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Why do we insist on pretending women don't work?
Sexists make up a world that doesn't exist, then use it to justify sexism in the world that does.
When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, a curious thing began to happen: people started acting as if my paid job was a small, part-time hobby, or that it didn’t exist at all.
They’d talk about me primarily as a supporter of my husband’s career. People would send me, a literally (thousands of times) published writer, advice on “getting published.” At gatherings, folks would ask my husband about his job, but never me. Or they’d make remarks about how busy I must be with the kids. I’d get lots of patronizing gestures along the lines of, “How cute!” when I told people I’m a writer.
My husband and I eventually turned it into a game: How many domestic tasks will a new acquaintance discuss with me before asking about my job? How many questions will an unfamiliar man ask my husband about himself and his work before acknowledging me in any way?
At first, I thought it was because lots of people call themselves writers as a sort of identity rather than an expression of their career. Then, I thought it might be because I was pregnant, and people assumed I’d be quitting my job to stay home. Like most women, I spent a lot of time blaming myself for harmful social norms: Maybe I’m bad at talking about work; maybe people think I’m too stupid to be a writer; maybe I’m boring and uninteresting and that’s why no one asks me about my work.
But I’ve seen the same thing happen to my friends, too. My buddy Mary Catherine Starr of Momlife Comics constantly fields angry comments from men telling her that she shouldn’t whine about unequal distribution of labor, because she gets to be a stay-at-home mother while her husband works. The problem is that they are leaving these comments on her literal, actual job—the blog and comic strip.
I’ve watched literally everything women do dismissed as labor. Trips to the grocery store are fun self-care! That six-figure business she runs is just a hobby; he has the real job! We’re told that we choose to work, and being a working mother is treated as some sort of value or philosophy rather than a necessary choice the overwhelming majority of women make, whether they want to or not.
Patriarchy depends on framing everything women do—paid or unpaid, no matter how valuable—as leisure.
This allows us to easily dismiss and devalue it. When we work outside the home, it’s because we’re bad moms who want to get away from our children—not because we need to earn money, not because we need to support a family, definitely not because we are the primary provider, and most assuredly not because our work is important. And if we are family caregivers instead of working for pay, then we are spoiled, entitled princesses who create busywork for ourselves then endlessly bitch at our poor, long-suffering husbands for not participating.
Poor men.
This belief in women as frivolous and flighty, as never really capable of hard work no matter what they do, has become the cornerstone of manosphere ideology, too. There, the phrase “provider and protector” has practically become a nervous tic. To misogynist men, having any job at all renders one a provider and protector, but a woman’s job is a sign of her “masculine energy,” and therefore evidence that she doesn’t deserve decent treatment.
Somehow, when men work for pay, it becomes an excuse for just about everything:
He’s bad at sex: Well, he’s a provider and protector so you need to submit.
He’s a shitty father: That’s not his job. He’s a provider and protector (apparently with no obligation to protect the kids from his abuse).
He’s disgusting, doesn’t clean the house, and can’t wipe his own ass: But he’s a protector and provider!
He’s verbally abusive: He’s just in his masculine energy. Men are aggressive. That aggression protects you (but not from him, I guess).
Seventy-five percent of mothers work—just 10% fewer than the 85% of fathers who do. This notion of women as unworking, of mothers as spoiled, and of household labor inequality springing from the fact that men are primary breadwinners is nothing more than a misogynist fantasy.
Of course, even when women don’t work for pay, they still work. This work, too, is devalued—treated as requiring no intellect, no experience, no skill. And that’s exactly the point: to treat everything women do as valueless, so we can continue to extract more and more from them.
Pitting working mothers against non-working mothers is, as always, a distraction from the real issue: Men devaluing whatever labor women do, wherever they do it. No wonder we feel like no matter what we do, it’s wrong. Because in a patriarchal society, it is.
Remember that next time you hear someone frame women’s work as leisure, and men’s work as inherently important.
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Apologies in advance, this is a long rant!
My husband and I share a business. Well, technically we do, we are partners and split profits 50/50. The overall business actually is made up of four smaller businesses in the same field; two that he does solely (video editing and web design) one I do solely (photography editing), one we do together (wedding photography). My sole business makes 70% of our total gross profit and 80% of our total net profit.
In terms of our joint enterprise, he charges batteries the night before and turns up on the day to photography. I do all of the admin, advertising, the post-processing after the event, all correspondence, taxes and accounts, most of the social media, the planning/prep for the day and organising on the day.
And yet, because my husband clicks his finger in the camera button on the group photos, the only part of the day where all the guests actively see us taking charge, the assumption is that it’s his business and I just tag along, like a cute little sidekick. I have planned the entire day, taken charge of all of the bridal preparation shots, choose the best location for group photos and the married couple’s portraits; pose the couple for every single couples portrait, organise the guests and family in the group shots, talk the couple through what’s happening next at every stage, speak to the event planner, turn the wedding party photos into a fun and memorable group experience that they talk about for years after. We get guests coming to us at every wedding to day how impressed they are with how efficient the group photos were, which is due to my pre planning and work on the day.
And yet still, people talk to my husband as if he is the one in charge and I just tag along for funsies. Technical questions go to him. Questions about the day go to him. Conversations start by addressing him and any business questions are directed to him. My taking charge of the group photos is always joked about as me being bossy and him being the long suffering husband who is indulging his little wife by having her there, all rolling their eyes at me good naturedly, and quipping about who wears the trouser. All as a joke at my expense, whilst he makes sure they know that he knows what he’s doing but let’s me ‘have my moment’ because he’s just such a loving husband (but God, aren’t I a nag?!). He loves to tell them how he’s been a photographer for years longer than me, and that one day he let me tag along and it turned out I wasn’t too bad.
At one wedding, a particularly obnoxious Best Man took exception at me asking him (and all the others) to remove large items from his pockets for a couple of group photos. He kept poking at me and deliberately dragging out the wedding party shoot time, and when I continued to organise and corale people despite him, he asked me what it was like to live off all the money my husband’s business was making.
And then there are the drunk men who thing it’s ok to hit on me or make lewd comments, then apologise to my husband in that ‘boys will be boys’ way. Occasionally a drunk female guest will make inappropriate comments to my husband which he laps up and says self-depracating things like ‘oh, it’s normally my wife getting chatted up, not me!’ Nobody ever apologises to me.
I also do 90% of the domestic labour for our family - physical, mental and emotional. I never stop, have no leisure time and yet get berated for working too much, accused of nagging when I try to hold him accountable, blamed for his lack of contribution because of my ‘attitude’ or my ‘coldness’ because I don’t want to have sex with a man who shows me so little respect.
And God forbid I should get behind with a deadline in our joint business because I am overworked and burning out. Suddenly, the man who takes no interest in the day to day running of our business is on my case, berating me for not being able to keep up. Interestingly, he seems to step this up a notch when a male contacts us to ask for a delivery date; two notches if it’s a man he knows personally. Suddenly, it’s OUR business again, and I am showing him up (apparently ‘on purpose’).
If I dare to suggest I’d have more time to work on the business if he took on some of the domestic load, I’m told I’m deflecting, that household chores have nothing to do with me ‘failing to deliver on my promises’ and are actually due to me creating ‘busy work’ instead of necessary tasks.
His solution to this? Despite doing almost zero chores and having no clue as to what running a home with children entails, he thinks we need to sit down together and agree on what is ‘actually necessary’, because apparently he and I have very different views on what really needs to be done (and he doesn’t mind mess, doesn’t even see it actually).
I burnt out Xmas 2022 after working 18-20 hour days for over 6 months and sometimes forgoing sleep entirely. Our income has dropped dramatically as I cannot keep up and I have lost clients. We are in debt. Despite this, I still outearned him by bringing in four times what he did in the last year. Instead of stepping up in the business he continued just as before, and then when bills went unpaid, it wasn’t his lack of financial contribution to blame, it was my fault for ‘wasting money’ when we had been financially sound (and I had savings set aside for us which I was forced to use to pay the mortgage and buy food). My ‘compulsive shopping habit’ (buying items for the home and business to make our lives easier, when we were financially secure, and the occasional family treat or luxury to make up for years of frugality), this was the reason we were in debt.
My unpaid labour holds no value it worth to him. My paid labour garners no recognition or acknowledgement from him. In times of financial stability he benefits from the fruits of my labour, and when times are hard he blames me for buying the very things he has enjoyed in the past.
Those around us believe I’m a workaholic who isn’t really family oriented, whilst he is super dad because we both work from home, so clearly he’s the SAHP if I’m working all the time.
There is no scenario in which I am given fair credit for success or grace when I am overwhelmed. I cannot win. But I don’t need to win, I just need what I do to be valued by someone, anyone!
Solo mothers seem to cop this particular, which seems completely illogical. Being a solo mother with no child support (as is very common) is the very definition of breadwinner, provider and caregiver all at once yet society judges these women as failures somehow.
It blows my mind.