow also manage the emotions so I didn’t turn into a simmering mess of resentment.
And for the record, in hindsight, my better answer might have been, “Yes. I’m asking in advance for every single time in the future that you’re tempted to remind me that all I need to do is ask if I need anything. The answer will always be yes. And since you’ve watched me one thousand times do all the things, just do the things. These are all fairly simple routine tasks that get done over and over, day after day, week after week. Learn the things and when you see one needs doing, the answer is yes, just do it, do the things. Please, and thank you.”
And that’s mostly just the physical part of running a household, which is hard work in itself, but the emotional part, the invisible part – adds to that weight exponentially.
The emotional load is heavy, and women have carried the bulk of it for too long.
I’m not proposing that we could easily and neatly just swap gender roles, and certainly, the ever-expanding awareness that gender is non-binary adds another dimension to the issue. But even among non-binary couples I see and hear these same issues as being commonplace – after all, cleaning, cooking, dishes, laundry, and the dozens of other household chores that have been historically relegated to women consistently need “doing” regardless of your sexuality or gender identity.
As a woman, I am not proposing that we stop reaching for “the top”. Women must keep reaching, keep going, keep accomplishing.
But women being successful in a multitude of fields isn’t the single thing that will bring equality. If it were we’d already have it. Women absolutely can and should keep reaching for their dreams, but men will have to reach down and meet us in the middle. The unpaid labor that keeps our society running day after day must be acknowledged, valued, and more equitably shared for equality to be realized.
Like so many other values we hold dear, equality starts at home.
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Cindie Chavez is known as “The Love & Magic Coach”. She is the creator of MOONTREAT™, and she has some great free stuff for you at her website: www.cindiechavez.com
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Cindie Chavez is known as “The Love & Magic Coach”. She is the creator of MOONLIGHT™ – A Course in Manifesting Love and she has some great free stuff for you at her website: www.cindiechavez.com
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